Tag: Texas Santa Fe Expedition

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.  

October Sale!

October Sale!

Because October was the month that the prisoners from the 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition marched down New Mexico to El Paso, it seems appropriate to put the novel I wrote about that march on sale. So, this month only, the paperback of The Texian Prisoners is 50% off ($8.99) and the ebook is $.99. You can find the Kindle version here and other ebook formats here.

To refresh your memory of what this book is about, here’s the description.

They called themselves “Texians.”

In Fall 1841, a band of roughly 300 men straggled out of the Staked Plains into New Mexico. They had intended to claim everything east of the Rio Grande for Texas. Instead, they were captured and sent south to El Paso del Norte, then on to Mexico City. The largest group of prisoners, which included journalist George Wilkins Kendall, was escorted to El Paso by Captain Damasio Salazar. Five prisoners died on that trek. Kendall would later write a book describing the experience, a book which accused Salazar of food deprivation, mutilation, and murder, and fed the glowing coals that would become the Mexican American War.

But what really happened on the way to El Paso? The Texian Prisoners tells the story through the eyes of Kendall’s friend George Van Ness, a lawyer burdened with the ability to see his enemy’s point of view, and asks us to consider the possibility that Kendall’s report was not unbiased.

A historically accurate retelling of Larry McMurtry’s Dead Man’s Walk, this fictional memoir will make you question everything you thought you knew about Texas, New Mexico, and the boundary between them.

The Priest at El Paso del Norte

The Priest at El Paso del Norte

When the men in my recent novel The Texian Prisoners reach El Paso del Norte (today’s Ciudad Juárez in November 1841, one of the kindest people they meet is local priest, Padre Ramón Ortiz. Prisoner George Wilkins Kendall, who later wrote a book about their trek, says Ortiz had a “benevolent countenance … that at once endeared him to every one.” The priest was also generous, “continually seeking opportunities to do some delicate act of kindness, which, by the manner of its bestowal, showed that he possessed all the more refined feelings of our nature.”


The padre housed, clothed, and gave money to Kendall and other men of the Texas Santa Fe Expedition while they were in El Paso. And his generosity didn’t stop there. When the prisoners headed out on the next leg of their journey, he sent along two or three ox-carts filled with “excellent bread.”


“Seldom have I parted from a friend with more real regret,” Kendall said later. “If ever a noble heart beat in man it was in the breast of this young, generous, and liberal priest. Professing a different religion from mine, and one, too, that I had been taught to believe, at least in Mexico, inculcated a jealous intolerance towards those of any other faith, I [thought I] could expect from him neither favour nor regard. How surprised was I, then, to find him liberal to a fault, constant in his attentions, and striving to make my situation as agreeable as the circumstances would admit.”


One would be tempted to conclude from Kendall’s description that Ramon Ortiz was sympathetic toward the Texians and, by extension, Americans. After all, most of the prisoners had been born in the United States. And the padre may well have felt that way in 1841. But he seems to have changed his mind by the end of the decade.


Padre Ortiz opposed America’s 1846 invasion of Mexico so vociferously that U.S. soldiers arrested him when they reached El Paso. Incarceration doesn’t seem to have curbed his spirit. He continued to voice his opposition and, as a deputy to Mexico’s Congress, fought ratification of its 1848 treaty with the U.S.


Ortiz was concerned about the amount of land the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo proposed to give away, which included today’s California, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. But he didn’t give up when he lost that cause. After the treaty was signed, he took on another role: helping New Mexico families who wished to move south across the new border, and thus remain Mexican citizens.


In late 1848, Mexico sent Padre Ortiz north into New Mexico to identify these people and assist them in the transition. His mission was so successful that the new regime in Santa Fe shut it down.


Ortiz arrived in the Santa Fe area in April 1849 and soon had approximately 1,000 families signed up for the trek south. And those were just the ones from San Miguel del Bado. When he then headed north toward Taos, the American administration panicked and started actively discouraging people from leaving while also throwing up bureaucratic obstacles related to signatures, funding, deadlines, and so forth.

Church at Mesilla, courtesy https://www.mesillanm.gov/history/


Even with these roadblocks, by mid-1850, the padre had successfully assisted 1,552 people to leave their homes in the new American possessions and move across the border to the Mesilla area. He then took on a new role and served as the commissioner responsible for issuing land grants to the new settlers.


If you’re familiar with New Mexico, you’ll know Mesilla is a town in the southern part of the state, on the U.S. side of the border. No, it didn’t move. The land on which the padre settled the newcomers was sold to the Americans in late December 1853. While the emigrants were adjusting to their new location, the U.S. had arranged to pay Mexico another $10 million for a strip of land that would enable a railroad route from Texas to California. Land that included Mesilla.


