Tag: Santa Fe history

The Takeover of New Mexico

The Takeover of New Mexico

Preparations for war were in full swing in Santa Fe that second week of August, 1846. Rumors of the approaching American army under Stephen Watts Kearny had been swirling all summer and became more concrete as time went on. New Mexico’s governor, Manuel Armijo, had fired letters off to the officials in Mexico City pleading for help and warning of the possibility that his paisanos would capitulate to the invaders without a fight.

Early in August, American trader Eugene Leitensdorfer arrived in Santa Fe with news. The U.S. Army was at Bent’s Fort. Armijo consulted with his council on Sunday, August 9, then sent out a call to New Mexico’s militia to assemble in Santa Fe. When they arrived, they headed for Apache Pass, east of the city, where they began digging trenches, throwing up barricades, and positioning cannon in. Things in Santa Fe were so tense that some of the American merchants there barricaded themselves in a store on the plaza, expecting to be arrested or even killed when the fighting began.

In the meantime, U.S. Army Capt. Philip St George Cooke and James Magoffin arrived in town on Wednesday, August 12. They carried a letter from Kearny and, rumor has it, a considerable amount of gold. They also brought news. Kearny’s army was not at Bent’s Fort any longer. It was already on New Mexican soil. In fact, Cooke was due to meet up with them at Las Vegas in the next couple days.

Philip St. George Cooke, circa 1860s. Courtesy of encyclopediavirginia.org

By the time that happened, on Saturday, August 15, it was clear to New Mexican officials that Governor Armijo was no longer anxious to defend the region from the invaders. He had gone from firing off letters, issuing bellicose proclamations, marshaling troops, and positioning cannon, to asking his officers whether he should really try to fight. When several of them said a vehement “yes!”, Armijo began complaining that the defenses he’d thrown up weren’t strong enough and that the men behind them were cowards who would run at the first shot.

Manuel Armijo, wearing the medal he’d received for his capture of the 1841 Texas Expedition to Santa Fe

Maybe word of Kearny’s takeover of Las Vegas and the number of U.S. troops had reached Armijo and he’d given up the idea of fighting. Or maybe he’d made his decision the night of August 12, during his conversation with Cooke and Magoffin. The only thing certain is that by the end of August 16th, the last Mexican governor of New Mexico had headed south toward Albuquerque and ultimately the interior of Mexico.

When Kearny and his men reached Apache Pass, they found it empty, although at least one of his officers thought the location could have been used effectively to at least slow them down.

But by then it was too late. The U.S. Army was in control of New Mexico and would quickly set up a new government to replace the old. All that excitement and fear had been for nothing. The New Mexicans had been completely cowed by America’s military might. Or so it seemed.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: William A. Kelleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846-1868; Marc Simmons, New Mexico; Howard R. Lamar, The Far Southwest; Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Military Occupation of New Mexico.

Contested Space: The Military Chapel of Santa Fe

Contested Space: The Military Chapel of Santa Fe

In a recent post about the Santa Fe plaza, I included a set of maps. If you look closely, you’ll notice that even the oldest of them identifies a small building on the south side of the square as the “military chapel.”

More properly called the Military Chapel of Our Lady of Light, and commonly referred to as La Castrense, this building was centered in the buildings on the south side of the Plaza and faced the Governor’s Palace on the north. The word Castrense means “belonging to the military profession,” so its nickname was appropriate, because the little church was built specifically for use by the members of the Santa Fe garrison. 

The original chapel was completed in 1717 and then rebuilt and rededicated in 1761. The reconstruction was funded by Governor Francisco Antonio Marin del Valle and his wife, Dona Maria Ignacia Martinez de Ugarte. This power couple also donated a new altar piece, or reredo, which was carved from large pieces of limestone quarried north of Santa Fe near Pojoaque. Said to be the largest and most ambitious piece of artistic work ever attempted in New Mexico to that point, the piece filled the entire altar end of the building. 

La Castrense altar piece today, courtesy El Cristo Rey Catholic Church, Santa Fe

The chapel received further decorations around 1813, when Pedro Bautista Pino, New Mexico’s representative to the Spanish Cadiz, returned from Europe with two marble bas-reliefs which were mounted on the outside wall above the door from the plaza. Colonel Francisco Perea remembered years later that one of them represented “Santa Gertrudes wrapped in the coils of a large serpent, while the other, I believe, represented the mother of Jesus, Nuestra Senora de la Luz (Our Lady of Light), recuing a human being from Satan.”

The military troops stationed in Santa Fe attended services in the chapel monthly as well as on special occasions. During Governor Manuel Armijo’s first two administrations, he and the full garrison attended regularly, with the officers in full uniform.  However, it seems unlikely that they continued to do so during his third term (July 1845 to August 1846) as the roof had fallen in. At least, that’s what Lt. James W. Abert reported in early October 1846. He also said the building contained “some handsome carved work behind the altar,” and that at least one of the bas-reliefs still remained over the door, the one that showed Our Lady of Light.  

Abert had entered Santa Fe in the Fall of 1846 with the occupying U.S. army. Five and a half years later, in Spring 1851, newly appointed Chief Justice Grafton Baker, needed a place to hold his court and decided to use La Castrense.

The building, apparently repaired by this time, was set up with the necessary furniture and the grand jury was called. Unfortunately for Judge Baker, the grand jury members included Santa Fe native and former Mexican soldier, Donaciano Vigil. Vigil and his wife had been married in the chapel, and his father and an infant son were buried there. As former provisional governor under the U.S. rule, he had enough political clout to risk protesting the use of the chapel for civil purposes and enough connections in the city to rally public opinion behind him.

Baker threatened to hold court anyway and to have Vigil arrested, but when a crowd began to assemble outside and the commanding officer of the American troops rallied behind Vigil, the Judge gave way. He ordered the court moved across the plaza to the Governor’s palace. The men responsible for shifting the furniture didn’t have to actually remove it from the building. The crowd had already dumped most of it in the plaza.

The building doesn’t seem to have been immediately converted back to being a chapel. According to the 1891 Silver City Enterprise, in the 1850s, it was instead used to store  captured cannons, including the Lone Star of Texas which had come into New Mexico in 1841 with the ill-fated Texas Santa Fe Expedition.

The guns must not have stayed there for long, because in 1859 Bishop Lamy exchanged the building for $2000 and  land in the vicinity of the Parish church. The money went to repairs for  church and the land became the site of St. Michael’s College and the Loreto Chapel.

La Castrense itself was demolished by its new owner, but not until the altar piece was preserved and carefully removed. It is now in El Cristo Rey, which offers a brochure about the reredos on its website. It’s nice to know that, even though the building itself had to give way to “progress,” at least some of its contents were preserved and still survive.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson July 2025

Sources: James W. Abert, Western America in 1846-47; https://www.cristoreyparish.org/; Roland F. Dickey, New Mexico Village Arts; Francois-Marie Patorni, The French in New Mexico; Colonel Francisco Perea in Allison, “Santa Fe in 1837-1838”, Old Santa Fe Magazine, Vol. II; Silver City Enterprise, Oct. 9, 1891; Marc Simmons, Spanish Government in New Mexico; Francis Stanley, Giant in Lilliput; Maurilio Vigil and Helene Boudreau, Donaciano Vigil.