Manifest Destinies, Second Edition

by Laura E. Gómez

  28 Ibid., 203.

  29 My review of records for all ninety-three criminal trials in the county over a seven-year period showed that one-third of defendants were tried by all-Mexican petit juries and another one-third by majority-Mexican petit juries. The records were not sufficient to draw conclusions about the remaining trials, but it is highly likely that they similarly involved all-Mexican or majority-Mexican petit juries. Gómez, “Race, Colonialism, and Criminal Law,” 1165–66.

  30 Ibid., 1168–71.

  31 Within this category I include the territorial legislatures (which went into effect in 1851, after Congress established New Mexico as a federal territory), representative constitutional conventions around the statehood issue (three conventions to draft a state constitution for New Mexico were held prior to New Mexico becoming a federal territory [in 1848, 1849, and 1850], and many were held throughout the territorial period), and “unofficial” legislatures that met before Congress formally organized the New Mexico Territory.

  32 These estimates are based on my calculations, utilizing primary sources such as the New Mexico Blue Book and a range of secondary sources.

  33 Ramirez, “Hispanic Political Elite,” 439. Ramirez’s estimate included perhaps a dozen men who were half Euro-American and half Mexican American, whom he put in the Euro-American or Mexican American category depending on their surname. Ibid., 440.

  34 Ibid., 373, 401–2.

  35 See Perea, “Demography and Distrust,” 316–23.

  36 For examples of scholarship that tends to treat Mexican American political elites as pawns of Euro-American elites living in New Mexico, see Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy; Lamar, Far Southwest; Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood; Twitchell, Leading Facts of New Mexican History.

  37 See, generally, Ramirez, “Hispanic Political Elite.”

  38 Although Congress nullified acts of the New Mexico territorial legislature only a few times, it is very likely that the threat of congressional nullification influenced the majority-Mexican legislatures’ actions many times. Ramirez, “Hispanic Political Elite,” 435.

  39 Ibid.

  40 Holzka, “Taos Honors ‘Champion of Common People’”; Baca, “Taos Priest.”

  41 Martínez and other Mexican priests were targeted by Euro-American Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy. When he arrived in New Mexico in 1852, Lamy initiated an overt campaign to replace Mexican priests with priests born in France, Italy, and Spain. Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 337–39. I rely on Twitchell’s account with some hesitation, noting that he had an undisguised anti-Martínez, pro-Lamy bias (he describes Lamy’s suspension of Martínez thusly: “No alternative was left to Bishop [sic] Lamy, after all sorts of fatherly advice and admonitions had been unheeded, but to suspend Father Martínez from the exercise of every priestly function”; and he describes Martínez as “very crafty” and motivated to oppose the U.S. occupation because it “was a death blow to his power and prestige”). On the roots of anti-Catholic sentiment as it affected the U.S. conquest of New Mexico, see Durán, “‘We Come as Friends,’” 30–35.

  42 A testament to its lasting popularity, Cather’s novel was selected by Time magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels written between 1923 and 2005. www.time.com, accessed January 30, 2007.

  43 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 105–6; Lamar, Far Southwest, 34–36.

  44 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,”109; see also Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 311 n.3.

  45 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 109–12 (noting also that Martínez had conflicts with Charles Bent, the American governor assassinated in the 1847 rebellion).

  46 Ibid.

  47 Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 337–38n264.

  48 Martínez also owned the only printing press in the region during the Mexican period (and through the first few decades of the American period), which he used to publish textbooks for his pupils, a short-lived newspaper, and the many treatises he wrote. Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 337–38n264.

  49 “Indians of the United States,” Hearings of the Committee on Indian Affairs, 599–602.

  50 For a defense of Martínez, see Martínez, “Betrayal or Benevolence.”

  51 Weber, On the Edge of Empire, 78.

  52 For competing perspectives on Indian rights in Mexico, compare Hall and Weber, “Mexican Liberals,” 8, 19; and Rosen, “Pueblo Indians and Citizenship,” 21n1.

  53 Article VII, Proposed New Mexico State Constitution of 1850.

  54 Ibid.

  55 Senate Bill 225, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., May 8, 1850 (“A Bill to Admit California as a State into the Union; to Establish Territorial Governments for Utah and New Mexico, etc.”).

  56 United States v. Lucero, 1 N.M. 422, 456 (1869).

  57 Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 650–51. Like Father Martínez, Gallegos was among the fiercely nationalist Mexican priests ousted by Archbishop Lamy.

