USA > New Mexico > History of New Mexico : its resources and people, Volume I > Part 33
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The case came to its final trial on June 3, 1895. The finding of the court was that the grant was not entitled to confirmation; that the claim was utterly fictitious and fraudulent, and that the various documents upon which it was based had been forged and surreptitiously introduced into the archives at Madrid, Seville and Guadalajara; that the baptismal and burial records of the parish of San Bernardino and San Salvador were forgeries ; that no such person as Don Miguel Nemecio Silva de Peralta de la Cordoba ever existed, or that he had a son Don Jesus Miguel ; and that the plaintiffs were in nowise related to or connected with the mythical first Baron of Arizona.
Thus ended the most gigantic fraud ever attempted in the history of the world. In extent it even transcended the historic "Mississippi Bubble."
The ingenuity displayed by Reavis in arranging the plot, in even its most minor details, seems almost to surpass human power in one man's life- time. In San Francisco he found a man who, for the sum of $50,000, contracted with him the necessary number of persons who would swear to the various statements he had formulated. As these individuals were brought to him, Reavis schooled them in the parts they were to play until they became letter perfect. In the criminal proceedings which, in 1897, followed the decree of the land court branding the proceedings as a fraud from beginning to end, Reavis played his role in a masterful manner. But his wife, though splendidly drilled in her part of the story, and for a long time avoiding the numerous traps laid for her by skillful cross- examiners, finally collapsed under the strain. It was an intensely dra- matic hour, and the incident resulted in the creation of a great wave of sympathy for the accused man. But the jury brought in a verdict against him, and he was sentenced to the penitentiary at Santa Fé. The criminal proceedings were conducted for the government by Mr. Reynolds, assisted by Summers Burkhart, who prepared two indictments in the case and rendered valuable assistance in bringing this prince of impostors to justice.
Attorney-General Harmon, in the report of the Department of Jus- tice for the year 1895, in referring to the civil proceedings, said: "The case is remarkable as probably the greatest fraud ever attempted against a government in its own courts." Mr. Tipton says: "In all the annals of crime there is no parallel. This monstrous edifice of forgery, perjury and subornation was the work of one man. No plan was ever more
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ingeniously devised; none ever carried out with greater patience, indus- try, skill and effrontery."
Reavis remained in prison from July 18, 1896, to April 18, 1898, three months being deducted from his term of imprisonment on account of good behavior. Upon the expiration of his term he left the territory and went to California, where he is still living.
Mr. Tipton, who bore such an important part in unraveling the mys- terious features of this case, in recent years has been employed in the gov- ernment service in the Philippines. Mr. Hughes, who was born in St. Anthony, Minnesota, in 1858, and was educated in Indiana University, has resided in New Mexico since 1870. His life has been devoted to com- merce in Santa Fé, in which he has been successful.
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LINCOLN COUNTY WAR-FEUDS-CRIMINAL ANNALS
Many events that have transpired on the soil of New Mexico, while deeply tragic in themselves, and of long-standing effects on the communi- ties where they occurred, are isolated from the main current of historical progress which they affect much in the accidental way that storms and earthquakes do. Outbreaks of violence occur in every age and every form of society. When persistent and widespread, they are manifestations of weak social order and the impotence of law; when sporadic and brief, they indicate the restlessness and impatience of restraint which everywhere and in all times cause crime and produce the "bad men." As long as the West was new and on the borderland of civilization, it served as a catch- basin for the reckless and criminal element of the larger East, and in the years that followed the establishment of American institutions in New Mexico, and particularly the two decades beginning with the Civil war, the Territory was seldom entirely free from the operations of political or private feud, crimes of theft and murder, and other forms of human lawlessness at some point or other within her borders. In the following pages the editors have endeavored to gather trustworthy accounts of some of the most important cases that would come under this classification of historical material.
The Lincoln County War was largely of the nature of a feud, carried on with the unrelenting ferocity and the fatal consequences which have characterized such disturbances at various times in different parts of our country. Such a conflict is usually a result of blended motives and circum- stances, and those who would state the causes and the issues often find their interpretation greatly at variance from that of another witness.
George W. Coe, of Glencoe, Lincoln county, was a participant in this war, actively associated with the foremost actors of one side. With ut- most freedom from rancor he states the facts of the contest as he saw and knew them with evident authority.
