USA > New Mexico > History of New Mexico : its resources and people, Volume I > Part 10
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As the country began to be more thickly, or less thinly settled, stage stations were established at various points along the route, at which rough hotel accommodations were provided. On frequent occasions passengers would be compelled to vary the monotony of the trip by walking a portion of the way as the result of breakdowns or the exhaustion of horses or mules. During the period when the Indians of the plains were on the warpath it became necessary to have both freight trains and passenger coaches accom- panied by escorts of the military over those portions of the trail where the menace was considered as serious. Strange as it may seem to the present generation, the experienced stage driver aimed to cover the most dangerous part of the road at night during the periods of Indian threat- enings, because, as a rule, the Indians would not attack at night, preferring daylight for hostilities.
Vol. I. 4
50
HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
NEW MEXICO IN 1840-1850.
Before entering upon the narrative of the intricate series of events and political conditions, involving now the internal affairs of New Mexico, now its relations with the central government at Mexico, and now the American invasion from the north, all combining to effect eventually the transfer of New Mexico to the American republic, it will be well to de- scribe through the medium of a writer whose work is the classic for this period the conditions in New Mexico as observed at the beginning of the forties. The province was at that time little advanced beyond the state of progress described by Lieutenant Pike in 1807. Indeed the following quotations from Gregg's "Commerce of the Prairies" supplement and ex- tend Pike's description, and taken together the two form a fairly accurate picture of the New Mexico as it had been developed under Spanish civili- zation and up to the point where American occupation begins.
The Santa Fe trail had been open as a commercial highway for nearly twenty years. The new outlook it afforded to the New Mexican people, the inevitable broadening of ideas which such trade intercourse brings about, not to mention its material advantages, must already, when Gregg wrote, have been felt as a strong impulse toward the breaking up of that territorial isolation which he describes as though a background to the stirring scenes that soon followed. New Mexico, says Gregg, "though bounded north and east by the territory of the United States, south by that of Texas and Chihuahua, and west by Upper California, is surrounded by chains of mountains and prairie wilds, extending to a distance of 500 miles or more, except in the one direction of Chihuahua, from which its settlements are separated by an unpeopled desert of nearly two hundred miles-and without a single means of communication by water with any other part of the world. The whole nominal territory, including those bleak and uninhabitable regions with which it is intersected, comprises about 200,000 square miles, considered according to its original boundaries, and therefore independently of the claims of Texas to the Rio del Norte. To whichisoever sovereignty that section of land may eventually belong, that portion of it at least which is inhabited, should remain united. Any at- tempt on the part of Texas to make the Rio del Norte the line of demarka- tion would greatly retard her ultimate acquisition of the territory, as it would leave at least one-third of the population accustomed to the same rule, and bound by ties of consanguinity and affinity of customs wholly at the mercy of the contiguous hordes of savages that inhabit the Cordil- leras on the west of them." The latter passage seems to bear especially on the design of Texas to extension of her territory and in line with which one plan was being put into execution at the time of Gregg's writing.
Continuing his description : "Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico, is the only town of any importance in the province. We sometimes find it written Santa Fé de San Francisco (Holy Faith of St. Francis), the
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latter being the patron, or tutelary saint. Like most of the towns in this section of the country it occupies the site of an ancient Pueblo or Indian village, whose race has been extinct for a great many years. Its situation is twelve or fifteen miles east of the Rio del Norte, at the western base of a snow-clad mountain, upon a beautiful stream of small mill-power size, which ripples down in icy cascades, and joins the river some twenty miles to the southwestward. The population of the city itself but little exceeds 3,000; yet, including several surrounding villages which are embraced in its corporate jurisdiction, it amounts to nearly 6,000 souls.
"The town is very irregularly laid out, and most of the streets are little better than common highways traversing scattered settlements which are interspersed with cornfields nearly sufficient to supply the inhabitants with grain. The only attempt at anything like architectural compactness and precision consists in four tiers of buildings, whose fronts are shaded with a fringe of portales or corridores of the rudest possible description. They stand around the public square, and comprise the palacio, or gov- ernor's house, the custom house, the barracks (with which is connected the fearful calabozo), the casa consistorial of the alcaldes, the capilla de los Solados or military chapel, besides several private residences, as well as most of the shops of the American traders.