  58 Laguna Pueblo and Taos Pueblo men voted in the election. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 650n23.

  59 Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 309; Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 61 (citing the congressional report). Gallegos’s election travails were not at an end, however. When he was up for reelection in 1855, he faced Miguel Antonio Otero; rather than support their fellow priest, newly appointed French and Italian priests backed Otero to signal their support for Lamy. Gallegos won the election by ninety-nine votes, but Otero appealed, this time alleging that fourteen hundred Mexicans who had retained their Mexican citizenship (rather than become U.S. citizens) had voted illegally. Congress sided with Otero, and he was seated as delegate. See Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 650–51.

  60 25 U.S.C. § 180 (1983).

  61 See United States v. Lucero, 1 N.M. 422, 425 (1869) (quoting the full text of the unpublished trial court opinion, United States v. Ortiz [1867]).

  62 Three of seven lawyers for the defendants (who sought Indian lands as squatters or purchasers) were former New Mexico Supreme Court justices. Rosen, “Pueblo Indians and Citizenship,” 25n31.

  63 Lamar, Far Southwest, 131.

  64 Gómez, “Race, Colonialism, and Criminal Law,” 1147n39.

  65 Slough’s ruling was issued in 1867; by the time Watt’s opinion was published in 1869, Slough had been killed and replaced by Watts as chief justice. Poldervaart, Black-Robed Justice, 72. On the duel with a legislator that resulted in Slough’s death, see ibid.

  66 United States v. Lucero, 1 N.M. 422, 454–57 (1869).

  67 See, generally, Rosen, “Pueblo Indians and Citizenship.”

  68 See, generally, United States v. Lucero, 1 N.M. 422 (1869). On December 22, 1858, Congress confirmed the titles of Spanish land grants to seventeen Pueblos in New Mexico. Ibid., 435.

  69 Ibid., 441.

  70 As I have noted, the chief justice quoted the full opinion of the trial judge, Chief Justice Slough, who had died by the time the Lucero opinion was released. As to the other two appellate judges, the chief justice specifically alluded to their familiarity with New Mexico’s Pueblo Indians in order to bolster the opinion’s authority, stating that, collectively, the judges had known “the conduct and habits of these Indians for eighteen or twenty years.” Ibid., 441.

  71 Ibid., 442.

  72 Ibid., 425–26.

  73 Ibid., 427.

  74 Ibid., 427.

  75 Ibid., 427.

  76 Ibid.

  77 De La O v. Acoma, 1 N.M. 226 (1857).

  78 United States v. Joseph, 94 U.S. 614 (1877).

  79 United States v. Sandoval, 231 U.S. 28 (1913).

  80 See, e.g., Twitchell, Leading Facts of New Mexican History, 309–10n234.

  81 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 149. It is more likely that Otero’s early twentieth-century biographers (and possibly himself and his parents) shared the progressive racial view’s tendency to designate elite Mexicans as “S
panish.”

  82 Lamar, Far Southwest, 90.

  83 Ibid., 91 (describing Otero’s many “Southern connections” in politics).

  84 Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 309–10n234; Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 192. Providing a glimpse into the extent of Euro-American historians’ unwillingness to credit even elite Mexicans with agency and self-determination, Loomis Ganaway, writing in 1944, claimed Otero did not have an opinion on slavery until his marriage and attributed his proslavery views to his wife’s influence. Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 61, 90. There exists no parallel literature describing the influence of Mexican American women on their Euro-American husbands in the years before and immediately following the American occupation.

  85 Lamar, Far Southwest, 90.

  86 Ibid., 91.

  87 Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 89. On the other hand, Bancroft refers to contemporary references to an 1861 speech by Otero “which incited the New Mexicans to rebellion,” but states that he (Bancroft) had not been able to confirm such reports. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 684n9. According to Bancroft, the southern cause was largely rejected in New Mexico, “the masses favoring the Union cause, and furnishing five or six thousand troops, volunteers, and militia, to resist the [Confederate] invasion” and “without avail, most of the wealthy and influential families being pronounced Union men.” Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 684.

  88 Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 310n234.

  89 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 197. Brooks speculates that most blacks in New Mexico in 1860 were slaves accompanying their masters, who were army officers. Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 309–10.

  90 The most complete analysis is provided by Larson. As to why it took almost sixty-four years from the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for New Mexico to become a U.S. state, Larson concludes that New Mexico’s “distinctive ethnic character” and partisan politics were the most critical factors. Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 303–4.

  91 Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 59.

  92 See Lamar, Far Southwest; Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood.

  93 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 198. See also Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 329 (quoting the same letter).

  94 Of thirteen delegates to the convention, ten were Mexican. Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 40.

  95 Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 2nd Sess., December 19, 1848. See also Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 40–41.

  96 Ibid., 49–52.

  97 Ibid., 40–41.

  98 Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 684, 686; Durán, “Francisco Chavez,” 22–23.