Alexander McSwain, who headed the faction of which Mr. Coe was a partisan, came to Lincoln about 1870, practiced law for several years, and in 1873 established a partnership with John H. Tunstel in the mercantile, banking and ranch business at Lincoln in the building now occupied by J. J. Jaffee & Co. McSwain also became attorney for John S. Chisum, the cattle king of the Pecos river, who at this time had about 60,000 head of cattle on the range.
Colonel Emil Fritz and Major L. G. Murphy had been post traders at Fort Stanton until the government turned out the traders, and then about 1867 or 1868 they came to Lincoln and continued a mercantile part- nership in the building which is now used as a court house. While on a trip to Germany Colonel Fritz died, and a short time after J. J. Dolan
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and John Riley succeeded to the firm of L. G. Murphy & Co., though Murphy remained in the firm as a silent partner.
These two firms were bitter rivals for the contracts . to supply the government posts with cattle and other supplies. The rivalry was carried on both ahove and below board, and doubtless both sides resorted to questionable means of obtaining advantage. But it became rather gener- ally understood that a great many of the cattle that were being turned in on the government contracts by the firm of Dolan and Riley were stolen cattle, picked out from the "long (brand) herds, then owned and run by John S. Chisum. The latter, with his attorney, McSwain, prosecuted a number of persons for the larceny of these cattle. This is thought to have been the entering wedge which separated the people of Lincoln county into two contending factions.
About a year before the first act of hostility in the war, McSwain, acting as attorney for Mrs. Scholan (a sister of Colonel Emil Fritz), col- lected an insurance policy on the life of her deceased brother. McSwain, so it is alleged, had previously agreed with the sister to collect the policy at his own expense and was then to retain a certain per cent of the pro- ceeds. He went to New York, at his own expense, and compromised the case with the insurance company, which had theretofore refused to pay a dollar. On his return he offered to turn over to Mrs. Scholan (as sub- stantiated by several witnesses) the entire amount collected by him less his percentage as attorney. Mrs. Scholan, acting under advice of Murphy, Dolan and Riley, refused to accept this money and demanded the entire collection less his personal expenses. McSwain refused, and Mrs. Scholan commenced legal action to recover the insurance money. In this suit an attachment was levied on the mercantile firm of Tunstel and McSwain, and upon all the cattle on the ranch owned by Tunstel on the Felix river in Lincoln county.
When the deputy sheriff and his posse arrived at the ranch to serve the writ they found there John H. Tunstel, Richard Brewer, his foreman, and William H. Bonney. later famous as "Billy the Kid." Mr. Coe states that the parties were friendly while at the ranch, and that after levying
The well known author, Emerson Hough, in a recent magazine article touched briefly on the causes and facts of the war. "There was no one part of the remoter West," says he, "which could claim any monopoly in the product of hard citizens, but there can be small challenge to the assertion that southeastern New Mexico, for twenty years after the Civil war was, without doubt. as dangerous a country as ever lay out-of-doors. The Pecos Valley caught the first of the great west-bound Texas cattle herds at a time when the maverick industry was at its height. Old John Chisum had perhaps sixty to eighty thousand head of cattle. It was easier to steal these cattle than to raise cows for one's self. As for refuge, there lay the central mountains of New Mexico. As for a market, there was the military post of Fort Stanton, with the beef contracts for supplying the Mescalero Indian res- ervation. Between the market and the Pecos cow herds ran the winding valley of the Bonito, like a cleat on a vast sluiceway. It caught bad men naturally. Thus the Lincoln County war of 1879 to 1880 was a matter of topography rather than of geography. It was foregone that there should be factional fighting in that country sooner or later. Some of the Chisum cow-punchers turned out as thieves, and grad- ually from these and other complications hecame evolved the famous Murphy and McSwain factions, who engaged in fighting so bitter that the Government of the United States took a hand, deposed Governor Axtell of New Mexico, and sent out General Lew Wallace with extraordinary powers, and orders to stop the killing. There were perhaps two hundred men killed in southeastern New Mexico from 1875 to 1881."
