day following the enemy appeared in the suburb of Analco, in the vicinity
of the present chapel of San Miguel, which had been erected for the
Tlascalan or Mexican members of the colony. A parley was held with a
deputation of the Indians, who bore a white cross of peace and a red cross
of war: of these they gave the Spaniards their choice, but on condition
that if the former were selected their country must be immediately
evacuated. Every effort was made by the Spaniards to bring about peace, but
the Indians, encouraged by the success of their bloody enterprise, were
determined to drive the Spaniards forever from the home of their fathers.
Failing in his efforts at conciliation, Governor Otermin endeavored to
dislodge the natives from the outskirts; but already the warriors had
arrived by hundreds, and the first desperate effort of the Spaniards to
drive off the natives resulted in their own retirement to the great adobe
Palace where the surviving women and children had already taken refuge.
The siege continued until the 19th. The Indians grew bolder with the
continued arrival of warriors until three thousand were massed in the
outskirts of the town. The city was beleaguered; the chapel of San Miguel
had been destroyed, and the water-supply of the town cut off; consequently
the trembling thousand within the Palace walls under the protection of only
a hundred armed men were in desperate straits. The 19th passed. Otermin and
his imprisoned colonists spent the night in planning the escape which
seemed almost impossible. On the following day the brave hundred made a
sortie which met with such success that three hundred of the enemy were
slain, and nearly fifty captured and afterward hanged in the plaza, while
the main body was driven in confusion to the heights. The Indians became
demoralized by this first blow, thus affording the Spaniards the
opportunity, on August 21st, of gathering their belongings, and starting on
their march of six weeks down the river, under a midsummer's sun and
through a ravaged country, to the mission of Guadalupe near the present El
Paso, Texas.
The Pueblos were at last in possession of Santa Fé and of the dearly bought
independence which they had so long been craving. Everything Spanish was
laid aside under strict taboo--the language of the white man was to be
forgotten and his religion forever buried; his houses of worship and the
civil and ecclesiastical archives were to be fed to the flames, and their
own rites revived in the ceremonial chambers which the Spaniards had caused
to be abandoned; even the clothing and the crops of the foreigners were to
be discarded, and only indigenous products consumed as of old, while
soap-weed and the rivulet which flows through Santa Fé provided the means
for effacing their baptism into Christianity. The Palace (which then
occupied the entire block north of the plaza) seems to have been at least
partially spared and was occupied by the Tanos of Galisteo, who built a
kiva or ceremonial chamber in its courtyard.
More than one attempt was made to reconquer the province and to
re-establish the seat of government during the next few years, but nothing
of marked importance was accomplished until after Diego de Vargas Zapata
Lujan Ponce de Leon became Governor in 1691. Accompanied by some sixty
soldiers, one hundred Indians, and three friars, Vargas started up the Rio
Grande from El Paso August 21, 1692, and on September 13th appeared before
Santa Fé with part of his force. The fortified Tanos at first showed
hostility, but moral suasion soon resulted in effecting their surrender and
even in inducing the apostates to renew allegiance and to submit to
baptism. Vargas then withdrew for the purpose of extending the conquest
over other parts, and it was not until October, 1693, that he was enabled
to gather his force of a hundred soldiers, and to renew the journey from
El Paso with the seventy families and seventeen friars (about eight hundred
souls) who were to form the new colony. On December 16th the little army
entered Santa Fé under the very banner borne by Oñate nearly a century
before. Although the Tanos were now found to be friendly in the main, they
manifested little enthusiasm in providing the Spaniards with food, or in
rendering aid in the restoration of San Miguel Chapel, offering, however,
their pagan kiva for the white man's worship.
It was midwinter, and, the altitude being over seven thousand feet, many
children perished. As the Indians were occupying the official quarters and
such of the dwellings as had not been razed, they were ordered back to
Galisteo, but refused to go. Their stronghold was attacked; re-enforcements
from the kindred Tewas arrived, but the combined force was overpowered,
seventy prisoners were made an example of, and four hundred women and
children were distributed among the colonists. Hostilities continued with
the outlying tribes until September, 1694, but before the year closed the
missionaries were enabled to resume their fields of labor.