"The population of New Mexico is almost exclusively confined to towns and villages, the suburbs of which are generally farms. Even most of the individual ranchos and haciendas have grown into villages, a result almost indispensable for protection against the marauding savages of the surrounding wilderness. The principal of these settlements are located in the valley of the Rio del Norte, extending from nearly one hundred miles north to about one hundred and forty south of Santa Fé. The settle- ments up the river from the capital are collectively known as Rio-Arriba, and those down the river as Rio-Abajo. The latter comprise over a third of the population, and the principal wealth of New Mexico. The most important town, next to the capital, is El Valle de Taos ('the valley of Taos) there being no town of this name. It includes several villages and other settlements, the largest of which are Fernandez and Los Ranchos, four or five miles apart). so called in honor of the Taos tribe of Indians, a remnant of whom still forms a Pueblo in the north of the valley.
"The first settler of the charming valley of Taos, since the country was reconquered from the Indians, is said to have been a Spaniard named Pando, about the middle of the eighteenth century. This pioneer of the north, finding himself greatly exposed to the depredations of the Coman- ches, succeeded in gaining the friendship of that tribe by promising his infant daughter, then a beautiful child, to one of their chiefs in marriage. But the unwilling maiden, having subsequently refused to ratify the con- tract, the settlement was immediately attacked by the savages, and all were slain except the betrothed damsel, who was led into captivity. After liv- ing for some years with the Comanches on the great prairies, she was bartered away to the Pawnees, of whom she was eventually purchased by a merchant of St. Louis. Some very respectable families of that city are descended from her; and there are many people yet living who remember with what affecting pathos the old lady was wont to tell her tale of woe. She died but a few years ago. *
"There has never been an accurate census taken in New Mexico. Of
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HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
the results of one which was attempted in 1832, the Secretary of State at Santa Fé speaks in the following terms :
"'At present (1841) we may estimate the Spanish or white popula- tion, at about 60,000 souls or more, being what remains of 72,000, which the census taken eight or nine years ago showed there then existed in New Mexico.' He supposed that the great diminution resulted from the ravages of the frightful diseases already alluded to (an epidemic of typhoid fever which ravaged the whole province from 1837 to 1839, carrying off nearly * If we exclude the subjugated ten per cent of the population). * *
savages, the entire population of New Mexico, including the Pueblo In- dians, cannot be set down, according to the best estimates I have been able to obtain, at more than 70,000 souls. These may be divided as follows : White creoles, say 1,000; Mestizos, or mixed creoles, 59,000; and Pueblos, 10,000. Of naturalized citizens, the number is inconsiderable-scarcely twenty; and if we except transient traders, there are not over double as many alien residents. There are no negroes in New Mexico, and conse- quently neither mulattoes nor Zambos.
