Author: lorettamilestollefson

Historical fiction and fact about Old New Mexico.

BOOK REVIEW: The White Sands, The Two Valleys Saga, Book 3

The third book in Mary Armstrong’s Two Valleys saga, The White Sands, takes a further dive into the history of southern New Mexico as it explores the events that led up to the famous feud between  Albert Fountain and Albert Fall. While Fall would go on to be implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal, Fountain would disappear into the White Sands in 1896  with his ten-year-old son Henry.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and Armstrong’s novel The White Sands. In this book, her narrator, Jesús Messi, gets to know the Lee family, the clan that was thought by many to be responsible for the Fountain disappearance. What he discovers is that there are two sides to every story, and more than one way to deal with a problem.

Armstrong uses Messi’s memory loss, suffered at the end of Book 2, to place him in the midst of the Tularosa Basin and the Lee network of family and friends. As part of that group, he comes to understand their perspective, which makes things awkward for him when he returns to Las Cruces. The teenage Jesús is caught between two worlds as he realizes that neither side is totally in the right—or the wrong.

His struggles are thoughtfully portrayed and provide a great way for Armstrong to explore the antagonism between the political parties at the time and the way those political divisions became deeply personal. In fact, the attitudes and events she recounts are eerily echoed in today’s news. They involve strong, opinionated personalities, convoluted legal questions, impatient and potentially coerced witnesses, and much more.

If you’re interested in southern New Mexico history in the late 1800s, the way our past is echoed by our present, or simply want an insightful coming-of-age story about an intelligent and perceptive young man, I highly recommend The White Sands.

George Wilkins Kendall Sails for New Mexico

On Monday, May 17, 1841 journalist George Wilkins Kendall sailed from New Orleans, Louisiana to join an expedition the Texas Republic was sending to Santa Fé, New Mexico.

Santa Fé had been a major destination of Americans heading west from Missouri for the past twenty years. Many had returned home wealthy. The Texans wanted to break a trail from Austin that would move that trade south to them instead. The resulting profits could prove critical to the Texan coffers, which were verging on empty.

If the Texans had only intended to trade, the reception the Texas Santa Fe Expedition received might have been different. But five years before, their Legislature had declared that Santa Fé and all its wealth was inside Texan borders. This was followed by President Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar’s open letter in Spring 1840 telling the New Mexicans the Rio Grande was “the natural and convenient boundary” of Texas and that “we shall take great pleasure in hailing you as fellow citizens.”  

Lamar promised to send an expedition in September 1840, with commissioners who would “cement the perfect union” of Santa Fé and Texas. These men would “be accompanied by a military escort for the purpose of repelling any hostile Indians that may infest the passage.”

George Wilkins Kendall, circa 1837. Source: Kendall of the Picayune, by Fayette Copeland

The Expedition he sent, which was comprised of three Commissioners, their staff members and companions, roughly ten merchants, and around 270 soldiers, was a little late getting started. It left Austin in June 1841. In the meantime, New Mexico Governor Manual Armijo had been busy gathering his resources while keeping a close eye on the Americans in New Mexico.

Although the Texans had been led to believe they would be welcomed to Santa Fé with open arms, they would find the situation a little more complicated than they assumed. George Kendall had estimated his journey would take a pleasant four months. It would actually be twelve, the majority of them uncomfortable, including time in a Mexican prison. 

All because he didn’t take the time before he left New Orleans to check whether Mexico agreed with the Texan desire to take over the Santa Fé trade.  

Loretta Miles Tollefson, copyright 5/15/23

BOOK REVIEW: Old Santa Fe Today

There’s only one problem with the fifth edition of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s classic Old Santa Fe Today. Every time I dip into it, I get more story ideas. I can’t research and turn them all into fiction! Which is too bad, because there’s a lot of great material in this book.

Old Santa Fe Today was originally conceived as a list of historical properties in Santa Fe. To that end, it still includes a register of properties worthy of preservation, information about efforts to do so, and a brief history of Santa Fe’s built environment. This may sound like a specialist’s book and not something for the average reader. However, the beautifully rendered full-color photos and the details about each entry make it highly accessible.  

