This is certainly not an account by a man of the time who felt that what Smith did was foolish or unwise. It is rather a reflection of the accepted perils of travel that existed in the Jornada of the Santa Fe Trail.
An anonymous eulogist wrote of Smith after his disappearance, “Though he fell under the spears of the savages, and his body has glutted the prairie wolf, and none can tell where his bones are bleaching, he must not be forgotten.”
Such were the perils of the times and the heroism of the men and women that many of us celebrate with our studies of the West. Imperfect beings such as Jedediah Smith, taming a frontier with only courage and primitive weapons to depend upon, provide us a conception from which to draw a code of honor and an ample reason to investigate the conditions that they faced.
Jedediah Smith was not the buffoon that many would have us believe. He took the conditions as he found them and blazed trails that few would ever equal. The irony is that he was defeated by a stretch of land that today is productive farmland, which has for a source an underground Ogalala aquifer of immense proportions. Millions of gallons of water were never more than a few hundred feet beneath him.
Chapter 5
Tough Night in Taos, The Death of Charles Bent
Charles Bent
Together with Ceran St. Vrain, William and Charles Bent established a vast adobe castle on the banks of the Arkansas River along the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail which became the spearhead of American expansion to the Southwest. The success of the Bent-St. Vrain trading empire, however, was not gained without a terrible toll.
On January 18, 1847, a small party of horsemen topped the ridge overlooking the Taos Valley of New Mexico. At the head of the band rode forty-seven year old Charles Bent, newly appointed governor of New Mexico and one of the most influential Anglos of the newly subdued Spanish Southwest by United States forces under General Stephen Kearny. Barely in office three and a half months, Bent had left his offices in Santa Fe against the advice of his supporters to return to his home, see to the safety of his family and establish order among the seething Indian and Mexican population of the community. Charles Bent liked Taos. The community’s business, distilling and farming were dominated by a tight-knit group of foreigners. The Workman brothers, John Rowland, the Branche family and Steve Lee were influential power brokers. Perhaps most influential was Carlos Beaubien, a transplanted French-Canadian who had the ear of Santa Fe and was a close friend of Bent. Although a Protestant, Bent also maintained a close relationship with the Catholic community especially through his marriage into the Jaramillo family.
Ceran St. Vrain
Bent’s appointment as governor of the territory was made for good reason. Few others in the Southwest could have matched his credentials. As the eldest son of a Missouri trading family, Charles attended Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and had a background in medicine and mathematics. He came to the Far West when only 18 as a clerk for the Missouri Fur Company in the early heady days of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade. He worked with the likes of Smith, Fitzpatrick, Clyman, Sublette and Ashley. His younger brother by nine and a half years, William, joined him in the fur trade business in 1825. He struck a fateful friendship with a Taos trapper of noble French descent by the melodious name of Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain in 1824. By 1829, through a series of bad breaks, he was utterly bankrupt. Starting over by assembling investors and business partners, he entered the Santa Fe trade using heavy wagon caravans instead of pack trains. A short time later he was joined by two more younger brothers, eighteen-year-old George and sixteen-year-old Robert. He parlayed Santa Fe trade profits and entered the Indian trade, a field in which his family had always excelled. After two years of dangerous and risky ventures the four Bent brothers, working out of a crude wooden stockade near the present sit of Pueblo, Colorado, arrived in Independence, Missouri, with a cargo of silver bullion, mules and furs worth an estimated $190,000. They immediately reinvested, joined forces with Ceran St. Vrain to establish the Bent-St. Vrain Trading Company, and built an adobe trading fort, Fort William, on the upper banks of the Arkansas near present-day La Junta, Colorado, in defiance of the monopolistic American Fur Company. Behind walls fourteen feet high and thirty inches thick, the company sent traders ranging among the Indians throughout the Southwest.
