Tag: Lewis Garrard

What to Believe?

What to Believe?

If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you’ve probably noticed that I sometimes quote Lewis Garrard, the seventeen-year-old American who visited New Mexico in 1847.  His book about his adventures there, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail, was published in 1850. It doesn’t seem to have made much of a hit at the time, but it’s now often used as a primary source for everything from how to make coffee on the trail to the April 1847 trials after the Taos insurrection was suppressed. In fact, Garrard’s report of the trials and subsequent hangings is the only firsthand account of them that we have.

Title page of Lewis H. Garrard’s 1850 edition, courtesy of archive.org

But Wah-to-yah also contains secondhand accounts. Of the insurrection itself and the battle at Taos Pueblo, as well as of the death of Taos leader Tomás Romero afterward. And this is where things get complicated.

The circumstances around Romero’s assassination are of particular interest to me because his death plays a role in my novel An Unhappy Country. Based on U.S. military records this is what we know about what happened:

  1. People from Taos pueblo sued for an end to hostilities the morning of Friday, February 5, 1847. Colonel Price agreed on condition that the remaining insurrection leaders be turned over to him.
  2. The only uncaptured leader alive and in the Taos area was Tomás Romero, who turned himself in later that day.
  3. Romero was taken to the jail in the village of Taos, where he was shot and killed by a U.S. Army dragoon private named Fitzgerald.
  4. Fitzgerald was arrested and jailed.
  5. About six weeks later, on March 18, 1847, Fitzgerald was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. This was well before the expiration of his term of enlistment.

And that’s all we know from the official accounts.

According to Lewis Garrard, he met Fitzgerald in the second half of March, while Garrard and his party were camped roughly 55 miles east of Taos in the vicinity of today’s village of Cimarron, New Mexico. He says Fitzgerald told him that he’d come to New Mexico specifically to wreak vengeance on “the Mexicans” for the death of his older brother, who’d been a member of the 1841 Texas Expedition to Santa Fe.

According to Garrard, the older Fitzgerald had been killed by Damasio Salazar, the militia captain who supervised the Texans’ removal from New Mexico. The younger Fitzgerald boasted that he accomplished his mission when “in the fight at the Pueblo, three Mexicans fell by his hand; and, the day following, he walked up to [Romero] and deliberately shot him down.”  

Whether Fitzgerald did kill three men in addition to Tomás Romero is anyone’s guess. But Garrard’s report of Fitzgerald’s motivation raises a number of issues. Either he was confused, or Fitzgerald was.

You see, the only Fitzgerald with the 1841 Texas Santa Fe Expedition was an Irish/Anglo man whose first name was Archibald. And Archibald Fitzgerald didn’t die in New Mexico. He survived the trek under Captain Salazar as well as imprisonment in Mexico and was released in late February 1842.

Instead of returning home to Ireland, Archibald Fitzgerald went back to Texas. There, he joined the young republic’s forces and fought with them at the December 1842 battle of Mier. According to historian Noel Loomis, Fitzgerald was captured there and thrown into prison at Salado. He and his fellow Texans staged a successful breakout, but Fitzgerald was killed in the aftermath.

So, either Archibald’s younger brother didn’t know what happened to him, Private Fitzgerald told Lewis Garrard a tall tale in order to justify what he’d done, or Garrard misremembered/embroidered the story when he retold it in 1850. In any case, this is one portion of Wah-to-yah which does not hold up to verification by other sources.

The younger Fitzgerald apparently also told Lewis he’d escaped from his Taos prison one night by breaking through the roof of his cell, noiselessly creeping to the edge of the roof, and waiting until the guard pacing below turned his back. Then Fitzgerald swung to the ground and “with as much ease as possible” walked to a mess fire where his waiting friends provided him with a pistol and clothing. Fitzgerald headed into the mountains east of Taos and “when day broke,” Garrard says, “The town lay far beneath him.”

Whether this is what actually happened is open to question. I have to admit I’m skeptical. It sounds a little too much like something out of an Alexander Dumas novel.

But then, Garrard also says Fitzgerald told him he was one of five men who breached the wall of the Taos Pueblo church and that during this event the man ahead of him was killed. Somebody is conflating two events here: the first being the attempt to enter the church that resulted in the death of Captain John H.K. Burgwin, and the second successful assault later that day, when no one was killed.

I have incorporated a variation on Garrard’s report of Fitzgerald’s version of events into An Unhappy Country, but whether it reflects what actually happened is anyone’s guess.  But then, that’s why my novels are labeled “historical fiction.” Because no one knows for sure.

Sources: James A. Crutchfield, Revolt at Taos; John Durand, The Taos Massacres; Lewis H. Garrard, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Ed., Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail; Noel Loomis, The Texan-Santa Fe Pioneers; Michael McNierney, Ed., Taos 1847, The Revolt in Contemporary Accounts.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Chintz and Coffee in New Mexico

Chintz and Coffee in New Mexico

The Americans in Santa Fe before the U.S. invasion in 1846 were almost all merchants. These men brought a range of goods into New Mexico. Fabric, from calico to cashmere. Butcher and other types of knives. Ready-made clothes, including neckties. And also apothecary scales, snuff, turpentine, canned oysters, champagne, claret, and chintz mugs.