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the attachment on the cattle the deputy sheriff permitted Tunstel, Brewer and Bonney to set off for town with all the ranch horses. When about twenty miles from the ranch the latter party discovered a bunch of turkeys in what is now known as Tunstel's canyon and stopped to hunt them. While hunting the sheriff's force came upon them. According to the statement of Brewer and Bonney, Tunstel rode toward the posse. Arriving within 15 or 20 feet, they ordered him to throw up his hands, which he did, dropping his gun and everything, and they shot him while his hands were over his head. At the first intimation of danger the other two men had made for the shelter of a hill, where they were attacked and a general battle ensued. They stood off the posse until nightfall, when they escaped and made their way to Lincoln and related the tragedy. Within two days the town was full of armed and excited men, roused to the highest pitch of bitterness by the killing .*
Such was the opening event of the Lincoln war. The resulting fights and quasi-legal contests could hardly be dignified with the name of "war," since personal enmity and the spirit of feud were the pregnant elements of dispute. As always happens at such a time, the criminal class gladly allied itself with one party or the other, glad to stamp its outlawry with some semblance of justifiable warfare. The events that followed were in reality the culmination of the hatred provoked by "cattle rustling" and less specific roguery, intensified by the alliance with the opposing sides of many persons who had individual scores to settle.
The causes of the war as above cited agree substantially with the ver- sions found elsewhere. In the judgment of another well-known citizen, the original cause was the rivalry existing between Lawrence G. Murphy and John S. Chisum, at that time the leading cattlemen at Lincoln and in the Pecos valley respectively. Both were furnishing cattle for the Indian agency and each accused the other of stealing from their respective flocks. The rivalry of these two men was the basis of the war, though the acts and depredations in which the sympathizers of these two principals were involved may have brought on the actual crisis.
*Tom Moore, who was a member of the sheriff's posse that levied the attach- ment on Tunstel's cattle, and consequently an eye-witness of many of the incidents, substantiates the claim that Tunstel resisted the sheriff's first attempt to serve the writ. His ranch house was really a fortification, being built of logs, was 14 feet square, with the door fronting east, and forming a semi-circle from one corner to another was a sand-bag breastwork. The deputy returned to Lincoln after his first visit and announced that Tunsiel had resisted the levy. At this Sheriff Brady swore in a posse of about forty men, among whom were Tom Moore, Billy Morton (later killed in the war), and ordered the deputy, William Matthews, to execute the legal paper despite resistance. On reaching the ranch the posse found it deserted by everyone except the cook. It being learned that Tunstel and his men had run off a lot of horses, the force was divided and Billy Morton in command of one-half pur- sued Tunstel, and in the fight that ensued when they overtook him Tunstel was slain. The other half rounded up the cattle and attached them. The deputy sheriff had trouble in finding men to stay with the cattle, but finally Tom Moore agreed to do sc with the help of a man named Robinson, who, however, went to Lincoln and never returned. Moore stayed with the cattle two months. About ten days after the killing of Tunstel, Billy the Kid and three companions came to the ranch and stayed all night, reporting to Moore that they had killed Billy Morton and three or four others of the party that killed Tunstel, and had now come to kill Moore provided he had been a member of the party which pursued Tunstel. But they were convinced that Moore was only the caretaker of the cattle and did not bother him.
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A slightly different account places the beginning of hostilities in the visit of one of Chisum's men, in October, 1876, to Wiley's camp, where he found the boss (named Yopp) to have been killed and the men to be stealing the cattle. A short time later Murphy, claiming to be at the head of a sheriff's party, was at Wiley's camp ostensibly to hunt thieves, but really was stealing stock and committing other depredations. This ac- count goes on to assert that it was Murphy and his men who killed Tunstel in February, 1878, the reason assigned for the killing being that Tunstel, as a cattle trader and merchant, was underselling Murphy. The successor of Yopp at the Wiley ranch was Dick Smith, who was also murdered, and his death, with that of Tunstel, made the first three casualties in the Lincoln county war.
After the killing of Tunstel his sympathizers organized themselves into a party known as the McSwain faction, some of whom had grievances of their own that induced them to take part in the strife that followed. The people fell into two hostile parties, and guerrilla war lasted for the next year and a half. The six shooters reigned supreme.