"Agriculture, like most everything else in New Mexico, is in a very primitive and unimproved state. A great portion of the peasantry culti- vate with the hoe alone-their ploughs (where they have any) being only used for mellow grounds, as they are too rudely constructed to be fit for any other service. Those I have seen in use are mostly fashioned in this manner : a section of the trunk of a tree, eight or ten inches in diameter, is cut about two feet long, with a small branch left projecting upwards, of convenient length for a handle. With this a beam is connected, to which oxen are yoked. The block, with its fore end sloped downwards to a point, runs flat and opens a furrow similar to that of the common shovel plough. What is equally worthy of remark is that these ploughs are often made ex- clusively of wood, without one particle of iron, or even a nail to increase their durability. *
"The staple productions of the country are emphatically Indian corn and wheat. The former grain is most extensively employed for making tortillas-an article of food greatly in demand among the people, the use of which has been transmitted to them by the aborigines. The corn is boiled in water with a little lime; and when it has been sufficiently softened, so as to strip it of its skin, it is ground into paste upon the metate (a hol- lowed oblong stone, used as a grinding machine), and formed into a thin cake. This is afterward spread on a small sheet of iron or copper, called comal (comalli, by the Indians), and placed over the fire, where, in less than three minutes, it is baked and ready for use. The thinness of the tortilla is always a great test of skill in the maker, and much rivalry en- stes in the art of preparation. *
* * A sort of thin mush, called atole, made of Indian meal, is another article of diet, the preparation of which is from the aborigines; and such is its nationality that in the north it is frequently called el cafe de los Mexicanos (the coffee of the Mexi- cans). They virtually breakfast, dine and sup upon it. Of this, indeed, with frijoles and chile (beans and red pepper), consists their principal food. *
* The very singular custom of abstaining from all sorts of * beverage during meals has frequently afforded me a great deal of amuse- ment. Although a large cup of water is set before each guest, it is not customary to drink it off till the repast is finished. Should any one take
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IN 1840-1850
it up in his hand while in the act of eating, the host is apt to cry out, 'Hold, hold! there is yet more to come.' What also strikes the stranger as a singularity in that country is that the females rarely ever eat with the males-at least in the presence of strangers-but usually take their food in the kitchen by themselves. * *
"There is no part of the civilized globe, perhaps, where the arts have been so much neglected, and the progress of science so successfully im- peded as in New Mexico. Reading and writing may fairly be set down as the highest branches of education that are taught in the schools; for those pedants who occasionally pretend to teach arithmetic very seldom understand even the primary rules of the science of numbers. I should, perhaps, make an exception in favor of those ecclesiastics who have ac- quired their education abroad; and who, from their vocation, are neces- sarily obliged to possess a smattering of Latin. Yet it is a well-known fact that a majority of this privileged class, even, are lamentably deficient in the more important branches of familiar science. I have been assured by a highly respected foreigner, who has long resided in the country, that the questions were once deliberately put to him by a curate-whether Napoleon and Washington were not one and the same person, and whether Europe was not a province of Spain?
"From the earliest time down to the secession of the colonies, it was always the policy of the Spanish government, as well as of the papal hierarchy, to keep every avenue of knowledge closed against their subjects of the New World, lest the lights of civil and religious liberty should reach them from their neighbors of the north. Although a system of public schools was afterward adopted by the republic, which, if persevered in, would no doubt have contributed to the dissemination of useful knowl- edge, yet its operations had to be suspended about ten years ago, for want of the necessary funds to carry out the original project. It is doubtful, however, whether the habitual neglect and utter carelessness of the people, already too much inured to grope their way in darkness and in ignorance, added to the inefficiency of the teachers, would not eventually have neu- tralized all the good that such an institution was calculated to effect. The only schools now in existence are of the lowest primary class, supported entirely by individual patronage, the liberal extension of which may be in- ferred from the fact that at least three-fourths of the present population can neither read nor write. To illustrate the utter absence of geographical information, among the humbler classes, it is only necessary to mention that I have been asked by persons who have enjoyed a long intercourse with Americans whether the United States was as large a place as the town of
Santa Fé ! Until very lately, to be able to read and write on the part of a woman was considered an indication of very extraordinary talent ; and the fair damsel who could pen a billet-doux to her lover was looked upon as almost a prodigy. There is, however, to be found among the higher classes a considerable sprinkling of that superficial refinement which is the bane of fashionable society everywhere, and which consists, not in superiority of understanding, not in acquired knowledge, but in that peculiar species of assumption which has happily been styled 'the flowing garment with which Ignorance decks herself !' * * *
"In nothing is the deplorable state of things already noticed made more clearly manifest than in the absence of a public press. There has
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HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
never been a single newspaper or periodical of any kind published in New Mexico, except in the year 1834, when a little foolscap sheet (entitled El Crepuscolo) was issued weekly, for about a month, to the tune of fifty subscribers, and was then abandoned, partially for want of patronage and partially because the cditor had accomplished his object of procuring his election to congress. Indeed, the only printing press in the country is a small affair which was brought the same year across the prairies from the United States, and is now employed occasionally in printing billets, primers and Catholic catechisms. This literary negligence is to be attributed, not more to the limited number of reading people than to those injudicious restrictions upon that freedom of the press which is so essential to its pros- perity. * * *
"Medical science is laboring under similar disadvantages, there being not a single native physician in the province. Neither is there a pro- fessed lawyer in New Mexico. * * * In architecture the people do not seem to have arrived at any great perfection, but rather to have con- formed themselves to the clumsy style which prevailed among the abori- gines, than to waste their time in studying modern masonry and the use of lime. Wood buildings of any kind or shape are utterly unknown in the north of Mexico, with the exception of an occasional picket-hut in some of the ranchos and mining places.