Many do not fully understand the influence that Bent’s Fort (Fort William’s more popular name) had upon the Rocky Mountain frontier of the Southwest. The adobe castle served as a base of operations for a trading empire that ranged to the Green River of Wyoming to the northwest and the Oklahoma panhandle to the southeast. Traders representing the company ranged into the Indian hinterlands in search of trade and profit. Unlike many in the trade, the Bents refrained from encouraging the abuse of alcohol to cheat the Indians of their goods, choosing to follow the premise that fair trading meant a lasting relation with the tribes rather quick profits. Under the direct management of William, men such as Kit Carson, Dick Wootton, Lucien Maxwell, Jim Beckworth, Mexican Sol Silver and Blackfoot John Smith were associated with the daily activities of the fort.
Modern reconstruction of Bent’s Fort near La Junta, Colorado
Several other companies tried to compete with Bent-St. Vrain but all failed. The brothers built a reputation for fair dealing with the Indians and maintained far superior organization and more skillful expansion efforts. William built his Indian alliances when he married a woman of the Southern Cheyenne tribe named Owl Woman. Charles married an influential Taos family widow, Maria Ignacia Jaramillo, and increased his own credibility in New Mexico. He became a business partner of Carlos Beaubien and subsequently a major player in the development of mammoth Rayado ranch. The Bent-St. Vrain Company also established prosperous ranches at Ponil and Vermejo. When the Mexican War broke out, Bent’s Fort became a major staging area for Kearny’s invasion of New Mexico. While others like St. Vrain and Beaubien had taken Mexican citizenship for business advantages, the Bents had stubbornly maintained American citizenship. After the almost bloodless capitulation of New Mexico, Charles Bent stood out as the one American citizen with the education, wealth, connections and experience to serve as governor.
He was not the burly mountain man that he had been in his youth, however. Charles was completely white-headed and had grown stout from years behind a desk. He was family oriented with four children and loved his home in Taos. After having just put down a rebellion in Santa Fe, his administration had been hamstrung by questions of authority with the army, lack of funds, little equipment and more threats of revolt in the smaller communities. Upon hearing rumors of brewing trouble in Taos, he returned immediately without military escort with Sheriff Steve Lee, Circuit Attorney James White Leal, Prefect Cornelio Vigil and two boys of family friends, Pablo Jaramillo and Narciso Beaubien. He wanted to quell the unrest without the threat of soldiers. Immediately upon entering the valley the group was surrounded by a gang of Pueblo Indians who demanded the release of friends jailed for theft. Charles handled the confrontation skillfully explaining that the law would take its course and the innocent released. He assured them that the rule of law would prevail throughout the pueblo and that they had nothing to fear from American leadership. The group then cautiously separated to individual homes and families. When Charles arrived home he found a full house. Fearing the rebellious native population that roamed the streets and not having their husbands at home, Kit Carson’s wife, Josefa, a sister of Ignacia, and Ingacia’s daughter, Rumalda, wife of Tom Boggs, had temporarily moved into the Bent home. Neither of the girls was out of their teens and they were frightened by the threats, demonstrations and sounds of gunfire raging throughout the pueblo. Several others were waiting in the house to talk to Bent and urge him to flee before the situation got out of hand.
Bent coolly refused stating that American governors did not fly in the face of danger as the Mexicans did. The rule of law and common sense would prevail over panic and threats of violence. He sent his family to bed for t
he night comforting them with the assurance that things would settle down by morning.
But Charles Bent was not aware of the influence of a provocateur named Pablo Montoya who was assembling reinforcements throughout the valley. Montoya, a self-styled Santa Ana of the North, and Tomas Romero assembled a large group of supporters preaching that the North Americans meant to steal all their land and strip them of their rights. They added fury to the rhetoric with copious amounts of free liquor and used the men jailed for theft as the example demonstrating North American tyranny.
The mob moved upon the jail, howling, waving torches and weapons. Sheriff Steve Lee was dragged from his bed into the street. Prefect Cornelio Vigil came to his aid, calling the mob a band of scoundrels and demanding dispersal. The rioters were in no mood for the angry admonishments of a Spanish patrician. They fell upon him and hacked him to pieces. Lee broke free and attempted an escape by way of a housetop. He received the same fate as Vigil.