Not only do the authors provide architectural and preservation information about the buildings in question, they also include a brief history: who built it, who lived in it, and who those people were associated with. I, of course, am especially interested in the older buildings, in particular those in use during the mid-1800s. However, the entries include structures built as late as the 1940s, including the Dodge-Bailey house designed by John Gaw Meem and adjacent to Meem’s own home on Old Santa Fe Trail.

Old Santa Fe Today also includes properties outside Santa Fe proper, including Las Acequias, a hundred-acre farm on the banks of the Rio Nambe, and non-building structures such as the Acequia Madre that has transported water into Santa Fe from the Sangre de Cristo mountains for over four hundred years.

So, whether you’d like to know more about Santa Fe’s historic structures, are interested in historic preservation, want to learn about Santa Fe area history, or just like beautiful pictures, I highly recommend Old Santa Fe Today. 

I’M BACK!!

I’M BACK!!

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything here since last May. This was the result of a couple of things. I was deep into the research for my forthcoming, which was pretty all-consuming. Also, my husband and I decided it was time to get our end-of-life instructions (wills, etc) set up. We’re not getting any younger. This led to a major effort to scan family photos and create a kind of history to accompany them that turned into a document that’s pretty close to a full length novel in its own right.

With all that going on, my blog post schedule slipped and then became nonexistent.

But now I’m back! I don’t expect to continue posting quite at the level I was posting when I began the historical fiction part of this journey in 2015, but I do plan to produce content more consistently.

The project I was so involved in last Spring is now getting closer to its conclusion. Tentatively titled The Texian Prisoners, it’s a biographical novel about the 1841 Texan invasion of New Mexico told from the point of view of a Texan who understands that every story has more than one side. I hope to release it this Fall. In the coming months, I’ll be sharing more about that book and the research behind it, as well as other material about New Mexico’s history that I think you’ll find interesting. I also expect to do some book reviews, both of nonfiction sources I’ve mined for The Texian Prisoners as well as historical fiction by fellow New Mexico authors.

I look forward to talking with you again!

BOOK REVIEW: The Iliad of Geronimo

BOOK REVIEW: The Iliad of Geronimo

The full title of W. Michael Farmer’s novel, The Iliad of Geronimo, A Song of Blood and Fire, tells us not only the subject but also the substance of the story. The poetic ring of the subtitle reflects the author’s premise that the events of Geronimo’s life in the ten years prior to his surrender to General Nelson Miles echo the themes of Homer’s Iliad.

They are both definitely stories of blood and of fire in the bones, as well as loyalty, betrayal, frustration, and triumph. My initial reaction to this premise is that the echoes didn’t run very deep. It seemed to me that the Trojans and Greeks of Homer’s epic were more culturally similar than were the Apaches and the Americans and Mexicans they fought. But as I reflected on the two tales, I began to realize that they actually are very alike. In both stories, the two sides cling to their deep antipathy toward the other and rarely acknowledge the pain their enemy has experienced. They also exhibit knee jerk suspicions of each others’ motivations and a deep unwillingness to see their opponents as individuals. In addition, in-fighting among their own subgroups weakens the group’s likelihood of success.

There are also differences between the two sagas. For example, unlike the Greeks and Trojans, the Apache way of life was based on raiding, a concept that looked remarkably like stealing to the Americans and Mexicans, regardless of the fact that they themselves had stolen the Apache homeland. The dissimilarity in perspective is perhaps best illustrated by an incident toward the end of The Iliad of Geronimo. When Geronimo and his band delay their final return from Mexico in order to “collect” a herd of cattle with which to begin their new life on the reservation, the Americans make them give the animals back. Geronimo is furious. It looks to him like the U.S. Army is once again setting the Apache up to live in poverty and subjection. He went to a lot of work to get that herd!

The way Farmer tells this and other events from the ten years covered by this book brings Geronimo vividly to life and helps us see him as a human being who grew up with one set of rules only to have them whipped out from beneath him and replaced with another before he had time to adjust.