The next important incident happened in the town of Lincoln, April 1, 1878. A party of five-Billy the Kid, Fred Wait, Henry Brown, Jim French and one other-known to be adherents of the McSwain faction, while secreted in a corral behind Tunstel and McSwain's store, shot and killed Major William Brady (sheriff of the county, who was an open partisan of the Dolan and Riley party) and George Hineman, who was with Brady. This added fury to the fued while it terrorized all the law- abiding citizens of the county. After the death of Brady, George W. Peppin, a partisan of the Dolan and Riley side, was made sheriff by ap- pointment of Governor Axtell.
A party of McSwain men, armed with a warrant, issued by a justice of the peace, set out for Tularosa to get a man reported to have stolen some of their horses. Among this party of twelve or fourteen were Billy the Kid, George W. Coe, Fred Wait, and Henry Brown, the remainder being Mexicans. They stopped on the way and the four Americans went up a hill to get a drink at a spring. While kneeling they heard shooting in the direction of the rest of the party, and soon perceived that the Mexicans were engaged in a fight with a party of five, belonging to the Dolan and Riley faction. One of the latter, named Bernstein, was killed, and the remaining four started up the hill and came upon Billy the Kid and his comrades. A hot fight ensued, but no one was killed save Bern- stein. For his death, Billy the Kid, Coe, Brown and Wait were indicted, but the governor afterwards quashed all indictments except that against the Kid.
While returning from Tularosa the McSwain party had another en- counter with their enemies near the Mescalero agency. It was the 5th of April, and while they were taking dinner at Dr. Blazer's house one mile from the agency, and Coe and John Middleton were standing guard, a man named Roberts rode up on a mule, very heavily armed. It seems that Roberts, who was a fugitive from Texas, where he had committed murder, had been offered $100 for each scalp that he could get of the McSwain faction. He rode up to the door but there hesitated, seeming undecided what to do. The party soon came out from dinner. Roberts called to Frank Coe, who was the only one known to him, and they went
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around the corner and sat down on the doorstep to talk. The others, consulting among themselves as to the identity and purposes of the new- comer, decided that he must be the Roberts who was the mercenary scalp hunter about whom they had heard some rumors. It was determined to arrest him. Dick Brewer called for volunteers to help, and Billy the Kid, Charles Bowder, and George W. Coe responded. Bowder walking quickly around the corner ordered the stranger to throw up his hands. Roberts, who had his cocked Winchester on his lap, answering with "Not much, Mary Ann," both men fired almost simultaneously. Roberts was shot through the stomach, while the bullet from his gun took effect in George Coe's hand, tearing it almost to pieces. The ball first struck the gun bar- rel, thus deflecting it from Coe's breast. Roberts continued shooting, one shot scraping Coe's breast, Middleton was hit in the chest, and Bowder's cartridge belt was shot off. After driving his foes to retreat Roberts went into the house and taking a feather bed placed himself on it in front of the door. Dick Brewer, going below the house to an old sawmill from which he could see into the door, began firing at Roberts from behind a log. Several shots were exchanged, and Roberts succeeded in killing Brewer with a ball through the head. About this time a detachment of soldiers from the agency came up and put a stop to the fight by driving off the McSwain men. Roberts died of his wound four hours later .*
The next fight of importance took place at the Fritz ranch, four miles below Lincoln, one afternoon about sundown. Some thirty men of the Dolan and Riley faction, while unsaddling their horses and making camp at the spring in the grove of walnuts beside the public road, discovered Frank McNabb. Frank Coe and Ab. Sanders, riding down the road to- wards them. Sanders was a non-partisan but the other two were Mc- Swain men. A general firing began from the camp. Sanders was shot from his horse immediately. McNabb's horse was disabled and he took to the hills, but was pursued and surrounded and killed while making a last stand behind a tree. Meanwhile Coe had put his horse to a gallop down the road, but was followed by a shower of bullets. When he had reached a point in the road fully 1,200 yards below the camp a ball from a buffalo hunter's rifle struck his horse, passing through its head and coming out at the eve. The horse turned a somersault in falling, while Coe escaped to the hills. He was there surrounded and taken prisoner
*Emerson Hough has given a different version of the fight at Blazer's Mill in the following paragraph :
"The most dramatic feature in this somewhat monotonous record of violence was the fight at Blazer's Mill, about a mile from where the Mescalero reservations are to-day. There was a little crippled ex-sergeant by the name of Buckshot Roberts who was slow in leaving the country when ordered to do so. At the mill he met one day a dozen of the crack gun-fighters of the other faction. These came around the corner of the house and opened fire on him almost in concert. Standing in the open, Roberts shot the finger off George Coe, cut the pistol-belt off of Charley Bowder with another shot, and shot Jack Middleton through the lungs. He shoved his rifle against the body of Billy the Kid, and would have killed him, but the piece failed to fire. Bowder shot Roberts through the body, and the latter did most of his shoot- ing after being thus wounded. Then he stepped into the house, picked up another rifle, and, at a distance of one hundred and forty steps, shot Dick Brewer square in the eye. He actually drove away the whole gang from the place, and took his own time to die, which he did on the following day."
