Navajos have long history of rich lore

by Marc Simmons

In the early 1840s, an American trader in New Mexico declared that “the Navajos, from a historical point of view, are certainly the most important of all the northern tribes of Mexico.”

Of the many reasons he gave, one was the tribe’s production of “a species of blanket known as the Serape Navajo, woven so tightly that it can shed rain.” New Mexicans eagerly paid an exorbitant $50 to $60 for one of these textiles, using it as a garment or bed covering.

After the United States acquired the Southwest a few years later, other Americans began to learn about the Navajos, initially because of their hostile ways, which were widely reported in the national press.

Later, as more was learned about the Navajos, scholars and writers became fascinated by the tribe’s rich history and its resilient and adaptable culture. It is doubtful that any other group of Natives in our country has been the subject of more books.

At present, the Navajo Nation sprawls across portions of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah; the reservation is almost as large as the state of West Virginia. Within that vast domain, Navajos preserve many of their traditional ways.

As a teenager in 1954, I got a summer job as a chore boy at a Navajo mission near Fort Defiance, Ariz., just across the New Mexico border. At that date, the interior of the reservation was undeveloped.

Most Navajos then were farmers or herders who lived in hogans. They traveled in covered wagons over unpaved roads to isolated trading posts. And they spoke little or no English.

For a kid “interested in Indians,” my three months at Fort Defiance seemed like a gift from heaven. I stayed in a dormitory with boarding Navajo boys my age, and with them I made my first halting attempts to learn the Native language.

All agree that mastering the Navajo tongue presents great challenges to outsiders because it contains plenty of unfamiliar structures and difficult sounds. The mission kept a paid interpreter on its staff who routinely translated the religious services for the congregation.

Each summer, the missionary and interpreter spent a week with a cluster of Navajo families living in an isolated area near Black Mountain. I was asked that year to accompany them as a helper.

The encampment held about six hogans, and others were visible on the adjacent plain. Every day, the people came in for Bible instruction and a noon meal, which, like breakfast and supper, consisted of mutton stew, fry bread and coffee prepared over an open fire.

Guests had no special quarters because there weren’t any. Our bedding consisted of sheepskins rolled out on the dirt floor of a hogan.

In the center of the large octagonal room was a homemade heating stove. And against the wall, old Arbuckles Coffee crates had been stacked to serve as shelving for food and pots.

Until World War II, Navajos used the celebrated Arbuckles’ Ariosa coffee almost exclusively. They called it Hosteen Cohay, which translates to “Mr. Coffee.”

The product arrived at trading posts in heavy crates decorated in red with the name Arbuckles Coffee above the trademark and a flying angel.

Traders handed out the crates to Indian customers, who put them to a variety of uses, including as caskets for infants.

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The mighty prickly pear

by Marc Simmons

The only thing a cowboy minds more than getting bucked off his horse is landing in a prickly pear when he does. The chances of that happening in New Mexico are pretty good because the state has more than 30 different species of pear cactus. A serious run-in with the long barbed thorns can be painful business.

While some people do their best to steer clear of the plant, others will tell you that, handled carefully, it can be darned useful. Many old-timers claim that the roasted cactus pads held against the jaw will reduce the swelling caused by mumps. Years ago, travelers used to crush the cactus and drop a piece in dirty water taken from a stock tank or arroyo. This caused the mud to settle quickly to the bottom of the cup.

A thick growth of prickly pear can be a nuisance on a cattle ranch, since it tends to crowd out grass. But during an extended drought, ranchers’ burn off the spines with a flame thrower, and the cows will eat the pads sort of emergency rations.

In Mexico, the prickly pear is called a nopal, which comes from the Aztec word, nocheznopalli. It figures prominently, of course, in the national emblem, an eagle with a snake in its beak alighting on a pear cactus.

The reddish purple fruit is widely sold in Mexican markets. The juicy pears, called tunas, have a sweet, somewhat astringent taste resembling that of the pomegranate. Perhaps because the fruit contains more seeds than pulp, it has never been particularly popular in the United States.

Back in 1908, a series of experiments were conducted at Las Cruces in an effort to discover if prickly pear fruit had any commercial use. The project was carried out by professors in the chemistry department at New Mexico State University, then known as New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.

The scientists developed several experimental cactus farms on the bare and otherwise worthless tablelands above the Rio Grande Valley. They set out plants in rows twelve feet apart and found that they thrived in the sterile soil without cultivation or irrigation. The yield was an astounding 14 tons of tunas, or pears, per acre.

Having demonstrated that the cactus could be easily grown on marginal land, the scholars next tried to find a practical use for the tunas. First they pressed the juice and extracted, through an elaborate chemical process, a stain which turned out to be an excellent and harmless food coloring. The extraction operation, however, was expensive and, in fact, proved an insurmountable drawback. Next, the professors looked at the possibility of converting the juice, containing about 7 percent sugar, into alcohol.

There was no technical problem here and the economic prospects appeared good. Alcohol was then bringing 30¢ a gallon which meant that about $45 could be cleared on an acre of prickly pear. In 1908, $45 was a reasonable sum.

But one large problem still remained. The pears had to be harvested by hand, a costly and time consuming job. Even the scientists couldn’t hurdle that one. Said a local newspaper, “It is hoped that some genius will soon come forward with a machine which will lessen the labor of gathering tunas.” Evidently New Mexico was short on geniuses, for there, so far as we can tell, the prickly pear experiment ended.

dchieftain.com

When the Rio Grande Floods

by Marc Simmons

Early visitors to New Mexico often compared the Rio Grande to the African Nile. That was because our great river, like the Nile, regularly flooded its inner valleys during spring and summer, at the same time dropping its burden of rich silt that fertilized the fields.

While soil enrichment proved a sound benefit, that had to be weighed against the destructive effects of flooding. They included the loss of human life, livestock, buildings, utilities and sometimes entire towns. The railroad center of San Marcial on the river north of old Fort Craig, for instance, was washed away in 1929.

Famed archaeologist Adolph Bandelier witnessed in 1884 a major episode of the Rio Grande leaving its banks. It reminded him that flooding in previous centuries must have played a major role in "burrowing new channels, obliterating Indian pueblos and changing the location of farm plots." That particular flood, in fact, destroyed much of Santo Domingo Pueblo.

Old Town Albuquerque had experienced a devastating inundation in 1874. When the rise of the river spread across its valley, the plaza area for a time remained above water, being situated on a low mound about two or three feet high. Shopkeepers took no chances, however, and while the road remained open they fled in wagons loaded with whatever merchandise could be salvaged from their shelves. The majority of residents escaped to the hills to the east, where they lived in tents for days until the water subsided.

Another memorable flood occurred in late summer of 1900. Before that time, the New Mexico Territory had suffered a prolonged drought. In mid-August, The New Mexican reported that the Rio Grande had gone bone-dry, and farmers and stockmen throughout the region were in desperate circumstances.