I recommend this book. If you’ve already read W. Michael Farmer’s The Odyssey of Geronimo, this novel will help you appreciate the events of that story more fully. If you haven’t read The Odyssey, I recommend you acquire both books and start with this one. The Iliad will show you Geronimo slowly coming to grips with the fact that new rules now apply, whether he wants them to or not. The Odyssey will show you how well he ended up adapting to and using them for his own purposes.

Whether you choose to read the books in sequence or want to plunge right into this one, I heartily recommend The Iliad of Geronimo, A Song of Blood and Fire.

Taxes Bring Trouble To New Mexico

Taxes Bring Trouble To New Mexico

By early Summer 1837, tales were spreading across New Mexico about the taxes the Mexican Congress had recently imposed, and getting taller as they went. Rumor had it that collectors would be confiscating one-third of the fruits of individual families’ labor—crops and chickens alike—and also levying charges on community-held water, wood, and pastures. There were even stories that men would have to pay a fee every time they lay with their wives.

Although New Mexicans paid municipal tariffs, they’d hadn’t paid the alcabala, or Federal sales tax, for most of the time since 1795. They’d been exempted in exchange for their role on Mexico’s northern frontier, providing a buffer for the interior against the United States as well as uncolonized Native tribes.

This tax exemption was due to expire in mid-1837. In addition, Congress had added a 12.5 cent per vara tariff on U.S. goods like plain-weave cotton (white or printed), and banned the import of shirting, calico, and other cloth. While the law seems to have been intended to protect Mexican production of these items, it was also likely to raise their cost.

So prices were going to go up. This in itself was upsetting. In addition, Mexico City had given Governor Pérez the authority to supervise tax collections. This was perhaps more worrisome. While New Mexico didn’t send tax revenues to Mexico City, it didn’t receive assistance from it, either. The Santa Fe administration was funded via levies on goods imported from the U.S. over the Santa Fe Trail. With imports being curtailed, government funds were going to have to come from somewhere else.

Since he’d arrived in Santa Fe two years before, the governor had demonstrated a talent for finding new sources of revenue, including enforced loans from rico families and, in 1836, a sweeping set of new fees that affected everyone else. While some taxes, such as the two dollars per vehicle carrying foreign merchandise and additional charges for the animals pulling them, were directed at American traders, those costs were still going to be passed on to consumers.

On top of this, Santa Fe residents now had to pay five dollars a month for the right to cut timber for lumber, twenty-five cents a head for cattle or sheep driven through the city, two dollars per performance for “entertainments” (presumably plays), and fifty cents for a dance license.

So people were already hurting. With the governor’s new authority to supervise collections, there was little chance to get around the coming taxes. There’d be no appeals to friendship, cousinship, or any other kind of interpersonal relation to ease the financial burden that was about to descend.

And then rumors about even more taxes began moving up and down the Río Grande Valley. Governor Pérez apparently made no effort to squash the more exaggerated claims or to let people know he’d asked Mexico City to renew the alcabala exemption. As the stories grew wilder and spread further, they ignited a fire that would cost Perez his life in early August 1837.

For more about what happened in New Mexico before, during, and after August 1837, check out my novel There Will Be Consequences. It’s available from your favorite brick-and-mortar store, Bookshop.org, ebook retailer, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Sources: Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1984; Janet Lecompte, Rebellion in Río Arriba 1837, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985; Benjamin M. Read, Illustrated History of New Mexico, Santa Fe: New Mexican Printing Company, 1912; Joseph P. Sanchez, “It happened in Old Santa Fe, The Death of Governor Albino Pérez, 1835-1837,” All Trails Lead to Santa Fe, Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2010; Marc Simmons, Spanish Government in New Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968; Ralph E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico History, Vol. 2, Cedar Rapids: Torch Press, 1912.

Teddy Roosevelt Visits Albuquerque!

Teddy Roosevelt Visits Albuquerque!

On Tuesday, May 5, 1903, a crowd of 15,000 people met President Theodore Roosevelt in Albuquerque during his stop there as part of a 66-day train tour of the American West.

It wasn’t the President’s first visit to New Mexico Territory. He’d been in Las Vegas four years earlier, attending the first annual reunion of his Rough Riders. This was an important moment for Roosevelt and for the Territory. He announced his candidacy for U.S. President and also promised to work for New Mexico statehood.