With the blood lust freed, the mob turned upon anyone associated with Americans or Yankee sympathizers through the direction of Montoya and Romero agents. Many of the homes were empty but still looted and burned. James Leal was marched into the frozen street naked, tortured with arrows, blinded, scalped alive and left for dead. He crawled through the streets for hours until another band killed him and fed his body to hogs.
Narciso Beaubien and Pablo Jaramillo attempted to hide in a barn. A female servant saw them and urged the mob to, “Kill the young ones, and they will never be men to trouble us.” The boys were butchered in the manger in which they were hiding. Their bodies were said to be unrecognizable.
Dawn was breaking when the mob descended upon Charles Bent’s home. Evidently, the family had slept through the slaughter undisturbed. Bent awoke to the sounds of the mob scaling the courtyard walls and surrounding his home. He dressed and called through the door demanding to know what was wanted. The women assembled in the room still in their bedclothes. Ignacia brought Charles his pistols but he refused them stating that violence on his part might lead to the slaughter of the entire household. He ordered the women to dig a hole through a wall into an adjoining house and make an escape while he delayed the mob.
While the women desperately pried out adobe bricks with a poker and large spoon, Bent extended several alternatives to the mob. He offered them money and suggested that a council could be formed to hear their grievances. His offerings fell upon deaf ears or only served to enrage the mob. When he heard the roof breaking through as the mob forced an entry, he ordered Ignacia to come for his son, Alfredo, and make an escape. As the mob gained entry, Bent offered himself as a hostage if they would spare the others in Taos.
Just then bullets splintered the door, one striking Bent in the chin, another in his stomach. Bent staggered to remain on his feet while urging the women to make an escape. Seconds later the door gave way and the mob entered. Several arrows struck Bent in the face and chest. He pulled several free and stumbled through the house to the hole that the women had made. They had crawled through pushing the children ahead. When Bent got to the hole, he collapsed and the women tried to drag him through to safety.
Rumalda held Bent in her arms and Ignacia begged the mob for his life. Bent tried to speak but his wounds were too serious for him to be understood. Realizing that he could not be comprehended, he groped for a piece of paper in his vest pocket and gestured blankly. An Indian seized him by the suspenders and tore him from Rumalda’s grasp. Bent was then thrown to the floor and scalped alive with a bowstring. While Bent was being tortured, friendly neighbors hustled Rumalda through the hole to the others. Ignacia remained behind to beg for the lives of her family. Someone in the room admonished the mob as fools, arguing that Bent should have been spared as a valuable hostage. The logic confused them and they milled about uncertainly. Finally, they chose to depart after tacking Bent’s scalp to a board and warning the women not to leave the building. Bent died slowly in front of the women and children huddled in their bedclothes about him. For the next day and a half the women remained in the room until friends helped them escape and hide Bent’s body to prevent further mutilation.
The rebellion raged on for days with ranches and businesses burned and ravaged throughout the region. On February 3, a force of nearly five hundred Santa Fe volunteers under the command of Sterling Price and Ceran St. Vrain swept into Taos. A smaller force from Pueblo led by Dick Wootton joined them. The combined forces crushed the rebellion with grim and bloody vengeance. Tomas Romero and Pablo Montoya were imprisoned in a one-window jail on the north edge of Taos. Romero was assassinated and Montoya executed. Fifteen others were tried and executed by civil authorities.
Because it was originally feared that the rebellion was a precursor of a full-blown Mexican invasion which would eventually sweep to Bent’s Fort, William was not with the forces retaking Taos. He chose to assemble a force to protect the fort and prepare for defense. He took the death of his brother hard, however. Charles “was loved and respected as a father” by all of the younger Bent brothers.
Bewildered and bereaved, William Bent obliterated Bent’s Fort and turned down the Arkansas a few miles east of the Purgatory River. There he established another fort, perhaps as an unconscious effort to begin again after the tragic loss of his brother’s dream. He died in 1869 of pneumonia near the original fort with most of his friends dead and the mighty Cheyenne forced to a reservation. The great days of the Indian trade had passed before him and the legacy of the great trading post of the western Santa Fe Trail had ended.