Tne newspaper also mentioned that the Zuni Indians were conducting a search in their locality for the witch whom they believed was responsible for causing the drought. Concluded The New Mexican: "There are hard times in store for both the witch and the Indians."

The drought-breaker came in the middle of the night on Sept. 7. A huge downpour dumped several inches of rain before dawn. The press headlined the event with the words "WAS A GREAT FLOOD!"
One story was titled "A night of terror at Trimble's stage camp." Albuquerque businessman W. L. Trimble operated a shortline stagecoach service to Santa Fe, for the benefit of small towns not on the railroad. Midway between the two cities he had built a major facility to accommodate his coaches and animals.

The flood's roar, descending an adjacent arroyo from the mountains, awakened the camp crew. Men raced through a swirling torrent to reach the large frame barn where 46 horses were stabled. Working furiously in the dark, they managed to release all the animals but one.

A few moments after the last man was out, the structure collapsed, or as employee Tom Cain later put it: "The barn was completely whirled out of existence." Lost, too, were a drove of hogs, all the outbuildings and two stagecoaches parked in the compound.

Other stories of heroism and rescue came to light over the next several days. As was common, the flooding had knocked out a number of railroad bridges, interrupting train service. Two bridges had gone down south of Santa Fe, including an iron one over the Galisteo arroyo.

By Sunday, Trimble had sent all his spare stagecoaches and teams up from Albuquerque to be used in shuttling passengers over the gap between the downed bridges. Once the passengers reloaded, the trains had to back up to the last station.

Slowly in the 20^th century, floodwaters were harnessed by dam building and flood-control projects through the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, established in 1925. Nevertheless, in spite of the current complacency, the potential for localized flooding remains, so more chapters in this story will certainly be added.

SFAOL 


Marc Simmons is a semi-retired historian and author of thirty-five books  I was honored to present The Rounders Award to him in 1991.

Punishing the saints in New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

      In times gone by, many traditional homes in New Mexico had a small, well-decorated altar upon which was kept a statue of the household saint. These simple wooden santos were greatly treasured, becoming much-loved family heirlooms.
      Of course, each small village and town also had its own patron saint, the celebration of its feast day being the high point of the year. The image of this patron, kept in the church, might wear clothes carved and painted as part of the statue, or it might have actual cloth garments that could be removed for cleaning.
      The saints were appealed to, as intercessors, for various favors or for aid, particularly in instances of emergency. Since the early-day New Mexicans were at the mercy of capricious weather, nomad Indians, and periodic epidemics, they faced plenty of occasions when prayers for help seemed appropriate.
      Often times the saints seemed to respond, providing the relief requested. But then once in a while they appeared to turn a deaf ear and no matter how hard or long the villagers prayed, their appeals went unanswered.
      When that happened, the santos might be punished. The penalties assigned sound strange to modern ears, but they were an accepted part of Hispanic folk culture on the upper Rio Grande.
San Ysidro, the patron of farmers, was one santo frequently mentioned as receiving punishment when he failed to deliver. On his day, May 15, his image was taken in a procession through the fields, so that crops might be protected from hail or frost.
      Later in the summer, if the rains failed to come, the faithful farmers prayed furiously to San Ysidro for an end to the drought. When that occurred at Truchas, once long ago, a huge flood followed and destroyed the crops.
       The outraged petitioners placed their santo on his platform with four handles and carried him back to the fields, so he could see the disaster he had caused them. Their aim was to shame him.
The ususal way to punish a santo was to turn its face to the wall. Or if the failure had been a large one, then it might be locked in a trunk and left in darkness for a considerable period of time.
      Jose Gurule provides an example dating from 1867. In that year, at age 16, he joined a wagon train on the dangerous journey over the Santa Fe Trail to Missouri.
      As the caravan left Las Placitas, he says, the wives or mothers of the departing men gently wrapped a cloth around the household saints and put them in the bottom of trunks to be held hostage for the safe return of their loved ones. When the men got back, the santos in their houses were removed from captivity and a ceremony was held in their honor with dancing and singing. But in those homes where the mend had died on the trail, the saints were taken out and buried in sad and solemn ceremony.
      Young English tourist R.B. Townshend witnessed an astonishing episode of punishment at one of New Mexico’s pueblos in 1875. The village had a life size statue of San Joaquin, kept in a small chapel on the edge of the village. The saint in the past had always responded to pleas for rain, but now in the middle of a severe drought, he ignored them. Townshend was allowed to accompany the angry party of avengers.
       A crowd of Indianson horseback rode up to the chapel door. They shouted: “Bring him out. Lasso him. Down to the river with him!” Then a man went inside, tied a rope around the santo’s neck, and came out, looping the other end over his saddle horn.
      The saint was jerked out the door and the whole band raced for the river. “Down in the sand, under the heels of ponies,” Townshend related, “the besmeared San Joaquin wallowed and rolled beneath a shower of curses and a hurricane of blows.”
      “When it was all over, wonder of wonders, they retrieved him, cleaned him up, and dressed him in his own proper garments. And again they set him up in his shrine and worshipped him harder than ever.”
      For outsiders, the strange folkways of New Mexico starting with “punishing the saints” were beyond comprehension.

dchieftain.com

Marc Simmons is a semi-retired historian and author of thirty-five books  I was honored to present The Rounders Award to him in 1991.

 

New Mexico was known for ‘Taos Lightning’

by Marc Simmons

What was New Mexico famous for in the 1830s and 1840s? It wasn’t pretty landscapes, spicy cooking, or wild dances called fandangos, although the territory had plenty of all three.

No. New Mexico’s renown, throughout the Rocky Mountains at least, rested upon its celebrated whiskey that went by the colorful name, Taos Lightning. By all accounts, a jigger of that heady stuff, swallowed in a single gulp, could knock a fellow’s boots off.

The source of this stout spirit lay in the bountiful wheat fields of the Taos Valley. In 1824 a couple of Missouri backwoodsmen who had settled there looked at all that grain and wondered what kind of beverage it might be made to yield.

They brought a copper still from the east, opened a small distillery, and came out with liquor more potent than corn whiskey, or white mule, as southerners termed it.

The new creation, Taos Lightning, won immediate acceptance. Several well-staffed distilleries appeared at Taos proper and at Ranchos de Taos. The largest, however, was established by Missouri born Simon Turley at Arroyo Hondo, 12 miles north of Taos Pueblo.

In 1836 Turley hired Charlie Autobees as a traveling salesman. With pack mules carrying 10 gallon wooden casks of Taos Lightning, Charlie ranged as far north as the Platte River, vending his liquid wares.

The casks were purchased by owners of fur trading posts who resold the liquor to trappers, Indians, and even agents of Canada’s Hudson Bay Company. Through the latter, Taos Lightning became available to guzzlers in faraway British Columbia and other western Canadian provinces.

Since the Taos product was 40 to 50 percent proof, both mountain men and Indians easily got roaring drunk, and sometimes dangerous. One trader on the Missouri River was reported to have laced his casks with laudanum (tincuture of opium) to help control the unruliness of his customers.