The winter of 1695-96 was one of discontent by reason of a failure of the
crops during the previous season. This probably in large measure was the
cause of another revolt in the following June, when twenty-six Spaniards,
including five friars, were murdered; and not until the new century dawned
were the last embers of the rebellion smothered. Vargas's term as Governor
expired in 1696; but he remained in Santa Fé, where serious charges were
preferred against him by his successor, Cubero, which resulted in his
imprisonment until 1700. In 1703 he was reappointed Governor, but died
April 8, 1704, and was buried in the Parroquia, which meanwhile had been
restored to its former condition. San Miguel Chapel remained in ruins until
1708, when its restoration was commenced by Governor José Chacon Medina
Salazar y Villaseñor, Marqués de Peñuela. The edifice was completed in
1710, as the following inscription on a gallery beam still testifies:
EL SEÑOR MARQUÉS DE LA PEÑUELA HIZO ESTA FÁBRICA: EL ALFÉREZ
REAL DON AGUSTIN FLORES VERGARA SU CRIADO. AÑO DE 1710.
The eighteenth century was marked by expeditions from Santa Fé in various
directions (including one in the year of American Independence that
resulted in the discovery of Utah Lake), which added materially to
geographic knowledge of the period; by an extension of missionary work
among some tribes and the chastisement of others who had been conducting
their raids uncomfortably close to the capital with its little garrison of
eighty soldiers; and by controversies between the authorities of Church and
State which did not tend to promote the peace of mind of either side or of
the colonists.
[Illustration SAN MIGUEL CHAPEL IN 1899. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY A.C. VROMAN,
PASADENA, CAL.]
In 1767 a freshet so seriously threatened the town that the citizens were
called to divert the course of the stream and thus saved the settlement. As
in the case of a previous proposal to move the capital to Sia, it was
planned in 1780 to transfer the seat of government to Santo Domingo, but
Governor Ugarte decided against the project and expended two thousand pesos
in improving the plan of the town and in establishing a presidio therein.
Before the middle of the century French-Canadian traders had found their
way to the Rio Grande, and sporadic bartering with the plains Indians
gradually developed into the important industry later known as the
"commerce of the prairies." A brisk trade also sprang up between New Mexico
and Chihuahua, which in 1780 aggregated $30,000 in value. Santa Fé,
therefore, at an early period became the seat of an inland commerce, mainly
in sheep, wool, wine, and pelts. In 1804 William Morrison of Kaskaskia
dispatched to New Mexico a consignment of goods, which were confiscated;
various attempts to introduce merchandise from the United States during the
next few years shared a like fate, the participants usually being
imprisoned. This action on the part of the New Mexican officials was later
probably more or less due to the ill-feeling engendered by the exploit of
Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, who in January, 1807, while conducting an
exploration under military orders, erected a stockade fort in Spanish
territory. He and his command were arrested, conducted to Santa Fé, and
later taken to Chihuahua as prisoners.
[Illustration CHRISTOPHER ("KIT") CARSON.]
But all efforts to prevent the inroads of traders from the United States
were in vain; even the almost prohibitory duty, for a time, of $500 per
load of merchandise, regardless of its value, was overcome, and the
overland trade conducted by way of the great Santa Fé trail, first by
pack-animals from Franklin, and later by wagon from Independence, Missouri,
increased from $15,000 in 1822 to $750,000 in 1844. The names of McKnight,
Pursley, Choteau, Beard, Lalande, Chambers, Cooper, the Bents, Joel Walker,
Sublette, Kit Carson, and many other hardy pioneers will long be remembered
in the early history of the old Santa Fé trail.
Santa Fé had so long been the hotbed of revolt that its inhabitants must
have been lonely for several years without one to engage their attention.
The rebellion of 1837 was due to political intrigue for which a former
Governor, Manuel Armijo, was held to be largely responsible. The Pueblo
Indians participated as usual, and the Governor, Albino Perez, as well as
the chief justice and nearly a dozen others, were wantonly murdered. Santa
Fé once more fell into the hands of the enemy, who elected José Gonzalez, a
Taos Indian, as Governor. Armijo now deserted the rebel cause, and, raising
a sufficient force to overcome the Gonzalez faction, declared himself the
administrative head. The revolt was quelled in January, 1838, Gonzalez and
several of his adherents paying the death penalty, while Armijo's "loyalty"
was rewarded by a confirmation of his self imposed governorship, which he
retained for eight years.