  99 An Act Concerning Free Negroes, New Mexico Laws, 1857. The law appears typical of other, contemporaneous so-called black codes passed by states that banned slavery. Legislators in such states were motivated by the racist fear that they would be “overrun” by blacks from the South, whether they were illegally fleeing their owners or had been manumitted. For a discussion of these laws, see Berwanger, Frontier against Slavery, 18–32, 118–19.

  100 Ibid.

  101 Offending black males were to be punished more harshly than offending white (including Mexican) females, with male violators subject to two to three years of hard labor and female violators subject to a fine of one to two hundred dollars. Ibid.

  102 For historical studies that focus on interracial intimacy in New Mexico, see Brooks, Captives and Cousins; Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came. For a legal history of miscegenation laws involving various racial groups, see Moran, Inter-racial Intimacy; see also Lubin, Romance and Rights.

  103 Foley, White Scourge, 208.

  104 Chap. 26, Laws of New Mexico (1859). New Mexico’s slave code never became law as such because Congress repealed it in May 1860. H.R. Res. 64, 36th Cong., 1st Sess. (1860). Recall that under federal territorial status, the New Mexico legislature’s acts were subject to review and approval by Congress.

  105 Ibid. See also People v. Hall, 4 Cal. 399 (1854).

  106 Berwanger, Frontier against Slavery, 30–59. For a different approach to the laws known as the black codes—as laws that arose in the South after emancipation—see Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 166.

  107 Berwanger, Frontier against Slavery, 31.

  108 Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 3.

  109 Ganaway, New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy, 68. Otero’s letter became widely available when an antislavery organization published it in a pamphlet in English and Spanish that was widely distributed in Washington and New Mexico. Ibid., 68n29. Ganaway notes that “when this letter was made public, Otero did not deny its authenticity, although he had an opportunity of doing so in a number of public letters which he issued early in 1861.” Ibid., 68.

  110 Ibid., 73–74.

  111 See Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity.”

  112 Chap. 26, § 30, Laws of New Mexico (1859).

  113 Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 346n63 (citing June 9, 1865, proclamation by President Andrew Johnson); see also Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 277, 279.

  114 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 292–93.

  115 Ibid., 312–13n597.

  116 Ibid., 294–95 (quoting Santistevan’s grand jury testimony); see also Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 352.

  117 For a defense of Indian slavery by Felipe Delgado, a contemporary of Santistevan, that raises similar themes, see Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 346–47 (quoting Felipe Delgado, New Mexico Superintendent of Indian Affairs in 1865).

  118 The federal grand jury impaneled to hear these charges in 1868 would have been similar in racial composition to grand juries and petit juries at the county-level territorial district court. In the Taos County District Court in the 1860s and 1870s, the larger group of potential jurors (from which specific grand jurors and petit jurors were selected) had no more than three Euro-Americans and many had none. Taos County District Court Records, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.

  119 During the 1870s, Santistevan was appointed jury commissioner for the April 1871, September 1874, March 1877, and September 1879 terms of court. He served as grand jury interpreter in the April 1873, April 1875, September 1875, March 1876, September 1876, March 1877, and April 1879 terms. Taos County District Court Records, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.

  120 For more detailed descriptions, see, generally, Brooks, Captives and Cousins; Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came; Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity.”

  121 Historian James Brooks argues that a regional exchange in people (especially women and children) of different nomadic Indian tribes predated the Spanish conquest. Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 124.

  122 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 152.

  123 Ibid., 153–54.

  124 Brooks concludes that Mexican captives “continued to face a range of possible fates from full cultural assimilation through subordinate labor status to resale among the expectant capitalists of American Texas.” Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 324. He describes the experience of José Andrés Martínez, a mestizo who was taken captive by Mescalero Apaches as a ten-year-old in 1866. After being renamed Andalí, he grew up with the Apaches; as an adult, he returned to his birth family, only to decide to return to live permanently with the Apaches, where he eventually played a role as a translator and spokesman for a Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche delegation to Washington, D.C., in the 1880s. Ibid., 356.

  125 Ibid., 327, 331–37.

  126 Ibid.

  127 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 249.

  128 Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 331–32.

  129 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 277, 279.

  130 Ibid., 286–87.

  131 Ibid., 288.

  132 For similar reasons, scholars have gravitated toward the study of American Indians who owned black slaves (common among the
Five Civilized Tribes, who formally sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War) and black plantation owners who owned black slaves. See, generally, Wickett, Contested Territory.

  133 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 301, 306–9.

  134 Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 681. Like the majority of Euro-American and Mexican American elites whose history he chronicles, Bancroft conceived of Indian slavery as benign, claiming that “in most instances” it had improved the living conditions of the slaves. Ibid.

  135 Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity,” 274.

  136 Ibid., 276.

  137 Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 403, appendix C.