New Mexican liquor venders who dealt with the Comanche’s on the Texas plains had their own method of self-protection. They buried their casks several miles out before going into the tepee village.

Upon trading for buffalo robes, they made a quick exit, leaving one of their number as hostage. After a half day, he would guide the Comanches to the alcohol, and then ride at top speed to get away before the big drunk began.

Intoxication also became a problem among New Mexicans themselves. British traveler George F. Ruxton, visiting New Mexico in 1846, took note of Taos Lightning, calling it a raw, fiery spirit.
On the Santa Fe plaza, he was shocked to see that every other place of business was a whiskey shop disgorging reeling, drunken men. The revelers were both native Santa Feans and recently arrived American soldiers.

Before the appearance of Taos Lightning, drunkenness had been fairly rare in Hispanic New Mexico. The main reason was the small supply of hard liquor.

Franciscan padres in the 1620s developed the first large scale vineyards in the Piro pueblos of the Socorro Valley. They made sacramental wine and grape brandy using a copper still.

Others soon produced wine and brandy commercially. But the poor rural masses usually could not afford either beverage.

When Americans arrived in the 19th century, they enjoyed the local brandy, but preferred Taos Lightning if they could get it. That became impossible in early 1847 since the Turley distillery was destroyed during the Taos insurrection. Simon Turley and most of his employees were killed.

But by then barrels of Kentucky whiskey were being imported over the Santa Fe Trail. That was too expensive to be used in the Indian trade. So a cheap substitute was created.

Here’s the recipe: To one gallon of silty water from the Rio Grande, add a pint of raw grain alcohol, a dash of bitters, a pinch of Jamaica ginger, and one plug of chewing tobacco. Stir and age overnight.

For obvious reasons, this concoction became known as rot-gut whiskey.

dchieftain.com

Marc Simmons is a retired historian and author of thirty-five books  I was honored to present The Rounders Award to him in 1991. 

Salt harvest a colorful chapter in state

by Marc Simmons

One of the colorful chapters in the history of New Mexico that is scarcely remembered now involved the annual cosecha de sal, or salt harvest, regularly undertaken by our pioneer settlers. I’ve long thought that the many details surrounding this fascinating activity could easily be turned into a small book.

In prehistoric times, both Pueblo and Plains Indians collected salt at saline lakes in the area. It became a major trade item, transported in baskets on Indian backs and widely distributed.

Incoming Spanish colonists quickly identified prime salt sources, to meet their own needs. The most accessible was found in the southern end of the Estancia Basin, where a cluster of saline ponds and small lakes offered a never-ending supply of the essential mineral.

Salt for man and beast, of course, is a nutritional necessity, not a luxury although many people are prone to use it simply because it enhances the taste of food. Colonial Spaniards, like other people, put it to a variety of uses.

As a preservative, dry salt was rubbed into green beaver pelts or buffalo hides, and various foods could be kept for long periods in salt brine. For example, buffalo tongues, a major export product, were pickled in barrels of brine and shipped south down the Camino Real.

Pure white salt also served a variety of uses in our local folk culture. A small bowl of it was often kept on the narrow shelf above a fireplace opening. Before the family went to bed, someone would toss a pinch of salt onto the red embers in the belief that doing so would prevent flying witches from descending the chimney during the night.

A man from Truchas once told me that when he was a boy his aunt always stood in front of her house whenever a storm gathered above the village. As the thunder cracked, she tossed a handful of salt in the air, in the form of a cross, saying “Santa Barbara, libranos de rayos!” (Santa Barbara, save us from lightning.) Her house was never struck.

When time came for the yearly harvest, the royal governor, through town criers, announced the date of departure for the cart caravan that always assembled at the village of Galisteo. To protect the convoy, he sent a squad of soldiers and sometimes a small cannon, since the salines were in dangerous Apache country.

As many families as possible sent at least one representative to join the workers, so they could receive a share of the harvest. Range sheep required about a quarter ounce of salt per day, so ranchers with large flocks needed huge quantities.

Leaving Galisteo, often after a wild fandango the night before, the throng of salt gatherers was in a festive mood. The men knew that weeks of hard work lay ahead, but they were accustomed to that.
A three-day march brought them to the Laguna del Perro, the largest salt lake. After camp was pitched, everyone got busy. Some gatherers went along the shore, raking encrusted salt into piles which could then be scooped into wool or leather sacks.

Others waded out into the shallow lake where the fresh salt was quite pure and shoveled it from the bottom. Ox carts waited at water’s edge, dried hides having been tied to their open rails and the bed to create a leathern tub to receive the wet salt.

After several weeks, the job was completed and the caravan made its return. Because of the danger and labor involved, this salt sold for $1 a bushel in towns along the Rio Grande.

A territorial law passed in 1854 provided that all citizens could freely collect salt at the lakes. But not everyone got the word. Years ago I heard an older resident of Galisteo relate how her grandfather had been conned into buying the lakes for a princely sum.

“That was not uncommon,” she said with a chuckle. “In those days, purchasing the New Mexican salt lakes was equivalent to a New York visitor buying the Brooklyn Bridge.”

 dchieftain.com

Marc Simmons is a retired historian and author of thirty-five books I was honored to present The Rounders Award to him in 1991.

New Mexico has a blacksmithing legacy

by Marc Simmons

In 1980, the noted Santa Fe blacksmith Frank Turley and I published our book Southwestern Colonial Ironwork. It represented the culmination of ten years of research and writing.

The work proved to be one of the most difficult projects I’d ever tackled, but also the most challenging and pleasurable. For background on Hispanic blacksmithing in New Mexico, I traveled to Spain to observe and interview modern craftsmen who still followed many of the old traditions. Along the way, I had some unforgettable experiences.
One branch or specialty of ironworking is farriery that is, horseshoeing. Since I’d done a lot of that myself in the 1970s, I made a point of talking with horseshoers while in Spain.

Once at a cavalry remount station in the village of Benavente, I was lucky enough to catch a master shoer and his assistant at work.

The latter, called a mozo, picked up the horse’s foot and held it, so that the master could remove the old shoe, trim the hoof, and nail on a new shoe. That’s the way it had been done in colonial New Mexico.

In Spanish, I explained to the two men and a crowd of on-lookers that in the United States horseshoers worked under the animal alone. The master declared indignantly that the job couldn’t be performed without a mozo.

To prove him wrong, I asked to borrow his tools and for permission to take off the rear shoes on his next horse. In short order, I lifted a hind foot, braced it against my upper leg, cut the old nail clinches, and jerked off the shoe with pullers. The appreciative audience gave me a round of applause; partly because I was the only foreigner in a business suit they had ever seen work on a horse. The master farrier, however, was anything but happy with my performance, so I made a quick exit. During research in New Mexico’s Spanish Archives preserved in Santa Fe, I first came across the history of the Sena Family who had been blacksmiths in the capital and elsewhere for more than 200 years.

