On Thursday, September 14, 1837, former New Mexico governor Manuel Armijo and his combined troops, about 1000 men, marched into Santa Fe to begin the push against the rebels who’d captured the city in early August.

The rebels had already left town. They’d installed Jose Angel Gonzales as governor and returned to their homes in Santa Cruz de la Canada, Chimayo, Truchas, and Taos. After all, it was the harvest season. They had wheat and other crops to harvest in preparation for the coming winter.

In Santa Fe, Manuel Armijo faced a similar lack of resources at the governmental level, but he was apparently less uncomfortable requisitioning what he needed.  This included seizing three large wagons to carry  provisions and also soliciting contributions from American merchants Jesse Sutton, John Scully, Luis and Antonio Robidoux, and David Waldo as well as New Mexico’s ricos, especially those who lived south of Santa Fe.

Money even came from Padre Antonio Jose Martinez in Taos. Martinez was probably feeling particularly anxious that the rebels be quelled. Even though he’d returned to Taos earlier in the month at the rebels’ request and come to terms with them, they still weren’t happy.

Not only did they want him to perform marriages, baptisms, and burials for alms, rather than the customary fees, they also wanted their dead buried inside the church. Martinez refused, saying he didn’t have the authority to do so and warning that anyone who undertook such a burial faced excommunication.

Nothing he said made a difference. The rebels seized the Los Ranchos de Taos chapel and buried a corpse by the chancel steps. When the Padre remonstrated, they gave him a document saying they took full responsibility.

By doing this, the rebels denied the priest’s authority in this and other areas of their lives.  While Manuel Armijo, in Santa Fe, was preparing physically for the coming altercation, the rebels in Taos were preparing mentally, establishing themselves and their comrades as the arbiters of their temporal and spiritual destinies.

They would need that self-assurance in the weeks to come.

Sources: Fray Angelico Chavez, But Time And Chance, The Story of Padre Martinez of Taos, 1793-1867, Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1981; Paul Kraemer, An Alternative View of New Mexico’s 1837 Rebellion, Los Alamos Historical Society, 2009; Janet Lecompte, Rebellion in Rio Arriba, 1837, Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1985; David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846, Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1982.