A New Mexico Mosaic

Image at far left is Henry Connelly, a Kentucky native who opened a trading business in New Mexico and became territorial governor. He married Delores Perea, to his right, who hailed from a leading Hispano family in New Mexico. Pictured in the middle is Cathay Williams, an ex-slave who masqueraded as a man and served as a Buffalo Soldier and then a cook at Fort Union. The far right image shows residents of Isleta Pueblo. The army at Fort Union often used pueblo Indians as scouts and spies.

 

Despite its isolated location from American population centers, New Mexico became a complex mosaic of ethnicities and racial demographics. Even before the arrival of the Americans in the mid-1800s, the indigenous people from numerous tribes had for hundreds of years been living and interacting with the Hispano colonists. Then French Canadians arrived in the area for fur trapping.

The Santa Fe Trail and Fort Union brought in additional diversity from far and wide. The Anglo population expanded dramatically as Santa Fe Trail merchants and soldiers arrived in the area. Some of the leading Anglos, including Kit Carson, Ceran St. Vrain and Lucien Maxwell, married into prominent Hispano familes. German Jewish merchants arrived on the Trail, and with the coming of Fort Union, the army brought additional variety. African-American Buffalo Soldiers, European-immigrant soldiers and even Asians added to the ethnic mix of northern New Mexico.

 

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Captives and Slaves

The mingling of New Mexico's Hispanic and Indian populations--and the practice of each one to seize human captives from the other and enslave them--created even more social variety. In many cases, the captives were raised and inter-married within the ruling society. The genizaros were--and still are--a group of people whose ancestors were born as tribal members but were enslaved by Hispanic families.

The image at left is George Catlin's 1834 painting entitled "The Little Spaniard." Catlin described him as a "A gallant little fellow...represented to us as one of the leading warriors of the [Comanche] tribe; and no doubt...one of the most extraordinary men at present living in these regions. He is half Spanish and being a half-breed, for whom they generally have the most contemptuous feelings, he has been all his life thrown into the front of battle and danger; at which posts he...commanded the hightest admiration and respect of the tribe."

 

Ilfeld family, with family patriarch Charles seated at far left.

University of New Mexico

Jewish Merchants

Traveling Jewish merchants, mainly from Germany, fanned out across the United States in the mid-1800s. Some of them found their way to New Mexico on the leading international highway of the day--the Santa Fe Trail. One of the early arrivals was Charles Ilfeld, pictured with his family at right. Charles developed his very prosperous mercantile company, one of the biggest businesses in the New Mexico Territory.

The "mercantile" companies in New Mexico brought a wide variety of goods from overseas and the eastern United States for sale in New Mexico, and arranged for the sale of New Mexico products outside the territory. The mercantiles often functioned as banks, lending money and financing other businesses, in the local community. The mercantiles also won big contracts to supply Fort Union and other army posts in the territory. One of the earliest Jewish merchants in Las Vegas, Arthur Morrison, became a prominent officer with the New Mexico Volunteers during the Civil War.

As the early Jewish arrivals prospered, family members and other co-religionists followed from Germany. A network of Jewish-owned businesses spread throughout New Mexico, even in the small towns.

 

French Canadian Francis Aubry was a prominent Santa Fe Trail trader in the early years of Fort Union. Known for his speedy trips across the trail, he once made a solo ride across the entire 800 miles of Santa Fe Trail in 5 1/2 days.

The French Canadians

The French Canadians, long involved in the fur trade of the upper Midwest, were drawn to New Mexico by the prospect of lucrative beaver trapping. Frequent visitors to the northern New Mexico trading town of Taos, the French Canadians were a small but noticeable minority in the area by the time Fort Union opened in 1851.

Francis Aubry was a well-known Santa Fe Trail trader and visitor to Fort Union in its early years. Ceran St. Vrain, a leading New Mexico merchant, was a prominent officer with the New Mexico milita and with the New Mexico Volunteers during the Civil War. The massive Maxwell land grant, which embraced 1.7 million acres northeast of Fort Union, was granted to Lucien Maxwell's French Canadian father-in-law. Maxwell inherited the grant from him, and the army maintained an outpost near Maxwell's ranch for several years and distributed rations to the Utes and Jicarilla Apaches nearby.

 

Retired Army veteran Edward Day Cohota

U.S. Army

The Chinese Soldier

The garrison at Fort Union had a surprise when Company C, 15th U.S. Infantry arrived at the fort in June 1872. The new arrivals included Edward Day Cohota, a native of China. Edward served at numerous forts on the western frontier, including several years at Fort Union during the mid-1870s. While serving at Fort Union, Edward was a cook for his company. He also helped build a telegraph line across northeastern New Mexico.

His lifelong odyssey took him from the docks of China as a little boy, to Massachusetts, to the battelfields of the Civil War, and to the western frontier. His later life was shaped by the discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned him from becoming a U.S. citizen despite his decades of service in the U.S. Army.

When the railroad came to Fort Union and nearby Las Vegas, NM, in 1880, more Chinese began arriving in the then-bustling town. An 1882 murder case in a Las Vegas Chinese laundry began the long process of dismantling the onerous Chinese Exclusion Act. A Chinese immigrant was accused of shooting a laundry patron. The accused, Yee Shun, protested his innocence, but was fingered for the murder by a fellow Chinese immigrant. Yee Shun lost the case (and subsequently committed suicide), but in the process the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that the accusing Asian American had a right to testify in court (previously denied by the Chinese Exclusion Act).

 

Sergeant John Denny of the 9th U.S. Cavalry, awarded the Medal of Honor, was a long-serving member of the garrison at Fort Union.

Library of Congress

African Americans Move West

The opening of Fort Union had an enormous impact on northern New Mexico. The social diversity of the Army brought a range of new ethnicities to the predominantly Hispanic and Indian area, including the first significant arrival of African Americans.

Some of the earliest African American arrivals came to New Mexico as slaves of U.S. Army officers. The first African American slaves brought into the territory came with their owner, Maine-born James Carleton, who would later be the military commander for New Mexico.

During the Civil War, the Union Army had enlisted nearly 200,000 African Americans as soldiers in the fight against the Confederacy. A few of these troops actually found themselves in New Mexico rather than on the battlefields of Virginia. When the war ended, the government created several permanent regiments of African American troops (later known as Buffalo Soldiers) and transferred most of them to the western frontier, including New Mexico. African American soldiers such as William Cathay and George Vaughn left the plantations of the South behind, only to discover that life in New Mexico had its own challenges.

On the civilian side, a leading merchant in Las Vegas was former Missouri slave Montgomery Bell. Bell arrived in New Mexico at age 22, unable to read or write, but traveling with Stephen Elkins, who became a prominent Santa Fe lawyer and a member of the Santa Fe Ring. After working briefly in the Elkins household, Bell learned to read and write and began acquiring a herd of sheep, which he later sold. In the late 1880s, Bell opened a livestock and land trading business in Las Vegas, became fluent in Spanish and took on many civic duties. He and his wife became well-known members of the Las Vegas community. The Las Vegas Optic newspaper took note in 1914 when Bell returned from Kansas to attend his mother's funeral.

 

The abandoned house once owned by Montgomery Bell, the leading African American merchant in Las Vegas, NM.

Palace of the Governors, New Mexico History Museum