Meanwhile the Texas troubles had been brewing, and discontent prevailed in
that quarter over boundary disputes, and because the large Santa Fé trade
came and went by the northern route. In 1841, President Lamar equipped a
force, known as the Texan Santa Fé Expedition, consisting of three hundred
rangers under General McLeod, for the main purpose of taking New Mexican
affairs into their own hands; but before reaching the capital the entire
"army" was captured by Armijo's militia, their belongings confiscated, and
the command marched to Mexico, where they were released in June, 1842.
The Mexican War and American occupancy followed closely on these exciting
episodes. Save during the brief periods of the arrival and departure of the
caravans at Santa Fé, with the resultant hubbub and flow of gold, the
capital was more dead than alive. The people, for the greater part, were
densely ignorant; in 1832 there were only half a dozen schools in the whole
territory, and although the salaries of the Santa Fé teachers aggregated
only $500 in that year, even this sum, from lack of funds, was unavailable
in 1834 and the schools were closed. By 1844 the only schools were "of the
lowest primary class," and a keen observer asserted that three fourths of
the people were illiterates. Santa Fé was without a newspaper, although a
sheet called _El Crepúsculo_ ("The Dawn") was printed at Taos for four
weeks in 1835 on the only press then in the territory of seventy thousand
inhabitants. Possibly the press later found its way to Santa Fé to become
the principal part of the equipment of a "government printing office" which
existed in one end of the Palace in 1846, and from which Kearny published
his "Code," the first Spanish-English production of the territory.
In its appearance Santa Fé had changed but little since 1807, when Pike
described its aggregation of low adobe houses as resembling from a distance
a fleet of flat-bottomed Ohio river-boats. The Palace occupied then, as it
did early in the seventeenth century and does to-day, the northern side of
the plaza. Besides being the only building in New Mexico that could boast
the luxury of glass windows, it contained the governmental offices as of
yore, as well as quarters for the guard and the government printing office.
In Pike's time the opposite side of the plaza was occupied by the houses of
the clergy and the public officers, in addition to the military chapel, but
with the advent of trade these gave way, before 1846, to the shops of
merchants and traders.
[Illustration THE OLD PALACE AT SANTA FÉ.]
General Stephen W. Kearny left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in June, 1846,
with his "Army of the West," comprising about eighteen hundred men (mostly
volunteers), equipped with a supply train of a thousand mules, and
overtaking _en route_ the Santa Fé caravan of four hundred wagons. A small
force was sent forward to open the way, and although it was favorably
received, Kearny later learned that his advance toward the capital would be
contested. Nevertheless, the army continued its march and entered the town
on August 18th without the slightest opposition on the part of Armijo, who
had fled precipitately. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over the Palace,
which Kearny made his headquarters, and the now seasoned volunteers
encamped on an eminence overlooking the town. On the following day the
inhabitants were assembled in the plaza, where the oath of allegiance was
administered to the former Mexican officials, including the acting
Governor, Juan B. Vigil. On the 22d Kearny issued his famous proclamation
declaring himself Governor and the inhabitants of New Mexico citizens of
the United States.
Meanwhile, Captain W.H. Emory selected, as the site for a fort, an eminence
on the northern edge of the town, and the construction of defensive works
was immediately begun. The fort, named in honor of William L. Marcy, then
Secretary of War, was built principally of adobe; the only approachable
point was guarded by a blockhouse of pine logs, and the magazine was
erected of the same material. The embankments of old Fort Marcy are still
plainly traceable, but there is nothing to mark the graves of the two
hundred brave Missouri volunteers who were laid to rest at the foot of the
slope during the cruel winter of 1846-47.
[Illustration SANTA FÉ IN 1846.]