"Wagons of Mexican manufacture are not to be found, although a small number of American-built vehicles, of those introduced by the trad- ing caravans, have grown into use among the people. Walking is more calculated to attract the curiosity of strangers than the unwieldy carretas, or carts of domestic construction, the massive wheels of which are gen- erally hewed out of a large cottonwood. This, however, being rarely of sufficient size to form the usual diameter, which is about five feet, an additional segment, or felloe, is pinned upon edge, when the whole is fashioned into an irregular circle. A crude pine or cottonwood pole serves for the axle-tree, upon which is tied a rough frame of the same material for a body. In the construction of these carretas the use of iron is, for the most part, wholly dispensed with; in fact, nothing is more common than a cart, a plow, and even a mill, without a particle of iron or other metal about them. To this huge truckle it is necessary to hitch at least three or four yokes of oxen; for even a team of six would find it dif- ficult to draw the load of a single pair with an ordinary cart. The labor of the oxen is much increased by the Mexican mode of harnessing, which appears peculiarly odd to a Yankee. A rough pole serves for a yoke, and, with the middle tied to the cart-tongue, the extremities are placed across the heads of the oxen behind the horns, to which they are firmly lashed with a stout raw-hide thong. Thus the head is maintained in a fixed position, and they pull. or rather push by the force of the neck, which, of course, is kept continually strained upwards. Rough and un- couth as these carettas always are, they constitute nevertheless the 'pleas- ure-carriages' of the rancheros, whose families are conveyed in them to the towns, whether to market, or to fiestas, or on other joyful occa- sions. * *
"The New Mexicans appear to have inherited much of the cruelty and intolerance of their ancestors, and no small portion of their bigotry and fanaticism. Being of a highly imperative temperament and of rather
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accommodating moral principles-cunning, loquacious, quick of percep- tion and sycophantic, their conversation frequently exhibits a degree of tact-a false glare of talent, imminently calculated to mislead and impose. They have no stability except in artifice, no profundity except for intrigue -qualities for which they have acquired an unenviable celerity. Sys- tematically cringing and subservient while out of power, as soon as the august mantle of authority falls upon their shoulders, there are but little bounds to their arrogance and vindictiveness of spirit. * * *
"The Northern Mexicans have often been branded with cowardice, a stigma which may well be allowed to rest upon the wealthier classes, and the city-bred Caballeros, from whose ranks are selected the military leaders who decide the fate of battles. But the rancheros, or, as they might be still more appropriately styled, the yeomanry of the country, inured as they are from their peculiar mode of life to every kind of fatigue and danger, possess a much higher caliber of moral courage. Their want of firmness in the field is partially the result of their want of confidence in their commanders, while the inefficacy and worthlessness of their weapons are alone sufficient to inspire even a valiant heart with dismal forebodings."
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HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
SPANISH AND MEXICAN RULE
The decadence of Spain and the unhappy condition of her colonies at the beginning of the nineteenth century may be fairly attributed to vicious, unnatural government. As the conquest of Mexico had not been con- ceived in a spirit of beneficence, the various sovereigns continued the sys- tem of plunder with which it was begun. This utterly artificial system thwarted both physical and intellectual development. The Indians and Creoles, stupid as they were believed to be in Spain, nevertheless under- stood and felt the wretchedness of their condition, and in their hearts cherished an intense hatred of their masters. This feeling naturally was accompanied by a desire to avenge their wrongs.