At the May 1903 event, New Mexicans took the opportunity to remind Roosevelt of his promise. When his mid-afternoon train arrived at the Albuquerque Depot and recently opened Alvarado Hotel, New Mexico’s Territorial Delegate began the festivities with a speech that emphasized the Territory’s eagerness for statehood.

Source: https://www.albuqhistsoc.org/source-documents/greeting-president-roosevelt-albuquerque/  Accessed 1/21/22

To further enhance his point, the dignitaries’’ platform faced a tableau of 45 young girls carrying banners that represented each of the current states and another child with her hands extended, appealing for admission to the Union. But Roosevelt didn’t let himself be tempted into making promises. His speech and ensuing remarks at a private reception in Albuquerque’s Commercial Club contained only platitudes and generalities.

However, in the end, the President did come through for New Mexico. As best he could, anyway. His December 1905 message to Congress included an endorsement of New Mexico statehood. Unfortunately, he recommended merging it and Arizona into a single unit, a proposal that Arizona shot down at the November 1906 polls, although New Mexico voted for it.

Roosevelt made further attempts to fulfill his promise, but none of them resulted in New Mexico statehood. It would be another seven years before the Territory would become a full member of the Union, in a deal crafted by Roosevelt’s successor, President William Howard Taft.

Despite Roosevelt’s inability to accomplish statehood, May 1903 wasn’t the last time New Mexico would get a glimpse of him. He returned to Albuquerque in Fall 1916, campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes. A short film of his appearance can be found at www.loc.gov/item/mp76000168.

Sources: Albuquerque Historical Society, http://www.albuqhistsoc.org; Howard Bryan, Wildest of the Wild West, Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishing, 1988; David V. Holtby, Forty-Seventh Star, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012.

Supreme Court Rules in Land Grant Company’s Favor

Supreme Court Rules in Land Grant Company’s Favor

On Monday, April 18, 1887, the U.S. Supreme Court finally confirmed the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company’s right to almost two million acres in northeast New Mexico.

The controversy over the grant’s size had been going on since the early 1870s. A survey when the Company bought the grant identified around 2 million acres, land that  that included much of what is now New Mexico’s Colfax County and stretched north into Colorado.

But there was a problem. Not everyone agreed that the grant was that large. In fact, U.S. General Land Office surveys insisted that grants issued by Mexico were limited to only 22 square leagues—a far cry from the 2 million acres claimed. Based on this judgment, the Land Office declared much of the acreage open to settlement. When its agents began issuing deeds to eager homesteaders and ranchers, trouble ensued. But the Maxwell Grant Company intended that land for its own uses and this was the American West—might made right. People died.

Map of final Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company boundaries

At the same time it was using guns and intimidation to keep people off its wide-open spaces, the Company also sought legal recourse. It turned to Washington with a request for an official government survey of the grant based on the geographical descriptions in the original 1840s documents. The request was refused.

Then in 1876, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed another New Mexico land grant to encompass more than 22 square leagues. The Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company swung into action. Three weeks after the decision, the Maxwell grant was being resurveyed. It took another eleven years, four days of oral argument, and 900 pages of testimony, but the Company finally got its land.  

With that ruling, the Colfax County War, which had begun in earnest in September 1875, finally wound down, making it a longer feud than New Mexico’s more famous Lincoln County War, which had lasted a mere three years (1878-1881).

And proving that if you hang in there long enough—and have enough money—you might just get what you want, after all.

Sources: Howard R. Lamar, Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West, New York: Harper & Row, 1977; Lawrence R. Murphy, Philmont: A history of New Mexico’s Cimarron Country, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972; Stephen Zimmer, For Good or Bad, The People of the Cimarron Country, Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1999; Maria E. Montoya, “Maxwell Land Grant”, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ha.026, accessed 1/20/22.

BOOK REVIEW: Wildest of the Wild West

BOOK REVIEW: Wildest of the Wild West

Howard Bryan’s Wildest of the Wild Westis one of the first books I read when I began to explore the possibility of turning pieces of New Mexico’s history into fiction. While Bryan’s book about the town of Las Vegas is nonfiction, it reads like a story. Certainly, some of the events he retells could be lifted straight from a traditional Western novel.