Founder of this smithing dynasty was Bernardino de Sena who at age nine in 1693 first came to New Mexico from Mexico City. That was during the reconquest by Gen. Diego de Vargas.

Bernardino’s parents settled on a ranch near Pojoaque. At 18 the young man went to Santa Fe and was soon blacksmithing, probably having learned the trade through an apprenticeship.

He prospered, invested in real estate, and became one of the city’s most prominent citizens. Upon his death in 1765, he was buried in a place of honor inside San Miguel Chapel, now sometimes referred to as the oldest church in the U.S.A. Generations of Bernardino’s descendants continued working at smithcraft. One of note was Ramon Sena whose Santa Fe forge turned out all sorts of ranch hardware in the 1830s. Several Navajos who wanted to learn ironworking so that they could make their own horse bits hired him to come to their camp below Mt. Taylor.

Sena went, with another smith named Jose Castillo, and taught the Indians what they needed to know. Then their hosts escorted them back to Santa Fe for protection, since word had reached camp that other Navajos were out raiding.

After Sena and Castillo’s instruction, the art of blacksmithing spread rapidly among the Navajo tribe. Using the same techniques of metal working, the Indians soon graduated to making silver jewelry. Today Navajo jewelry is one of the most famous and sought after of native crafts.

The last of the long line of Sena blacksmiths was Abran Sena who was forging and shoeing horses in Santa Fe as late as the 1920s. When he closed his shop across from Guadalupe Church in the latter part of the decade, a tradition that had begun more than 200 years before with Bernardino de Sena came to an end.

defensorchiefiain

 Marc Simmons is a retired historian and award winning author of 35 books 

Texans’ 1872 raid reclaimed stolen cattle from New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

In midsummer of 1872, a Texas cattleman, John Hittson, led 50 hard-bitten cowboys on a vigilante-style raid of Eastern New Mexico, and he did so with the approval of his state governor. The incident created headlines at the time, but today it has been almost forgotten.

The trouble that prompted Hittson’s daring act had its origins in the famed Comanchero trade of the southern plains. Comancheros were native New Mexicans who, for more than a century, had been venturing upon the wide Llano Estacado to trade with the warlike Comanche Indians.

To their wild customers, the merchants from the upper Pecos (that’s where most of them lived) swapped guns, powder, lead, knives and hatchets. They received in return mostly live cattle, but also some horses and mules.

Occasionally, the Comancheros brought liquor to barter, but that was a very dangerous commodity. They would bury the kegs some distance from camp, make their trade with the Indians and then, just as they were leaving for home, divulge the location of the firewater. They wished to be well away before the revelry began.

The trouble with this business was that the livestock acquired by the Comancheros was almost all stolen from ranches in Texas. The market provided by the New Mexicans actually encouraged the Indians’ devastating raids.

Howls of protest echoed from the Lone Star State. But there was criticism at the other end of the line as well.

...Panhandle rancher Charles Goodnight had long suffered heavy losses. In the late 1860s, he rode over to the Gallinas River where he found 600 of his cows in the hands of a local resident.

Going to nearby Las Vegas, N.M., Goodnight engaged a lawyer and tried to redeem his lost property. Local officials proved unsympathetic and not only refused to order return of his cattle but made him pay $75 in court costs. The poor Texan said he was lucky to get away with his shirt.

...In 1872, he (John Hittson) decided to do something about that. He assembled his small army, and armed with powers of attorney from many ranchers across Texas, he swept like a tornado into New Mexico.

Everywhere he found cattle wearing a Texas brand, including his own Three Circle brand, he repossessed them at the point of a gun. No attempt was made to determine whether they had been legally purchased or had come through the unlawful Comanchero trade. Hittson automatically assumed the latter.

...When John Hittson finally departed New Mexico, he was said to be driving 18,000 head of cattle. It was not his raid that finished off the Comacheros, however. That task was completed by the army who soon forced the Comanche tribe onto an Oklahoma reservation. That ended their trading with the New Mexicans.

Now in semi-retirement, author Marc Simmons wrote a weekly history column for more than 35 years. The New Mexican is publishing reprints from among the more than 1,800 columns he produced during his career.

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Trail Dust: ‘Taos Lightning’ brought drunkenness to New Mexico

By Marc Simmons


What was New Mexico famous for in the 1830s and 1840s? It wasn’t pretty landscapes, spicy cooking or wild dances called fandangos, although the territory had plenty of all three.

No, New Mexico’s renown, throughout the Rocky Mountains at least, rested upon its celebrated whiskey that went by the colorful name Taos Lightning. By all accounts, a jigger of that heady stuff, swallowed in a single gulp, could knock a fellow’s boots off.

The source of this stout spirit lay in the bountiful wheat fields of the Taos Valley. In 1824, a couple of Missouri backwoodsmen who had settled there looked at all that grain and wondered what kind of beverage it might be made to yield.

They brought a copper still from the East, opened a small distillery and came out with a liquor more potent than corn whiskey — or White Mule, as Southerners termed it.

The new creation, Taos Lightning, won immediate acceptance. Several well-staffed distilleries appeared at Taos proper and at Ranchos de Taos. The largest, however, was established by Missouri-born Simon Turley at Arroyo Hondo, 12 miles north of Taos Pueblo.

In 1836, Turley hired Charlie Autobees as a traveling salesman. With pack mules carrying 10-gallon wooden casks of Taos Lightning, Charlie ranged as far north as the Platte River, vending his liquid wares.

The casks were purchased by owners of fur-trading posts who resold the liquor to trappers, American Indians and even agents of Canada’s Hudson Bay Co. Through the latter, Taos Lightning became available to guzzlers in faraway British Columbia and other western Canadian provinces.

Since the Taos product was 40 percent to 50 percent proof, imbibers easily got roaring drunk, and sometimes dangerous. One trader on the Missouri River was reported to have laced his casks with laudanum (tincture of opium) to help control the unruliness of his customers.

New Mexican liquor vendors who dealt with the Comanches on the Texas plains had their own method of self-protection. They buried their casks several miles out before going into the tepee village.

Upon trading for buffalo robes, they made a quick exit, leaving one of their number as hostage. After a half-day, he would guide the Comanches to the alcohol and then ride at top speed to get away before the big drunk began.

Intoxication also became a problem among New Mexicans themselves. British traveler George F. Ruxton, visiting New Mexico in 1846, took note of Taos Lightning, calling it “a raw, fiery spirit.”

On the Santa Fe Plaza, he was shocked to see that every other place of business was “a whiskey shop disgorging reeling, drunken men.” The revelers were both native Santa Feans and recently arrived American soldiers.

Before the appearance of Taos Lightning, drunkenness had been fairly rare in Hispanic New Mexico. The main reason was the small supply of hard liquor.

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Trail Dust: Friction matches once a luxury item in Santa Fe

By Marc Simmons


When was the first friction match brought over the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico? That is an interesting question I have been trying to answer for some time.