Kearny took almost immediate steps to provide civil government for New
Mexico by appointing as Governor Charles Bent, who had for many years been
a prominent trader in the country. But as the months passed many of the New
Mexicans grew tired of their new allegiance, and conditions ripened for
another revolt. On January 19, 1847, Bent, with other officials, was foully
murdered at Fernandez de Taos by Mexicans and Taos Indians, but retribution
swift and terrible followed, and the battle-scarred and ruined church at
Taos pueblo practically repeated the story of the Alamo.
Although it remained under military control until 1850, New Mexico very
soon began to feel the effects of American influence. In 1847 a legislative
assembly was held at Santa Fé; the first English newspaper, _The Santa Fé
Republican_, was founded, and the New Mexicans had their first opportunity
of becoming familiar with the mysteries of a sawmill, which was placed in
operation on Santa Fé Creek. In August, 1848, the treaty of peace was
proclaimed from the Palace, and the ancient city formally changed masters
for the fifth time in its history. The volunteers were glad to return to
their homes, the Santa Fé trade resumed its busy march, and modern ways
made further impress on the manners of the old adobe town. In 1848 the
first English school was put in operation at the capital; later in the year
the _New Mexican_ was founded, and, save for a few intermissions, has ever
since been published; while the ecclesiastical importance of the town was
augmented by the establishment of the Roman Catholic vicariate-apostolic of
Santa Fé, with Bishop Lamy at its head. On March 3, 1851, after much
wrangling and many attempts, New Mexico was organized into a full-fledged
territory of the United States, James S. Calhoun becoming its first civil
governor, and on July 14th the first legislative assembly fixed Santa Fé as
the seat of the new government.
[Illustration THE TERRITORIAL CAPITOL, COMPLETED IN 1900.]
Next came the Civil War, the principal operations of which were not so far
away that Santa Fé failed to participate. The severe defeat of the Federals
under Canby by the Texans under Sibley, at Valverde, in February, 1862
(where Kit Carson's bravery made him a brigadier), opened the northern way
to the Confederates. Santa Fé was abandoned by the Union forces on March
3d, and Sibley took possession a week later. On the 22d Colonel Slough's
Federal force of thirteen hundred men marched from Fort Union toward the
town. On the 26th the vanguard of four hundred met the enemy in Apache
Cañon, and in the severe engagements which followed on that day and on the
28th, the Federals were victorious and the way was again opened to their
occupancy of Santa Fé on April 11th, the Confederates having evacuated
three days earlier. This practically closed the war in New Mexico, the
Texans returning to their homes minus half their number.
The recent years of Santa Fé's history have more than ever marked the
passage of the ancient town from the lethargy characteristic of the century
of its founding to the enterprise which one expects in an American
settlement of the present day. The contrast between the sleepy Mexican
village in the wilderness during the early years of American occupancy and
the progressive, substantial, picturesque town of nowadays is vast. The
great awakening came with the first screech of the locomotive on February
9, 1880, which forever hushed the rumble of the long caravan as it rolled
its weary way into the crooked streets of the City of the Holy Faith. New
Mexico's capital was enabled at last to make the acquaintance of the outer
world, although rival settlements, created by the new trail of steel,
robbed it more and more, as year after year passed, of the trade which had
helped to make it famous. Its genial climate and other advantages attracted
many from the East; schools and hospitals were established, and as the seat
of federal and territorial administration, as well as of military and
ecclesiastical importance, its social advantages became widely recognized.
Despite its modern buildings devoted to various uses, there are parts of
the town which have not changed greatly during the half-century of American
influence. The plaza, of tragic memory, has evolved from a barren common
to a bower of beauty ornamented with a monument dedicated to the heroes of
Indian and civil strife. The old Palace, in which the gallant Vargas was
dungeoned, and in which Lew Wallace wrote the last chapters of _Ben Hur_,
has been refurbished, but probably no walls within our domain hold in
hiding such a wealth of cruelty and horror, of treachery and suffering, of
valor and chivalry, as the great adobe structure which still overlooks the
historic plaza of our oldest western town.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SALT LAKE CITY
THE DESERT THAT HAS BLOSSOMED AS THE ROSE
BY JAMES EDWARD TALMAGE
Long before the first settlement, little more than fifty years ago, of the
valley of the Great Salt Lake, strange stories of the briny sea and its
desert setting had found their way to the civilized and cultured East; and,
mingled with the weird accounts of sun-baked plains, waterless wilderness,
and saline solitudes, were the predictions of the wise that the country
would never be worth settling. This region was included within the area
against which Daniel Webster hurled his anathema of denunciation from the
floor of the national Senate, proclaiming the utter worthlessness of the
great West, and declaring that he would "never vote one cent from the
public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston" than
it then was. And concerning the Salt Lake Valley itself, Colonel James
Bridger, for whom the disputed honor of discovering the Great Salt Lake has
been claimed, said that he would offer a thousand dollars in gold for the
first ear of corn that could be ripened therein.