Chapter 6
Mexican Traders of Santa Fe
Although generally overlooked by historians, a powerful group of New Mexican natives took advantage of the Santa Fe Trail and exerted substantial influence upon trade, regulation, government and even justice.
When learning about the Santa Fe trade many do not realize that commerce was not composed of a single trade route from Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Missouri traders chose Santa Fe as a destination because of its preeminence in the Southwest region. That dominance increased after the trail opened and more was affected in Santa Fe commerce than simply the arrival of Anglo traders in 1821. Spain’s unsound policy of discouraging foreign trade was discarded with the creation of the new government. Santa Fe was in an excellent position to become a hub of trading activity which had transcontinental spokes because of access to mountain passes and trails, temperate climate, and Spanish prominence throughout the region.
The immediate trouble with the Santa Fe economic system was that there were not many citizens with the resources to enter the trade nor was there enough cash available to sustain long-range markets. Comments were being written as early as 1825 that “every village is crowded with goods…” and that many merchants were selling goods at a loss. So, what happened to all of these surplus commodities in the Rio Grande Valley? Where did an estimated $60,000 in excess goods go before the arrival and increased worth of the trade volume of merchandise from Missouri in 1826? The answer lies in the fact that Santa Fe was not a terminal end of goods as many think but an international marketplace through which goods were distributed throughout the Southwest. If Santa Fe was starved for goods and merchandise in 1823, then what about Albuquerque, Chihuahua, Taos, or even Los Angeles or San Diego? When many of these goods, which had been purchased at such exorbitant prices, were sold at a loss, most of those purchases were made by the only people with the cash reserves to do so. The gente fina or upper class of the region purchased surplus goods and immediately repeated throughout the Southwest and northern Mexico what the Missourians had already accomplished in Santa Fe. They distributed the goods to other communities at staggering profits for as long as the markets held. The markets held at a lower profit margin in Santa Fe because it became a distribution point from which goods could be distributed elsewhere. As the Mexicans developed these markets, the profit margins in Santa Fe again began to climb in reaction to increased demand. The only way to get the goods any cheaper
was to go to Missouri or farther east and purchase them directly, which is exactly what the Mexican traders did within only a year after the trade route opened.
Many Americans vastly underestimated the abilities of the Mexicans as trade rivals. This is what Charles Bent, an Anglo who today is recognized as one of the more tolerant toward the Mexicans, had to say in 1846: They are not fit to be free, they should be ruled by others than themselves…. They are corrupt, destitute of all principal, lazy, indolent, ignorant and base to the last degree…. The Mexican Character is made up of stupidity, obstinacy, ignorance, duplicity and vanity.
Within months, Bent was complaining about the unfair trade advantages that the New Mexicans were marshaling for themselves against the Anglos, such as being able to store their goods at private residences without being fined, taxation advantages and insider trade communication advantages. These seem to be unlikely tactics for a group as ignorant as Bent claimed, but rather shrewd business manipulations that the New Mexicans formed to remain competitive with the Yankees. These are also the same traders who managed to make the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Claims pay damages to the New Mexico traders in 1846 for unfair trade sanctions, or manage to assure international trade control through the Mexican government as early as 1839.
Chihuahua, Mexico, merchant families dominated Santa Fe markets in the early years. Families existed in the Santa Fe merchant class, however, and soon took advantage of the relaxed markets created by the revolution. Don Francisco Baca and Don Antancio Volivar were active in Santa Fe. Chihuahua merchants Ramon Garcia and Manuel de Escudero established connections in Santa Fe to take advantage of trail traffic. The Jaramillo family of Taos is known to have had Santa Fe trading connections. The first governor of New Mexico after Mexican independence was Francisco Xavier Chavez. Chavez was an old and influential family of direct Spanish descent who held prominent positions in New Mexico from its inception as a province in 1598. Don Francisco took advantage of his political connections and quickly established his family as one of the dominant trading powers in Santa Fe. With the financial resources of large land holdings, vast flocks of sheep and mercantile holdings, the Chavez family had deep enough pockets to prosper from early market over indulgence.
Heroes of the Santa Fe Trail Page 5