Prior to the introduction of matches, New Mexicans wanting to start a fire had to use the cumbersome flint and steel. When the two were struck together, they produced sparks that could be caught in tinder and fanned into a flame.

Handy friction matches began to appear on the American frontier in the latter 1820s. One report mentions that they were being used in central Missouri, at the head of the Santa Fe Trail, by 1829.
Soon after that, a stray traveler probably carried the first match overland to New Mexico.

I wrote about this subject in my book, The Old Trail to Santa Fe, published years ago. Therein, I said this: “In 1864 a wholesale grocer in Leavenworth, Kan., filled an order for New Mexico merchant José Albino Baca at Las Vegas that included a box of matches at 75 cents.”

The high cost of transportation by ox wagon made them expensive, indeed a luxury item. That was the first documented reference to the importation of matches that I had seen.

I stated in the book that I fully expected earlier mentions to turn up sooner or later. Now one has.

I received a letter from Michael Long of St. Louis, a researcher and author. He was writing a biography of the famous German botanist George Englemann who settled at St. Louis in 1833 and helped establish the Missouri Botanical Garden.

George’s name is attached to one of the two spruces that grow in the mountains of New Mexico, the Engelmann spruce. (The other is the Colorado blue spruce.) He was an early expert on conifers.

Long in his letter said that he had recently read my Old Trail to Santa Fe and noted the section on matches. He enclosed a letter written from Santa Fe in 1846 by August Fendler to Engelmann.

It seems that Engelmann was paying several men going out west to collect botanical specimens for him and ship them back to St. Louis. One of those was young Fendler, also a German immigrant, who accompanied Col. Sterling Price’s army on its march to Santa Fe.

During his first weeks in New Mexico, Fendler collected seeds, cacti, tree branches, fruits, plants and mosses. He packed them in barrels for shipment east by freight wagon.

By November, he was running out of money, as he complained to his sponsor, because everything was so expensive here in the Territory.

Writing to Englemann, he suggested they start up a small business as a sideline to bring in some cash. “You will probably smile,” he elaborated, “if I tell you the business is nothing else but the manufacture of matches.”

“A small box of matches is being sold here for 6 1/4 cents, the demand is great and reserves in local stores are exhausted. By entering into this, we would be able to take care of most of our expenses.”

It is clear that Fendler thought the going New Mexico price of 6 1/4 cents per matchbox was outrageous, two or three times the price in St. Louis.

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Trail Dust - Spanish passion for noble rank helped king colonize New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

...In centuries past, Spaniards too had a passion for titles, perhaps even more so than Englishmen. Many families first gained noble rank during the medieval wars with the Moors as a reward for extraordinary military service. In the 12th century, for example, two brothers named López led an assault on the Moorish-held Portuguese city of Chaves and captured it.

A grateful king made them knights and ordered that their name should, thereafter, be López de Chaves. The brothers’ descendants long afterward helped explore the New World, and the name Chaves (or Chavez) is a common one now in New Mexico and Chihuahua.

Practically every Spanish commoner hoped someday to advance at least to the lowest noble rank, that of hidalgo. The term comes from the contraction of three words, hijo de algo, meaning simply, “son of something.” Those who could save enough were able to buy the title from the king. But most poor people had to count on winning it through some valued deed.

Hidalgos were exempt from taxes, they couldn’t be arrested for debt, like the common folk, and they could pass on the title to a male heir. Among status-conscious Spaniards, hidalgo rank was much coveted.

...When Juan de Oñate was preparing to march north in the closing years of the 16th century and settle New Mexico, he ran into trouble enlisting colonists. Spaniards well knew the dangers and hardships they would find on the Rio Grande frontier and, hence, were not eager to sign on.

The king lent a hand by proclaiming that every man who joined Oñate and stuck it out in New Mexico for five years would be made a hidalgo. Recruitment sped up after that.

...Such noblemen were permitted to add the title “Don” before their first name, such as Don José on Don Manuel. The usual explanation is that the term Don comes from combining the first letters in the phrase, de origin noble. However, Fay Blake of Albuquerque, a scholar of Jewish history, informs me that it may actually derive from the Hebrew word Adonas, which means “Our Lord.”

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Trail Dust: Longest-ever stagecoach line crossed New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

...(John Butterfield) was a business tycoon from Utica, N.Y., with an interest in transportation. In 1857, he formed the Overland Mail Co. and the following year launched stagecoach service between St. Louis and San Francisco.

The route used, across the Southwest, stretched 2,700 miles from one end to the other. It has been called, and rightfully so, the longest stagecoach line in world history. A noted Texas historian has referred to development of the Butterfield Trail as a “romantic high point in the westward movement.”

Butterfield’s pockets were not deep enough to fully finance his visionary enterprise. So he obtained loans from Wells, Fargo & Co. and also managed to get a $600,000 annual subsidy from the government.

Federal officials went along because they were eager to establish quicker contact with California.

Butterfield stages would carry U.S. mail bags and deliver them to San Francisco in a mere 24 days.

The obstacles to getting the overland business up and running proved daunting. Through much of West Texas, Southern New Mexico and Arizona there were few if any towns.

In those sections, isolated stage stations had to be built every 20 miles, then staffed and provisioned. And in places where the route crossed rivers or arroyos, workmen had to cut down banks at fords and in some cases build bridges.

By Sept. 15, 1858, all was in readiness. On that date, the inaugural westbound stage departed from St. Louis.

...Ormsby had been sent by the New York Herald to make this historic journey, write up a series of reports as it unfolded, and send them back to be published serially in the newspaper.

The young man wrote in a fresh and lively manner, providing rich details of his experience and picturing the changing country through which he passed.

At El Paso, roughly the midway point, the stage turned north up the Rio Grande as far as New Mexico’s town of Mesilla. There it turned west, heading for Cooke’s Peak and then Picacho Pass. Between those two places, Ormsby’s coach passed the eastbound stage coming from San Francisco.

The journalist described this stretch of New Mexico as one of “the driest and most tedious portions of the route.” Brief relief came with a stop at Soldier’s Farewell, where copious springs bubbled forth northwest of the later Deming. But no station had yet been built and the keeper was living in a tent.

The stage road continued to Stein’s Peak Station then crossed into the future state of Arizona.

Eventually, Ormsby arrived in San Francisco and watched the dusty mail pouches unloaded. The entire journey had taken just a few hours under 24 days, all grueling.

...John Butterfield, however, fared less well. Two years into his operation, he faced a financial crisis.

The huge sums borrowed for development could not be repaid. When Wells, Fargo & Co. threatened foreclosure, Butterfield’s own directors removed him from the presidency.

With the country racing toward Civil War, the reorganized Overland Mail Co. closed down its service on the Butterfield Trail. The grand but expensive venture had lasted only three years.

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Trail Dust: New Mexico county boundaries evolved over time

By Marc Simmons 

Development of our state’s county boundaries over the centuries forms a curious story virtually unknown to New Mexicans.