The motive spirit actuating the early travellers in these then Mexican
wastes was that of exploration and discovery. Worthy as it was, it was
insufficient to induce the settlement of the wilderness or to inspire the
ambition of subduing the desert and sanctifying the waste places with the
name of home. The most potent of all incentives, that of religious
conviction and conscientious devotion to what was regarded as sacred duty,
was necessary--and not wanting.
It was on the 19th of July, 1847, that the vanguard of the pioneer party of
"Mormon" colonists sighted the valley of the Great Salt Lake. For long,
weary months they had journeyed; their start from the frontiers of
civilization had been hastened by the musket and the sword and the
devouring flame of persecution; their course over plain and mountain had
been attended by vicissitudes that only those who have toiled through such
journeys can comprehend.
[Illustration PAVILION OF SALTAIR, GREAT SALT LAKE.]
And what emotions did that first view of the "Promised Land" inspire! A
valley, beautiful it is true, even as the desert is beautiful in its
parching splendor; as the mountains are beautiful in their terrible
grandeur; as the ocean is beautiful in its calm monotony or in its
storm-lashed fury; but such beauty is not suggestive of rest or peace, and
it was peace the wanderers sought. From the cañons of the Wasatch, though
not the first to traverse the region, yet the first to brave its desolate
and forbidding seclusion in search of a home, they looked down on a valley
walled by the Wasatch and the Oquirrhs, bare of tree or shrub, except for
patches of chaparral oak, and here and there a gnarled willow or
cottonwood bravely struggling for existence on the upper parts of the few
stream courses that opened from the mountain wall on the east; the only
blossoms those of the stunted sunflower and its desert companions, the
foliage that of the gray artemisia, or wild sage.
On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young, the founder of Salt Lake City and
the pioneer colonizer of Utah, descended from the mountain gateway,
followed by the main division of the company, numbering a hundred and forty
and four souls, of whom three were women. One of this trio of heroines was
overcome by the treeless and desolate aspect of the valley. "Weak and weary
as I am," she said, "I would rather go a thousand miles farther than stop
in this forsaken place." Three days earlier an advance detachment,
including Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, each of whom came to be known as a
prominent apostle of the "Mormon" Church, had entered the valley; but July
24th is regarded as the first day of occupation, and each recurrence of the
date is observed as Pioneer Day, a holiday by law established in the State
of Utah.
[Illustration BRIGHAM YOUNG. FOUNDER OF SALT LAKE CITY.]
The pioneers' purpose was not uncertain; having reached their destination
they paused not to make experiments or preliminary tests. "This is the
place," said their leader, "the very place"; and the company began at once
the work of permanently establishing themselves and of preparing for the
reception of other immigrant parties then on the march. Ploughs were
promptly brought into action, and the soil theretofore unused to the
husbandman's touch was in part torn and turned; yet so hard and resistant
was it that it measured its strength with the energy of man and for the
time held the victory. But the colonists were full of resource. The little
stream now known as City Creek, the chief source of the city's water
supply, was diverted from its course and made to flood the land chosen for
the first desert garden. With its long thirst appeased, its stony heart
softened, the virgin soil yielded and received the first seed sown by human
agency in the Great American Desert. Thus began the system of irrigation
which in its later developments has proved itself the magic wand under
whose sway the desert has been conquered and the wilderness transformed
into a garden of beauty.
[Illustration EAST TEMPLE STREET, LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE TEMPLE.]