While Spain lost its empire and New Mexico and the Southwest sank into
poverty and decay, yet another force was on the march, a force that
welled up in an Anglo-American people clinging to the Atlantic Coast of
North America. As these people developed a nation, they also discovered
a sense of destiny which turned their faces to the west and their
footsteps toward the sunset. With them moved their culture. At first, it
was a trickle, a few traders bent on profit, crossing the plains on the
Santa Fe Trail. Then the trickle became a flood. For New Mexico, these
men came as saviors. The Missouri traders broke the Chihuahua monopoly
and goods from all parts of the world began to flow into New Mexico,
resulting in higher standards of living. These Yankee traders, sensing a
good thing, also penetrated the markets of Mexico, using New Mexico’s
Royal Road to gain entrance.
Again there was conflict, not Spanish and Indian, but Latin and
Anglo-American. Mexico owned the lands of the Southwest and intended to
keep them. But this American, with his gaze glued on western skies,
refused to turn aside, and he strode on, grinding the feeble efforts of
Mexican resistance into the desert sands. The Mexican War in 1846,
suddenly transferred ownership of Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada,
Arizona, and California from Mexico to the United States. This was
nearly half the territory of Mexico. New Mexico, with her already
complex cultural pattern, was subjected to still another influence.
The history of the American occupation of the Southwest is as complex
and diverse as its predecessors. Its ingredients include cattle, mining,
railroads, agriculture, science, and the Indian. All these, and others,
combined to give an Anglo-American slant to the Southwest. The Indian
culture did not disappear, nor did the Spanish, but rather a new stratum
was cast that was to complete the mosaic.
When the American arrived in New Mexico, he found a poor, backward area,
hungry for trade and outside contacts. He found the Indians of the
Southwest in open rebellion against the white men. The Navajo and other
Apache groups, the Comanche, and some of the Pueblos were the primary
offenders. This was to be the main problem occupying the time and energy
of the American settler and soldier for forty years after 1846. Until
the Indian situation was stabilized, there would be little economic and
social development.
The method evolved for containing the vicious raids against friendly
Indian, Spanish, and American communities was a series of forts placed
at strategic passes or trails surrounding the traditional lands of the
Apache. The Indian strongholds were located primarily in the mountainous
regions of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The line of
forts stretched along the Rio Grande south of Socorro to the vicinity of
Las Cruces, and west along the southern edge of the mountain escarpment
into Arizona. Then the defense complex ran north across the desert to an
irregular line running east from Flagstaff through Gallup and back to
the Rio Grande. These forts were well garrisoned and provisioned and
began to carry the fight to the Indian. Early success was halted by the
conflict generated by the American Civil War.
The center of the Civil War in the west was in New Mexico. There was
conflict, argument, and some small degree of fighting in other western
states and territories as settlers from the north or south struggled to
carry this territory or that state into the Union or the Confederacy.
These were, however, local matters and as much political as military. In
New Mexico, there was a war and there were battles, battles which
deserve to be a part of the general Civil War story but that are usually
forgotten in the smoke and roar of eastern cannon.
Two major battles were fought in New Mexico, the first a Confederate
victory, the second a Union victory which saved New Mexico, and the
west, for the Union. The aim of the Confederate forces was to capture,
intact if possible, the forts in New Mexico and Arizona with their great
store of military provisions, provisions badly needed by the Confederate
army. Also, there was a feeling among southern leaders that success in
New Mexico might also lead to success in California, badly split on the
question of secession, and in Colorado, rich in silver and gold. An army
recruited in Texas and commanded by General Henry Sibley was sent to
accomplish Confederate aims.
This army entered New Mexico along the traditional route, moving up the
Rio Grande from El Paso. It quickly subdued the forts and Union troops
in southern New Mexico and continued up-river. On February 21, 1862, it
met a Union army commanded by Colonel E. R. S. Canby at Valverde, a
small community about twenty miles south of Socorro, New Mexico. Kit
Carson, New Mexico’s famous trapper and scout, commanded the New Mexico
Volunteers, a part of the Union force. Canby’s troops were beaten and
dispersed at the Battle of Val Verde, leaving the upper Rio Grande
Valley virtually without defense. Within a few weeks, the Texans had
taken Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But one stronghold in New Mexico
remained in the hands of the Union forces. Fort Union, northeast of Las
Vegas, New Mexico, became the focal point of action by both north and
south. Sibley, marching from Santa Fe, knew success depended on the fall
of Fort Union. The Union forces, equally aware of the importance of the
fort, hurriedly reinforced it with a number of volunteers from Colorado.
Within Fort Union, a crisis developed over differing opinions on
strategy. The fort commander wanted to keep the garrison at full
strength and fight the Confederates from within the fort. The Colorado
Volunteers wanted to go out and meet the enemy. The latter won and a
Union force moved into the passes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to
meet the Confederates in a fateful battle that would decide control of
the west. It was fought at Glorieta Pass on March 28, 1862. Despite the
fact that the two armies met on this field, the contest was not decided
there. Early on the morning of March 28, a force of 400 Colorado
Volunteers, commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington, began a flanking
action in hopes of hitting the Confederate rear. This group moved out of
the Pass into the mountains, and by a very difficult route moved back
toward the Pass behind the Confederate force. On a ridge overlooking
Apache Canyon, they saw below them the entire Confederate supply train
and cavalry horse herd. In a lightning hit-and-run attack, the supply
train and horses were destroyed. When word of this reached Sibley at
Glorieta Pass, there was little for him to do but to retire from the
field. The Confederate force never recovered from this disaster and
gradually retreated to Santa Fe, then back down the Rio Grande into
Texas.
With the end of the Civil War, New Mexico and the Southwest returned,
not to peace, but to war, war against the Apache. It took twenty years
for the American with all his modern weapons and tactics to bring the
Apache under control. For the Apache, it ended on September 3, 1886,
when Geronimo and his few ragged followers surrendered to General Miles
in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. Under the weight of steel and increasing
numbers of white men, the Apache was doomed. Though civilization would
swallow the Apache, as it has always succeeded against the barbarian,
the Apache made a spectacular defense of his lands and his way of life
against both Spaniard and American. He made himself master of the
desert, and only the gods of science succeeded in overcoming him and his
desert gods.