Neighboring Texas has a total of 254 counties, most of them comparatively small. By contrast, New Mexico’s counties number only 33, but all are respectably large in size, except tiny Los Alamos County, at only 111 square miles.

When Gen. Stephen W. Kearny seized New Mexico for the United States in 1846, he found the Mexican province divided into three large administrative districts, each governed by an official called a prefect. But it was a far cry from the county system of local government familiar to Americans.

Such a system was not introduced until 1850, when Congress created the Territory of New Mexico. Within two years, 10 counties had been defined, but were identified only on maps, since no survey of boundaries had yet taken place.

At that time, New Mexico stretched from the Texas line westward to the border of California and took in even the southern portion of Nevada.

Four of the New Mexican counties extended in an unmanageable sweep from Texas to California. One of them, Socorro, was believed to have been the largest county in the United States.

From then on, to the end of the century, county boundaries were constantly redefined by the territorial legislature.

Part of the reason had to do with federal actions that led to major changes in the boundary of the territory itself. The first involved the Gadsden Purchase (1853), when the U.S. acquired from Mexico a large wedge of country within the border region of the present states of New Mexico and Arizona.

Soon afterward, the territorial legislature added the Gadsden acquisition to Doña Ana County. It thereby became the fifth county reaching from Texas to California.

However, what the legislature giveth, it can also take away. In 1860 a legislative act from Santa Fe lopped off the western half of Doña Ana, creating the new county of Arizona.

That entity, nevertheless, enjoyed only a short life. For President Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, signed a bill (1863) cutting New Mexico roughly in half. The western portion became the separate territory of Arizona.

As a result, the New Mexico counties that had included significant ground in the west now found themselves with much diminished boundaries.

For Taos County, that proved to be its second major territorial loss. The first had occurred in 1861.

With organization of the Colorado Territory in that year, Congress had amputated a huge piece of Taos County, centered on Trinidad, to fill out the Colorado boundaries we know today.

Even apart from these major episodes, county boundaries remained in a constant state of flux. As New Mexico’s population expanded into previously unsettled areas, the territorial legislature seemed to take genuine glee in scissoring up the map to reshape old counties and from them cut out new ones.In the second half of the 19th century, for example, San Miguel County suffered 11 “boundary redefinitions,” Bernalillo County 15, and the record-holders, Doña Ana and Socorro, both experienced 17.

It appears that record keepers of the day had a hard time tracking all the changes. but it was necessary to do so, since county boundaries played an essential part in determining the districts for membership in the territorial House of Representatives.

In January 1876, the legislature abolished one of the original counties, Santa Ana, and parceled out its area to neighboring Bernalillo and Sandoval counties. Geographer Jerry L.Williams claims this was the only case in New Mexico history in which a functioning county was dissolved.

With opening of the 20th century, New Mexico had 20 counties. By the statehood year of 1912, that number had climbed to 26, and then to 31 by 1921.

In the latter year, the period of radical or chaotic adjustment of county boundaries seemed to have come to an end. Only two important exceptions can be noted in the recent era of stability.

The first occurred in March of 1949. The U.S. government, which had federalized a mountainous section of Santa Fe and Sandoval counties for atomic energy research, returned the land to state jurisdiction. From it, Los Alamos County was formed.

Second, Cibola County was split from Valencia County in 1982. The main reason was that residents of the Grants area had been 70 miles from their former county seat at Los Lunas.

It remains to be seen whether New Mexico has any more new counties in its future.

Now in semi-retirement, author Marc Simmons wrote a weekly history column for more than 35 years. The New Mexican is publishing reprints from among the more than 1,800 columns he produced during his career.

Trail Dust: Disgusted with Santa Fe Ring, Grant County tried to secede

by Marc Simmons


The word “secession” is usually associated with the Civil War and the attempt by southern states to secede from the Union. But in 1867, New Mexico experienced a small secession movement of its own, one having nothing to do with the great war.

This episode was led by the people of Silver City and Grant County who finally got fed up with crooked Santa Fe politics. In the centennial year of the American nation they voted to break away from New Mexico and join the neighboring Territory of Arizona. It was a bold move taken in desperation.

Grant County had been created in 1868 by lopping off the western part of huge Doña Ana County. Silver City, after its founding in 1870, became the county seat. Within a few years it was rated the most prosperous boom town anywhere in the territory. A Las Cruces newspaper called it “a go-ahead place, an example of energy and enterprise.”

Mining was the mainstay of Silver City’s economy. But lumbering was important too. And the first woodworking mill in the territory was opened there. Also, local merchants did a thriving business supplying a vast area of western New Mexico, eastern Arizona and northern Mexico. Silver City was on the way up.

That is, it was going up, provided it could get around dirty politics in the capital. Santa Fe was proving hostile to progress in Silver City.

The trouble lay with the notorious Santa Fe Ring, a clique of Anglo Republicans that included the governor, many legislators, judges and lawyers. They controlled the territorial politics, by manipulating the majority Hispanic vote, all for personal profit.

In the 1871-72 session, the Republicans in the legislature fell to squabbling among themselves. That allowed the minority Democrats to gain temporary control. Alarmed, Republican Gov. Marsh Giddings brought armed federal troops into the capitol building to intimidate the Democrats and keep power in the hands of the Ring.

Speaker Diego Archuleta denounced the governor as a tyrant “who seeks to overawe us and force us to obey his despotic will by the presence of U.S. bayonets. Before we submit, the Mexican people had better be placed upon reservations as the Indians now are.”

Grant County, of course, opposed the rascally governor. As a result, he saw that two legislative bills important to it were killed. One would have given Silver City a charter, allowing it to incorporate. The other would have permitted Grant County to establish a public school system.

Resentment caused by this action ran deep and lingered long. It finally peaked in 1876 when Grant County announced it would seek to cut its political ties with New Mexico and join Arizona. The people declared they were tired of being held in a state of vassalage by Santa Fe and its Ring.

By uniting with Arizona, Grant County citizens saw a number of advantages. Not only would they be rid of Santa Fe where they were under-represented and without influence, they would be much closer in miles to Arizona’s capital at Tucson. Also, Arizona was a mining state that could understand their special problems. Then there was the matter of the Chiricahua Apaches who were still on the warpath. Arizona, suffering the same trouble, could be counted upon to be more attentive in developing mutual defense.

Urged on by local newspapers, residents went to the polls and overwhelmingly voted for Grant County’s “Declaration of Independence.” The fact that the national centennial was in progress and much patriotic fervor was in the air probably contributed to the outcome of the election.

Arizona seemed delighted. A newspaper in Yuma proclaimed: “For our part we would welcome them with open arms.” Arizona Gov. Anson P.K. Safford warmly approved and steered through his legislature a memorial asking Congress to allow his annexation of New Mexico’s Grant County. The people there, he said, were the proper judges as to which territory they should belong. And the people had spoken.