Chintz mugs were not made of fabric, as the term “chintz” would imply, but of china. That these pieces of fragile tableware made it from Missouri to New Mexico is a testament to the shippers’ packing ability. The cups were decorated with an all-over flower pattern copied from 18th century fabric designs. Entire dish sets were and are still being made using these patterns, though only the mugs seemed to have made it to New Mexico in the mid1800s.

Chintz mug. Image courtesy of Replacements.org

The mugs were undoubtedly used to drink the coffee which was also imported. Although a luxury item in the eastern United States, the beverage seems to have been considered by New Mexico’s Anglo travelers to be an essential, regardless of the cost. And it was expensive: 50 cents a pound in 1846, at a time when a typical male wage earner brought in $2 to $5 a month.

The coffee would have travelled in bean form, probably green beans, as they can be stored up to twelve months in comparison to about thirty days for roasted beans. So purchasers had to roast and grind the beans themselves. Lewis Garrard provided a vivid description of how this was done in on the road.

AWe selected two flat stones from the [water] channel at hand, twenty-five to thirty inches in diameter, which we placed on the fire ’til heated; then one was taken off, the coffee [beans] poured on, and stirred with a stick. The stones served alternately as they became cool. When the coffee was sufficiently burned, a piece of skin was laid on the ground, and a clean stone, a foot in diameter, rested on the knees of the grinder, with one edge on the skin. A smaller stone, held in the hand, reduced the grains between it and the larger one to powder by a rotary motion.@

The resulting grind was poured into boiling milk, where it sank to the bottom of the pan. When the grounds resurfaced, the coffee was ready. “How we feasted!” Garrard reported. “It was splendid!”

It’s unlikely Garrard and his friends drank from chintz mugs that night. They were still on their way to New Mexico. Any china would have been safely packed away. But I’m willing to bet that coffee served in chintz mugs accompanied the September 1846 oyster and champagne supper James Magoffin served his brother and sister-in-law to celebrate their safe arrival in Santa Fe.

Life in New Mexico in 1846-1847 could be quite civilized, for those who could afford it.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: David C. Beyreis, Blood in the Borderlands, Conflict, Kindship, and the Bent Family, 1821-1920; Stella M. Drumm, ed., Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico, Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847; Lewis H. Garrard, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail; http://www.antiquesandteacups.com/collections/chintz, accessed 2/14/25

Rebellion Ends With a Bang – TAOS REVOLT, Part 3

Rebellion Ends With a Bang – TAOS REVOLT, Part 3

By Friday, February 5, 1847, the Taos insurrection against the American occupation of New Mexico was over. All that remained was the formal surrender of Taos Pueblo leader Tomás Romero.

The Americans had conditioned the end of hostilities on Romero’s surrender. And the people at the pueblo were eager for things to end. Their church, where the rebels had made their stand, was in ruins. Any further action put the massive housing complexes in danger.

So, Romero surrendered. But he was never tried for his actions in a court of law. While he made it to the Taos village jail, that’s as far as he got. A U.S. dragoon named Fitzgerald shot and killed the Taos leader that morning, instead.  

Fitzgerald later bragged about the killing to seventeen-year-old Lewis Garrard, who reported that Fitzgerald killed Romero and three other men as vengeance for the death of his older brother Archibald Fitzgerald. Archie had been a member of the 1841 Texas Santa Fe Expedition and later died during a prison breakout. Why his younger brother thought the death of Romero and the others avenged him is unclear.

What is clear is that Tomás Romero’s death on February 5 was the last shot fired in the Taos Revolt. Other men would die, but they would do so after a cursory court case and the administration of at least the semblance of law. The Taos leader’s death was simple murder.

Fitzgerald was locked up afterwards in the Taos village courthouse, where he was allowed to escape a month later. On March 18 he was dishonorably discharged from his company at Albuquerque, apparently for desertion. He had fled east by that time and would eventually make his way to Geelong, Australia, become the owner/operator of the Western Sea bathhouse, and die in 1882.

Source: Find-a-Grave.com

Fitzgerald’s action at Taos was one of two links between the revolt and the 1841 Texas Santa Fe Expedition. The Texans had brought along a six-pound cannon which was captured along with them and left behind when they were marched south. The cannon ended up in Santa Fe and was still there when the U.S. Army arrived. They took it with them to Taos, where it was key to the action that breached the pueblo church walls.

While the use of this particular piece of artillery may simply have been convenient, its presence may also have sparked the younger Fitzgerald’s memories of his brother and triggered the subsequent shooting at the Taos village jail. Or maybe he’d planned Romero’s death all along. Or was simply a confused young man with a propensity for killing people.

Like most historical or even current events, it’s doubtful we will ever know why the U.S. dragoon did what he did and why Tomás Romero had to die.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: James A. Crutchfield, Revolt at Taos, The New Mexican and Indian Insurrection of 1847; John Durand, The Taos Massacres; Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, eds., The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott; Lewis Garrard, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail; Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The History of the Military Occupation of the Territory of New Mexico; Alberto Vidaurre,” 1847: Revolt or Resistance?” in Corina A. Santisteven and Julia Moore, Taos, A Topical History.