I haven’t found a record of Padre Ortiz’s response to that exchange of real estate. I doubt he was pleased. But he had plenty of time to adjust to what had happened. He was priest at El Paso del Norte for another forty-two years.


If Kendall’s portrayal of him is accurate, it’s possible that Padre Ortiz, unlike so many of us, was able to distinguish between individuals and the country they came from and continued to be as full of “exceeding liberality” as he’d been in 1841. I don’t think I could have done so.

If you want to learn more about Mesilla’s fascinating history, see https://www.mesillanm.gov/history/ or Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and David R. Maciel’s, The Contested Homeland, A Chicano History of New Mexico. You can find a short review of this book in this month’s newsletter. Sign up here!

Source List: Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and David R. Maciel, The Contested Homeland, A Chicano History of New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, 2000; George Wilkins Kendall, Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, Harper and Brothers, 1847; W.H. Timmons, El Paso, A Borderlands History, Texas Western Press, 2004

Texan Prisoners Reach El Paso!

Texan Prisoners Reach El Paso!

When the last of the men from the Texas Santa Fe Expedition reached El Paso del Norte (today’s Juarez) in early November 1841, they must have felt as if they’d come out of hell into paradise.


They had traveled roughly 1000 miles from Austin, Texas to New Mexico, starving a good deal of the way, then about 500 more, as prisoners, from eastern New Mexico to the Rio Grande, then south, a route that included the desert-like Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead Man. They had endured unbearable heat on the plains and snow and icy winds on the Jornada. Now, though they were still prisoners, life had become much easier.


The very weather had changed. George Wilkins Kendall noticed it the night before they arrived, when, he says, “the evening air was of a most wooing temperature mild and bland” (Kendall, II, 23). As the Texans reached the outskirts of El Paso, they saw that the very plant life was different. The valley, irrigated by a canal from the Rio Grande, boasted abundant wheat, onions up to four pounds in weight, fruit trees, and extensive vineyards (Timmons, 195).


Even Kendall, who spent almost all his time in Mexico complaining, liked El Paso del Norte. Although his report doesn’t mention its famous building, the mission of Guadalupe de los Mansos, he does rhapsodize about the city’s “delightful situation in a quiet and secluded valley, its rippling artificial brooks, its shady streets, its teeming and luxurious vineyards, its dry, pure air and mild climate, and, above all, its kind and hospitable inhabitants” (Kendall, II, 42).

The Guadalupe Mission was painted in 1850 by A. de Vauducourt.
Source: es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misión_de_Guadalupe_de_los_Mansos_en_el_Paso_del_río_del_Norte Accessed 10/17/23


Part of the reason Kendall was so impressed by the hospitality was that he was one of several Texans hosted by Presidio Commander José María Elías González. And hosted lavishly. Kendall reports the afternoon hot chocolate, the evening wine in glasses the size of New England tumblers, the tasty blood puddings, and other details of the table with great glee.
But the party couldn’t go on forever. The Texan prisoners were on the road again on Tuesday, November 9, heading to Chihuahua en route to Mexico City, where life would again become difficult. The idyll of El Paso was over, and prison and the whims of President Santa Anna, who the Texans had humiliated at San Jacinto, waited ahead.

Partial Sources: Ruben Cobos, A Dictionary of New Mexico & Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press; George Wilkins Kendall, A Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, Vol. II, Harper and Brothers: New York, 1847; W.H. Timmons, El Paso, A Borderlands History, El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2004.

George Wilkins Kendall Reaches New Mexico

George Wilkins Kendall Reaches New Mexico

After a torturous journey, George Wilkins Kendall and a small group of fellow Texans finally reached New Mexico in mid-September 1841. And were under lock and key.


The approximately 300 men of the Texas Expedition to Santa Fe had divided into two groups at the end of August and sent 100 (including Kendall) ahead to find provisions for the rest, who waited with the wagons.


On Tuesday, September 14, 1841 Kendall and three other men rode into Anton Chico, New Mexico looking for food. When it became clear that the little village couldn’t supply what was needed, they headed across country toward San Miguel del Bado. They made it, but not quite the way they’d planned. By the time they reached town, they were in the custody of Mexican militia under Captain Damasio Salazar.


Kendall and his group spent just over a month incarcerated at San Miguel del Bado, where flirted with the women, engaged in shooting contests, and observed village life while they waited for word of their comrades. News finally came on Monday, September 20, when the group of 100 (less four) marched through on the way to Mexico City.


The larger group who’d been left farther behind wouldn’t arrive until October 12. After a three-day rest, they also would head south, along with Kendall and his comrades, under the supervision of Captain Salazar.


San Miguel del Bado was a logical place to incarcerate Kendall et al, as it was America’s port of entry into Mexico at the time. The town included barracks for the presidio soldiers stationed there, as well as mercantiles and other services for the 2000-plus residents. It even provided a space west of the church where in-bound merchant trains could wait for the customs official to survey their goods and calculate the import fees necessary to go on to Santa Fe or farther south to Chihuahua.

