Mexico: two of them were lawyers, one a medical doctor, and one an army colonel. Among them they had held numerous elected offices at the local, state and national levels. by Don Bullis, Problems with the nomadic, and hostile, New Mexico Author Indian tribes were at top of their lists. The donbullis@msn.com fact that, with but a few periods of respite, Indian raiding, and counter-raiding, had been going on since the Spanish arrived in the late 16th century, didn’t make the matter less important to New Mexicans in the middle 19th century. Many American citizens, who had been Mexican citizens only a few years before, favored American rule because they hoped that the newcomers would do a better job of dealing with the hostiles than had the earlier Spanish and Mexican governments. They didn’t, of course. Conflict between civil and military ew Mexico Territorial government did leaders, who both believed they had the not make an auspicious beginning in upper-hand in dealing with Indians, also the 1850s. The first four governors, created difficulties. While governors had appointed by Presidents Fillmore, Pierce, more implied political power, military comand Buchanan, were James S. Calhoun, manders controlled the most important William Carr Lane, David Meriwether, and commodity in the territory: money.2 Abraham Rencher. They faced formidable There was unhappiness among those New challenges and were obliged to function with Mexicans who had favored statehood over few resources and little support from Wash- territorial status. And too, there were those ington.1 These were men who had been citizens who vehemently opposed any form successful in life before they reached New of American rule, and they were not relucNEW MEXICO’S OLD TIMES & OLD TIMERS
Governing Against All Odds in the 1850s
N
tant to make their feelings known. The early governors were well aware that New Mexico’s first civil executive, Charles Bent, who had been appointed by General Stephen Watts Kearney in 1846, was murdered by Mexican nationalists and Taos Indians only a few years earlier (January 19, 1847). Changes in the criminal justice system, from the Spanish and Mexican to the American, also required some attention. Under the former, criminal penalties generally included various forms of corporal punishment, exile, labor on public works, fines and/or confiscation of property.3 Under the latter system, incarceration was the normal punishment for criminal acts, and that required the construction and maintenance of prisons; both of which required money. Population characteristics were a problem, too. The 1850 census reported that New Mexico (which included what is now Arizona and part of southern Colorado) had a population of about 61,500. Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell estimated that of that number, only about 1,000 were “American born.” It must be noted, too, that Indians were not counted in the census but some sources estimated that 7,000 Pueblo and Hopi people lived in New Mexico by 1851. Ten years later, the territorial population was
n Manufacturers of a complete
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n All feeds priced Mill to
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Costilla
Rio Grande
M 285
522
ada
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Tierra Amarilla
Rio
ma
Cuba
Santa Clara Pueblo
Los Alamos
S
Los Alamos
doval
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erc
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Paradise Hills
Tijeras
Armijo South Valley
Tererro
La Cienega
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518
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285
41
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104
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Colonias
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. Guadalupe
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Torrance
84 54
41
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Cuervo
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Estancia Lucy
Negra Pedernal
Silio
Encino Carnero
3
Abo
42
Vaughn
L. Sumner
Buchanan
Debaca
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Torrance Corona h
285
Ramon
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as R.
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Gallin
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55
s Trujillos
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47
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Ya
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39
161
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El Porvenir
Pecos
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337
47
25
120
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S
Tesuque
25
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Santa Fe
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