With the seizure of Spain by France, Mexico was compelled to rely upon itself for temporary government. All classes seemed to be united in loyalty to the legitimate king and hatred of Napoleon. None seemed to feel that it was a proper time to free his native land entirely from colonial thraldom. But as the prestige of Spanish power had been destroyed and the Spanish throne was occupied by a French king, a sudden revulsion in popular sentiment took place. The memory of oppression, bad govern- ment and misery was kindled afresh, and when the popular uprising finally took place its bitterness was manifested in a general outcry against Spain.
Joseph Bonaparte was king, and his emissaries were endeavoring to prepare the people for the ratification and permanence of the new govern- ment. In the meantime there was organized in 1810 a secret league among the leaders of thought in Mexico and the other provinces, but their plot for a general revolt was detected as it was about to be put into execution. The desire was to overthrow the Spaniards, not to unseat the French king. The original rebellion, headed by the curate Hidalgo, was soon thrown from the hands of the Creoles into those of the Indians, and a war of races was imminent. But Venegas, the viceroy, combined with the church au- thorities against the rebels. Hidalgo was captured and shot, and his death and the wholesale slaughter of the rebel forces reduced the remainder to the necessity of guerrilla warfare. On November 13, 1813, the provi- sional congress published a declaration of independence ; but this body was finally driven to the mountain forests where, on October 22, 1814, it adopted the Constitution of Apatzingo. Morelos, the soldier priest who had led insurgent forces since the death of Hidalgo, was shot December 22, 1815: and with his death the hopes of the insurgents and their efforts paralyzed.
In the meantime the Spanish constitution of 1812 had been pro- claimed in Mexico. on September 29 of that year. The remaining officers of Morelos spread themselves over the country in the hope of keeping alive the revolutionary fervor. Apodaca, now viceroy, who realized that his power was greatly diminished by the constitution, was disposed to proclaim the absolute authority of the king by 1820, and to this end he
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selected Agustin de Iturbide, a native Mexican and a gallant warrior, as commander of the army. Iturbide accepted the commission; but instead of allying himself with the cause of a falling monarchy, he resolved to abandon the viceroy and his project against the constitution and to throw his whole support toward the cause of the country-absolute independ- ence. On February 24, 1821, while at the small town of Iguala, he pro- claimed the plan of Iguala, the cardinal principles of which were inde- pendence, the maintenance of Roman Catholicism, and union. This most important state paper is as follows :
Article I. The Mexican nation is independent of the Spanish nation, and of every other, even on its own continent.
Article II. Its religion shall be the Catholic, which all its inhabitants profess.
Article III. They shall all be united, without any distinction between Americans and Europeans.
Article IV. The government shall be a constitutional monarchy.
Article V. A junta shall be named, consisting of individuals who enjoy the highest reputation in different parties which have shown themselves.
Article VI. This junta shall be under the presidency of his excellency. Conde del Venadito, the present viceroy of Mexico.
Article VII. It shall govern in the name of the nation, according to the laws now in force, and its principal business will be to convoke, according to such rules as it shall deem expedient, a congress for the formation of a constitution more suit- able to the country.
Article VIII. His Majesty Ferdinand VII shall be invited to the throne of the empire, and in case of his refusal, the Infantes Don Carlos and Don Francisco De Paula.
Article IX. Should His Majesty Ferdinand VII and his august brothers decline the invitation, the nation is at liberty to invite to the imperial throne any member of reigning families whom it may choose to select.
Article X. The formation of the constitution by the congress, and the oath of the emperor to observe it, must precede his entry into the country.
Article XI. The distinction of castes is abolished, which was made by the Spanish law, excluding them from the rights of citizenship. All the inhabitants are citizens, and equal, and the door of advancement is open to virtue and merit.
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