Aftermath of a Rebellion

In mid April 1847, the Taos Valley was still experiencing the aftermath of the January 20 rebellion.

The U.S. Army had captured a total of 45 rebels. They released 24 for lack of evidence and tried 21. The trials were over, but the executions weren’t. Seventeen men would hang, one of them for high treason.

The high treason charge was questionable. An argument could be made that a person couldn’t rebel against a country to which they had not pledged allegiance. The war with Mexico wasn’t over. New Mexico was still officially part of occupied Mexico, and its people were still citizens of that country. There’d been a trial in early January which had found the high treason charge suspect. But that didn’t stop 26-year-old prosecuting attorney Francis P. Blaire, Jr. from continuing to use it.

In early March, Blaire filed the charge against three men: Antonio Maria Trujillo, Pantaleon Archuleta, Trinidad Barceló, and Pedro Vigil. Apparently the only rebel trials held in Santa Fe, the charges against Archuleta, Barceló, and Pedro Vigil were eventually dropped after the proceedings ended in a mistrial.

Trujillo was found guilty, but because he was elderly and unwell, the jury and judge requested that the sentence be commuted. Military Governor Sterling Price granted the pardon, and Santa Fe was spared a demonstration of the effectiveness of the gallows.

Taos wasn’t. Of the eighteen prisoners tried there, all were convicted and hung.

There had been a single execution on February 7 of Pablo Montoya, one of the rebellion leaders, but the remainder waited until April, when the formal trials began.

These hangings started on Friday, April 9, when Hipolito (Polo) Salazar, Jose Manuel Garcia, Pedro Lucero, Juan Ramon Trujillo, and the Romero brothers Ysidro and Manuel, age sixteen, were executed two days after their trials. Salazar had been convicted of high treason, but the rest of these men were found guilty of killing American-appointed Governor Charles Bent.

The eleven remaining convicted rebels had to wait to meet their end. Most of them would die three weeks later, on Friday, April 30. These executions seem to have occurred in two batches. The six men from Taos Pueblo—Francisco Naranjo, Jose Gabriel Romero (or Samora), Juan Domingo Martin, Juan Antonio Lucero, and a man called El Cuervo—were apparently hanged at the same time. They were buried at the Pueblo at the church which had been destroyed by the Americans in early February.

Four other men—Manuel Miera, Juan Pacheco, Manuel Sandoval, and Rafael Tafoya—were also executed that day. Then, on the following Friday, Juan Antonio Avila was hanged for his role in the insurrection.

Why the week-long delay? There’s no information in the records. I’d love to know the answer to this question, just as I’d like to know why the trials of Trujillo, Barceló, Archuleta, and Vigil were held in Santa Fe and the reasons for the mistrials for latter three men. Was this a procedural issue? Was family pressure brought to bear?

I’m especially curious about the case of Trinidad Barceló. He was the older brother of businesswoman Gertrudes Barceló, who had assisted the U.S. occupiers in suppressing a revolt the previous December. Did her support of the regime play a part in her brother’s release?

What about the other two: Archuleta and Vigil? Were they related to Acting Governor Donaciano Vigil or some other prominent New Mexican who the Americans wanted on their side?

And then there are the stories of the men who died: their reasons for resistance, the impact on their families, the pain or joy they left behind.

So many stories, so little time.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: David C. Beyreis, Blood in the Borderlands; Mary J. Straw Cook, Doña Tules; James A. Crutchfield, Revolt at Taos; Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, eds., The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott; Lewis H. Garrard, Wah-to-ya and the Taos Trail; Lucy Lippard, Pueblo Chico, Land and Lives in Galisteo since 1814; Michael McNierney, ed. Taos 1847, The Revolt in Contemporary Accounts; Alberto Vidaurre in Corina A. Santistevan and JuliaMoore, Taos, A Topical History.