There isn’t much left of 1840s San Miguel del Bado today, except for the church with its three-foot-thick stone walls topped with adobe bricks and its twin bell towers. In Fall 1841, this building was the starting point for at least two religious processions that celebrated and gave thanks for the capture of the Texan Expedition. Kendall sneered at them both, describing the second one as “nonsensical mummeries.” He would have much to learn in the weeks to come.

Fever and the Texas Expedition to Santa Fe

Fever and the Texas Expedition to Santa Fe

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BOOK REVIEW: Narrative of an Expedition

As a general rule, I only review books that I can recommend wholeheartedly. George Wilkins Kendall’s two-volume Narrative of an Expedition Across the Great Southwestern Prairies from Texas to Santa Fé is an exception to that rule.

The Narrative is Kendall’s report of the experiences of the roughly 300 men who left Austin, Texas in June 1841 to capture New Mexico for the Republic of Texas. Many of the approximately 280 soldiers accompanying the Texas Santa Fé Expedition had been told it was a trading mission. In actuality, the goal was to enforce the Texan claim that its boundaries extended west to the Rio Grande and north to that river’s headwaters.

That enforcement never happened. The rugged landscape between Austin and New Mexico, along with the Expedition’s lack of planning and discipline, weakened the starving Expedition to the point that men threw away their weapons to lighten the load they carried.

Rounded up by the New Mexicans, the Expedition members were taken south to Mexico City in three groups. The third included Kendall and 186 other men. It was escorted by Mexican militia Captain Damasio Salazar and roughly 150 guards.

Salazar, hurrying to get this largest of the three groups south to El Paso del Norte before winter set in, did not spare his guards or the Texans, the majority of whom were still weak from their ordeal on the Eastern Plains. Five died, three from natural causes. Kendall’s Narrative blames Salazar for all these deaths, painting him as such a monster that the Americans who invaded New Mexico five years later made it one of their first tasks to hunt the Captain down.

The fact that these men made finding Salazar a priority points to the popularity of Kendall’s Narrative and its impact in the run-up to the Mexican-American War. Indeed, it could be argued that Kendall accompanied the Texas Expedition with the sole purpose of providing a reconnaissance report for the conflict on the horizon. From El Paso to Mexico City, he provides details about distances, road conditions,  and fortifications, as well as his perception of the make-up and morale of Mexico’s military.

The way Kendall’s Narrative blames the Mexicans for not welcoming the invading Texans with open arms, brushes aside the gifts of food and clothing they did receive, and lays out information useful for a military incursion is almost breathtaking in its audacity. And yet his readers seem to have accepted his assertions without question. This makes the Narrative a useful example of the risks of reading uncritically, something that is still a danger for us today.

If you are interested in exploring historical sources with an eye to reading between the lines and trying to determine what might have really happened, and if you can stomach racist attitudes throughout the text, then I suggest you pick up a copy of Kendall’s Narrative and read it in light of the inception and outcome of the subsequent 1846 invasion. You may find it quite enlightening.

Texan Expedition Leaves for Santa Fe!

Texan Expedition Leaves for Santa Fe!

On Friday, June 18, 1841, Texan President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar accompanied Texas Santa Fe Expedition on the first leg of their journey to New Mexico.

Lamar sent an open letter with them, printed in both English and Spanish. This missive asserted Texas’s right to New Mexico east of the Rio Grande and said the Republic intended to “admit its remotest citizens to an equal participation of the blessings which have been acquired by our late glorious revolution.” It then went on to invite New Mexico to enter “the doors of the Temple which we have erected to Liberty,” and stated that if they weren’t interested, the Texans would leave quietly.

Mirabeau B. Lamar, courtesy Wikipedia.com

However, Lamar had told the three men he’d appointed to represent him in New Mexico that “upon entering the city of Santa Fe, your first object will be, to endeavor to get into your hands all the public property.” Admittedly, he said to do this without resorting to violence. But ninety percent of the men he’d sent were either current or recent members of the Texas Army. Maybe he thought the mere threat of violence would suffice.

The 300-strong Expedition marched eagerly out of Austin that bright Friday morning in June. On Saturday morning, Lamar reviewed them, delivered a speech, and sent them on their way. Everyone was in good spirits. They’d be home again in a matter of months, and the way to Santa Fe and all its wealth would be open at last. 

The trip wouldn’t go quite as planned, but they didn’t know that yet. For now, adventure awaited.

As did New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo, who was already marshaling troops and ammunition, and arranging for the Comanches to monitor the Texans’ progress. Lamar’s Expedition would not find New Mexico unprepared.

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