Vol. I. 15
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and brought to Lincoln. The next day, while a fight was going on be- tween the two factions, he escaped and joined his friends.
Following this for a period of several months there were many battles fought and many were killed or wounded. The battle that culminated the war was fought at Lincoln in July, 1878. Sheriff Peppin, heading the Dolan and Riley faction, had called upon the United States forces as a posse comitatus, on the plea that they were required to protect the women and children, which, it is asserted, had never been molested. The troops consisted of a company of infantry, a company of cavalry and one of artillery, with a gatling gun and a 12-pounder. The troops were drawn up before McSwain's front door, where the latter and some fifteen men were stationed, and demanded the arrest of the entire party. McSwain refused and read the order of President Hayes stating that the military had no authority to interfere or assist the civil authorities. While the at- tention of the McSwain force was attracted to the parleying in front, the Dolan and Riley men sneaked to the rear of the house, and pouring oil on the roof and window sills, set fire to the house. For a long number of hours those in the house had to fight both fire and bullets. But when night came they one by one made a run between volleys to the river, and thence made good their escape to the hills. Billy the Kid, and McSwain, stayed to the last, and when only they were left their opponents made a rush and endeavored to enter the house. They were checked, however, and one of their number, Robert Beckwith, was killed. The Kid then made his escape, and McSwain, who knew nothing about the use of fire- arms, was shot before he could get out of the house. Eugenio Salazar, one of the present county commissioners of Lincoln county, was in the house and was shot through the stomach, but managed to make his es- cape.
George W. Coe, who took such an active part on the McSwain side, had come to Lincoln county in 1876. He was born in Iowa and reared in Missouri. After the war he lived a short time in Colorado, but then re- turned to Lincoln county and took up his home on his present ranch, two miles above Glencoe, where he has been in the cattle ranching, farming and orchard business ever since.
The account of the Lincoln war as given above distributes pretty evenly the blame to both parties, whose nominal heads were McSwain and Chisum on one side, and Murphy, Dolan and Riley on the other. Others believe that the turbulence that terrorized the entire community, characterized by desperate man-hunts, and most appalling acts of guerrilla warfare, was the result of the outlawry established and given full license by such desperadoes as Billy the Kid. It seems that the latter never sated his vengeance because of the killing of Tunstel, his friend and em- ployer. Some time after the fight in which Tunstel was slain, the Kid and his companions captured Dick Lloyd, Billy Morton, Frank Baker and others at the mouth of Penasco river, took them first to Chisum's camp, on South Spring river, then started with them for Lincoln, but at White- water all the prisoners met their death; shot down while attempting to escape, according to the report of Billy the Kid, but others say they were foully murdered. This happened about the 25th of February, 1878.
The Kid and his gang then proceeded to wreak his vengeance throughout the county and in the Pecos valley, showing no mercy to any
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whom he thought had been connected with the killing of Tunstel. As a matter of fact, according to one version of the matter, neither McSwain nor Chisum had anything whatever to do with the war at any stage, either before or during the fighting. It was generally believed that the Kid was fighting as the head of the Chisum forces and his right-hand man, but the fact is, that he never worked for Chisum at all. The sole foundation for this report is that for a few days he stopped at the Chisum ranch at his own invitation. On January 15, 1880, Billy drew his gun on Chisum at Fort Sumner and demanded pay for services rendered, but Chisum denied any debt and walked away without a word. Billy afterwards said that this coolness saved Chisum's life.
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