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Trail Dust: Water dowsing is nothing to shake a stick at

by Marc Simmons


Locating underground water by use of a forked stick is a practice that has been known and used for centuries. Indeed, a European scholar named Georgius Agrocola published a treatise on the subject as early as 1530.

The process is referred to variously as dowsing, witching or divining. People who practice it are called dowsers or water witches.

When I was a boy growing up in a rural area east of Dallas, everyone in our neighborhood dowsed for water as a matter of course. When we needed a new well, my father went into the peach orchard and cut a green stick in the shape of a Y.

With each hand he grasped a branch of the Y firmly and holding the point level, parallel to the ground, he walked around our pasture. At one spot, the fork seemed to twist in his hand and aim downward.

He passed the peach branch to each member of the family in turn and we all got the same result. The fork seemed to have a mind of its own; the pull was unmistakable. We drilled and got water at 30 feet.

Years passed before I discovered that water dowsing was considered superstitious nonsense by most people. I was even more surprised to learn that those who believed in it thought that dowsing was a special and mysterious gift limited to a few.

The truth is, the stick will perform for practically everybody, skeptic and non-skeptic alike. Often I’ve placed a dowsing fork in a scoffer’s hands and watched the amazement spread across his face as the branches twisted in his hands.

Like aspirin, dowsing works whether you believe in it or not...

After years of searching, I have been unable to run up any reference that would show the Hispanic settlers of colonial New Mexico had knowledge of dowsing. Most of their domestic water was dipped from streams or irrigation ditches. Occasionally, they had dug wells in valleys where the water table was shallow.

In 1880 when the railroad reached Albuquerque, Anglos, who founded New Town, two miles east of the old plaza, dug wells in their backyards. They had no need for dowsing either, because water could be found just two or three feet below the surface.

In a shallow hole, they inserted a wooden barrel with the bottom knocked out to serve as casing. Water seeped in and provided a plentiful source for an entire family.

I suspect that dowsing was introduced in New Mexico by Anglo emigrants from the East who took up farms on the plains and in the Pecos and Rio Grande valleys during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the practice was not widespread,, and today there are many residents who have never heard of it.

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Trail Dust: History of rooster pulls traces to Spain

by Marc Simmons


New Mexico has long proved attractive to visitors because of the many old Hispanic and Indian customs surviving here. Ancient practices and folkways lend an exotic air to the Southwest and impart a sense of timelessness. They are reminders that history lies at our back door.

One strange custom, now rare today, is the corrida de gallo, or “rooster pull.” Formerly this “sport” was found in all of New Mexico’s villages and larger towns. It was one of the few aspects of native life which Americans found thoroughly disagreeable.

A traveler from the East gave a graphic description in the early 1840s. “A common rooster or hen,” he tells us, “was tied by the feet to some swinging limb of a tree, so as to be barely within reach of a man on horseback. Or the fowl was buried alive in a small pit, leaving only the head above the surface.

“In either case, horsemen racing at full speed grabbed the head of the bird, which, being well greased, generally slipped out of their fingers. As soon as someone succeeded in tearing it loose from the tree or from the pit, he spurred his horse and tried to escape with the prize. He was chased by the whole sporting crew. The first who overtook him tried to seize the fowl, a fight ensured, during which the poor chicken was torn into atoms.”

Our writer goes on to explain that should any of the horsemen escape with the whole bird, he takes it at once to his lady and presents it to her. And she carries the feathered creature that same night to the village dance where she displays it as proof that her man is the best lover in the neighborhood.

As far back as the Middle Ages, the corrida de gallo was popular throughout Spain. There, the rooster was often suspended by its feet from a rope stretched across a narrow street. The riders dashed by, rising in their stirrups in an effort to wring off the bird’s head. That was made harder because men tugged at either end of the rope so that the target bobbed wildly in the air.

The chicken, an Old World bird, was brought from Spain to Mexico, and eventually to the upper Rio Grande Valley. With it came the corrida de gallo. Soon the Pueblo Indians adopted the rooster pull. And, as a matter of fact, they are the only ones who still occasionally have done it in recent times, the custom having died out in Hispanic communities during the 1940s.

The entire affair can be fairly dangerous, especially when the rooster is buried and the rider must lean from the saddle at top speed and make his wild grab. In a number of places, the corrida de gallo was abandoned after someone was killed.

That happened at the village of Manzano, east of Albuquerque, in 1898. A teenager, Antonio Sanchez, fell from his horse and died. I saw a serious accident during a pull at Cochiti Pueblo in the 1950s. There, a young man caught a hoof in the face as he tumbled from the saddle.

In most cases, the rooster pull was conducted on the feast day of San Juan, that is, St. John the Baptist. An American official in Santa Fe in the 1850s, for example, wrote: “On the afternoon of St. John’s Day the plaza is thronged with Caballeros riding to and fro and testing the stretching qualities of the chickens’ necks.”

In part, the rooster pull was regarded as a manly art, “a macho thing,” in which youths showed off their riding skill in front of the ladies. But it also had a deeper, almost unconscious, religious meaning dating back to the pre-Christian pagan rites of Europe.

In ancient Spanish symbolism, drops of blood were closely identified with drops of water. The Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains was where water rose and flowed into the valleys. The shedding of blood, as in the rooster pull, helped bring rain because the spattering of red drops was powerful magic.

Nor is it coincidence that the corrida de gallo was scheduled for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Remember, he is closely identified with water, since he baptized Christ and is regarded as patron of pure water. Also, like the rooster, he lost his head which must have been accompanied by a spattering of blood.

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Trail Dust: Wrangler turned author once fled New Mexico

by Marc Simmons


Southern New Mexico’s cowboy novelist Eugene Manlove Rhodes surely rates as one of the most eccentric authors ever to inhabit the state. Seems everyone who knew him had a story or two about his quirky behavior.

Even now, I occasionally run into someone in Santa Fe who remembers Gene when he lived and wrote briefly in Tesuque, just north of town, during the 1930s. Inevitably, they’ll tell me of some odd thing he said or did.

Gene grew up working as a horse wrangler on ranches in the Tularosa Basin and along the Jornada del Muerto. His father briefly served as agent for the Mescalero Apaches.

The country was still part of the Wild West, and the young Rhodes did his part in making it wooly. He was constantly in fistfights and shootouts. Late in life, he would say that in his youth, he had witnessed 13 men killed.

The curious thing about this feisty horse wrangler was that he loved to read. When not working, he always had a book in his hand. Most often it was a paper-bound classic ordered through the mail and paid for with coupons that came in those days with each sack of Bull Durham tobacco.

When traveling, Rhodes usually carried a gunny sack full of books tied to his saddle. Once he rode 25 miles in a snowstorm reading Shakespeare and scarcely noticing the cold. He would sit for hours in an old tin bathtub, with his nose buried in a book...

Gene owned a hardscrabble outfit in the San Andres Mountains, near the edge of the White Sands. He had an ongoing feud with large rancher Watson Ritch, son of a former territorial governor. Rhodes claimed that in time, he had eaten 181 of Rich’s cattle.