We find an Italian hermit living in a cave above the Spanish-speaking town and revered as a holy man and miracle worker, Jesse James and Billy the Kid soaking in the nearby hot springs, Doc Holliday opening his final dental practice only to abandon it for a saloon and gambling hall, and Hoodoo Brown, formal justice of the peace and informal protection racketeer. Then there’s the actress/singer/poet/faro dealer known as Monte Verde who was actually the famous Confederate spy Belle Siddons. And the enigmatic “Mysterious Dave” Mather, who seems to have robbed a train while serving as Las Vegas Town Marshal.

The stories of these various characters is woven into a coherent narrative of Las Vegas’s history which Bryan tells with humor and verve. If you like nonfiction that reads like a novel, I highly recommend Wildest of the Wild West.

Governor Pérez Heads to Santa Fe!

Governor Pérez Heads to Santa Fe!

In early April 1835, Mexican Army Colonel Albino Pérez left Chihuahua for his new post as Governor of New Mexico. He arrived in Santa Fe with 1000 pesos “for the needs of that office,” and a strong reputation as a military man. A “man of fine presence … privileged and well-to-do,” Pérez began his administration with a brisk efficiency that boded well.

However, once New Mexicans got a closer look at the governor, they were less impressed. The funds he brought were depleted fairly quickly. Also, Pérez seemed to think his 3,000-peso-a-year salary was insufficient, even though it was high for New Mexico. He borrowed large gilded mirrors from former governor Francisco Sarracino, a chest of drawers from Justice Santiago Abréu, and a large table clock from Judge Juan Estevan Pino. And local transport options weren’t good enough for him. He ordered an American-made two-wheeled carriage and two horses worth 800 pesos from Santa Fe trader Jesse Sutton.

The new governor also lived an immoral life. Although he was believed to have a wife in Mexico City, he became involved in a relationship with his housekeeper, Trinidad Trujillo, and fathered her child.

New Mexicans might have merely muttered at all this and gone on with their lives, but Federal politics began to exacerbate already-negative feelings.

On October 3, 1835, a decree by President Santa Anna’s centralist Congress abolished Mexico’s State and Territorial legislatures and replaced them with five-member Councils with no decision-making powers. Instead, they were subordinate to the president-appointed—and therefore controlled—governor. This gave Governor Pérez much more authority than he’d had when he arrived.

In addition, and perhaps more importantly, New Mexico’s tax exemption was about to run out. There was no assurance it would be renewed. New Federal decrees made the governor responsible for supervising collections, a potentially lucrative job. He didn’t have much incentive to ask for a continued exemption.

Rumors swirled. The governor was about to impose exorbitant tariffs. Thing never taxed before—like water, wood, and pasture—would be now. It was even whispered that men would be taxed for laying with their wives. Some people believed the new rates were actually being levied by the governor, not Mexico City, as a way to fund his lifestyle. When Pérez called a July 10 meeting to discuss the process for collecting the new revenues, the pot of rebellion began to heat up.

A month later, the governor’s naked body would lie headless in the road south of Santa Fe. All the efficiency and fine presence in the world couldn’t save him from the consequences of his lifestyle choices and Congressional mandates.

For more about what happened in New Mexico before, during, and after August 1837, check out my novel There Will Be Consequences, which is available from your favorite brick and mortar store, Bookshop.org, ebook retailer, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Sources: Lansing B. Bloom, “New Mexico Under Mexican Administration,” Old Santa Fe Magazine, Vol. II, Santa Fe: Old Santa Fe Press, 1914-1915; Paul Kraemer, An Alternative View of New Mexico’s 1837 Rebellion, Los Alamos Historical Society, 2009; Janet Lecompte, Rebellion in Río Arriba 1837, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985; Benjamin M. Read, Illustrated History of New Mexico, Santa Fe: New Mexican Printing Company, 1912; Ralph E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico History, Vol. 2, Cedar Rapids: Torch Press, 1912; David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.