On several occasions, Rhodes tried to force Rich into a gunfight, but failed. Years after Gene had left New Mexico, he learned that Watson Ritch intervened to bail his widowed mother (the elder Mrs. Rhodes) out of a financial scrape. Gene wrote his old foe a letter of apology and declared, “The hatchet is buried!’

“The Four Rannyhands:” Harry Carey, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Fred Stone, and Charles M. Russell eating grub at Carey’s ranch, 1923

In 1906, Gene fled New Mexico under mysterious circumstances and went to live for the next quarter-century in his wife’s home town of Apalachin, N.Y. Several different stories suggest the reason for his hasty departure.

One is that his habit of rustling stock finally caught up with him, and he left the territory just a step ahead of the sheriff. Another tale has it that he bent his gun barrel over the head of a local tough named Kentucky Hargis, and that incident prompted him to leave.

The most widely accepted theory holds that his flight was prompted by a fight at Oro Grande, a mining town on the road between Alamogordo and El Paso.

There, Rhodes got into a fight with a large man in a crap game. They adjourned out back to finish their argument and, being outsized, the smaller horse wrangler evened the odds by breaking several beer bottles over his opponent’s head. Thinking he had killed the fellow, so the story goes, Gene headed east before he could be arrested.

During his long exile in New York, he wrote and published eight novels and 30 short stories. He always said that he dreamed night and day of his old life in New Mexico, and that his writings about the glorious West provided him a measure of comfort...

Gene Rhodes died in 1934 and is buried inside the boundaries of the White Sands Missile Range. One of his books, Pasó Por Aquí, is regarded as a classic of New Mexican literature.

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Trail Dust: Old New Mexico Spanish words fading away

by Marc Simmons


I’ve long considered the variant of the Spanish language spoken in New Mexico to be one of our country’s great cultural treasures. The local speech is rich in pronunciations and vocabulary that are unique, having evolved in place over more than 400 years.

I find especially fascinating those regional words whose meanings are closely connected to our history. Collecting and studying such New Mexicanisms gives us small glimpses into a way of life now largely gone.

Take the old word coi, borrowed from the Tewa language north of Santa Fe. In the 18th century, it was part of everyday speech here. Coi was the name Spanish-speakers used for the first story, or floor, of multilevel Indian pueblos.

In the early days, remember, the first floor had no windows or doors. Outside ladders gave access to the roof and to the stair-stepped stories above. This arrangement allowed for the drawing up of ladders in case of attack, whereupon the pueblo became an effective fort.

The coi could be entered only through a trap door in the roof, as kivas are today. Its dark chamber was not suitable for daily living, so it served the residents as a storage area, particularly as a granary.

By 1870 or so, the pueblos were no longer subject to attack, so doors and windows were opened in their first floors, and the interior space converted to apartments, like those above. The word coi dropped from use and within a generation was forgotten.

Another term, having a somewhat similar history, was genízaro, referring to Indians, captured or ransomed, who were assimilated into New Mexican society. The royal government allowed them to establish their own communities on the frontier. Belen, Abiquiú and San Miguel began as genízaro towns.

Hispanos looked down upon them as being crude and rustic bumpkins. A mother might admonish her naughty child: “Hijito. No seas genízaro,” (that is, “Son. Don’t act like a genízaro.”) The meaning of that archaic expression would not be understood at present.

One of the most New Mexican of all words is cíbola, preserved as a place name in Cíbola National Forest and Cíbola County. Coronado in 1540 knew the cluster of Zuni pueblos as the Province of Cíbola. Strangely, cíbola (or cíbolo) also became the regional term for buffalo.

The Spanish language did not have a word for that New World animal, so when it was encountered on the northern frontier, pioneer folk called it simply a “vaca de Cíbola,” or a Cíbola Province cow. By the 17th century, cíbola alone had come to mean buffalo, and buffalo hunters were known as ciboleros.

The reddish-brown American elk also presented a problem. Spanish lacked a name for this creature, too. So here in New Mexico, it was called an alazán venado, signifying a “sorrel deer.”

Elk were considered so exotic that the king ordered New Mexicans in the 1780s to capture several and ship them to Spain. They finally arrived and were placed on display at the Retiro Park in downtown Madrid.

Punche is a New Mexicanism still used today. It is a native tobacco long grown in the Rio Grande Valley. Colonial settlers produced large quantities for the Indian trade. Corn husk cigarettes made with punche were pretty strong, but the plant also had value as a folk medicine, which is why a few old-timers continue to raise a bit of it, and the word survives.

In standard Spanish, the term for dusty or dust cloud is polvareda. But in New Mexico it became “corrupted,” as language scholars say, when the local people transposed the two final consonants to produce polvadera. (Actually, the new word sounds better to the ear.)

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New Mexico’s limited water sparked ‘Tularosa Ditch War’

by Marc Simmons


Water has always been New Mexico’s most precious commodity. Through history, Indians, Spaniards and Anglos have struggled for possession of the land’s limited water resources. Some were even willing to kill for it.

That was the case in the 1870s and ’80s at the town of Tularosa, situated on the eastern edge of White Sands. The site took its name from the tules (reeds or cattails) growing in marshes about a mile from where the little Tularosa River left its canyon and disappeared in the sands.

As early as 1858, some New Mexicans from the Rio Grande settled here and put in their crops. But before harvest, they were chased out by Mescalero Apaches.

Then, in the early 1860s, a new band of Hispanic pioneers arrived. They were from the Mesilla Valley and El Paso, where a Rio Grande flood had washed away their homes and fields. Wanting a new start and willing to work for it, they founded the community of Tularosa. Other settlers from Socorro soon established the neighboring village of La Luz.

The people built adobe homes, dug irrigation ditches to tap the river and organized a municipal government with an alcalde, or mayor. They also had occasional run-ins with the Mescaleros.

But life was generally serene, and the desert blossomed with orchards and a huge vineyard. Travelers considered Tularosa an oasis.

Trouble loomed on the horizon, however. Anglos began moving into the area, and with them was born competition for scarce water.

Among the first to enter was Joseph Blazer, who had started life as an Iowa dentist and went on to service in the Union Army. In 1866, he acquired an old sawmill up Tularosa Canyon and diverted some of the river water to power the wheel. He was careful, though, to turn it back into the main channel after use so that people below would not be shorted.

Other newcomers were not so charitable. Several farmers occupied lands above Tularosa and placed small irrigation dams across the river, in total disregard of the rights of downstream users.

The leader of the interlopers was Andrew J. Wilson. When Tularosa citizens came up one night and destroyed the offending dams, Wilson assembled work parties and put them right back.

That was too much for the plucky Tularosans, and they launched an attack upon the farmers. Wilson sent an urgent plea for help to nearby Fort Stanton. Lt. John Wilkinson and five men of the 8th Cavalry responded.

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