An old wound

This month’s La Historia column takes a look back at one of Northern New Mexico’s most turbulent and, for many, still painful events: the 1847 Taos Pueblo Revolt. Columnist Rick Romancito takes a look back at the impact of the Taos Pueblo Revolt through historical research, as well as an interview with newlyappointed Taos Pueblo Gov. Gary J. Lujan. For more, turn to

History is what it is. In New Mexico, ours is a chronicle of struggle, endurance, innovation, unity, exploitation, tenacity and, of course, violent conflict. Taos, strangely enough, has been at the center of many of these chapters.

This week, for instance, is the 176th anniversary of the Taos Revolt. To the wider world, this 1847 rebellion is not very well known, even among some Taoseños. And, for the most part, it tends to favor the victors in its tale of murder, upheaval and retribution. But, as in all things “Taos,” there are many layers.

Its roots go back to another revolt that happened in 1837 among the villages and Tewa-speaking Indian Pueblos of the Santa Cruz Valley south of Taos, first colonized by Juan de Oñate in 1598. This one, historian Edward P. Dozier noted in “Pueblo Indians of North America” (1970) was considered “a confused and meaningless uprising of low-class Hispanos and Indians.” But, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in “Roots of Resistance” (2007), this incident revealed that “the insurgents were politically aware and possessed the skills necessary for governing the province.”

Dunbar-Ortiz writes that a prevailing notion among leaders was that “poor village farmers [were] commonly thought to have been passive and fatalistic; similarly, Pueblos are thought to have been docile and uninterested in any important activities outside their communities. These conceptions are patently false.”

It should be noted that the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, organized at Taos Pueblo, saw Spanish colonists all over New Mexico evicted by Pueblo Indians after decades of oppression and offenses against Native religion. In the 150 or so years since the Spaniards’ return, the colonists and Natives found a measure of independence as the region became Mexican Territory in 1821. DunbarOrtiz refers to an unnamed authority who said this period resulted in “much better relations among peoples within the older regions. The Mexican Revolution was a strongly anti-clerical mestizo uprising which put an end to relentless missionary pressures upon unwilling Indians and softened Indian-Spanish relations in general.”

Fears of an invasion by the United States and its Manifest Destiny Doctrine began to spread like wildfire after a border incident gave U.S. President James Polk the excuse to declare war against Mexico in 1846, once Texas was annexed. Although New Mexican troops and volunteers were gathered, Col. Stephen Watts Kearny led an invasion force into Santa Fe without a shot being fired. Once settled, “he set up a provisional government,” according to DunbarOrtiz, and made local trader Charles Bent the territory’s first governor. Bent had family and a home in Taos.

Then, Kearny took off with a large number of his troops to engage in the conquest of California. DunbarOrtiz writes that this left Col. Sterling Price in charge of New Mexico, but it also gave rise to talk of rebellion. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, Pueblo Indians were left to occupy

their ancestral homelands by government decree and Hispanos held onto land grants with religious fervor; all of that was rumored to be threatened if the new government was allowed to have its way. During the winter of 1846, a massive and well-organized “plan was being formulated,” Dunbar-Ortiz adds.

Bent happened to be in Taos at his home on what is now Bent Street on Jan. 19, 1847. On that day, he was attacked, shot with arrows and scalped in front of his family by a group of rebels from the town of Don Fernando de Taos and Taos Pueblo. They were led by José Pablo Montoya, who state historian Robert Torrez writes in “Taos: A Topical History” (2013) “had been active in the Revolt of 1837.” With him, as leader, was Taos Puebloan Tomás Romero.

Trapped in the home, Bent’s family managed to escape by digging a hole in the adobe wall. Bent’s wife was Ignacia Jaramillo, who was the sister of Maria Josefa Jaramillo, wife of famed mountain man Kit Carson.

“The family tragedy did not end with Charles Bent’s assassination,” historian Elizabeth Cunningham writes in “Remarkable Women of Taos” (2011). “In defense of their country, the defiant insurrectionists hunted down and killed anyone or destroyed anything connected with the murdered man. They found Ignacia and Josefa’s brother, Pablo Jaramillo, and his friend, Narciso Beaubien, and lanced them to death.”

Dozens of other Americans and American sympathizers were killed by the insurgents that day in Taos and later at Turley Mill and Questa north of town. “Over the next few days, violence spread to Mora and at some other areas to the northeast,” Torrez writes. “More than a thousand insurrectionists rallied and armed themselves with the intention of marching to Santa Fe and taking New Mexico back from the Americans.” However, unlike the 1837 rebellion, this action wasn’t as wellorganized, nor was it well armed.

On Feb. 1, 1847, military troops under U.S. Col. Sterling Price mobilized and rode north with various arms, including cannons. After defeating an attack at Santa Cruz de la Cañada and Embudo, they arrived at Taos Pueblo on Feb. 3 and found the rebels had barricaded themselves and their families inside the San Geronimo Church.

Price ordered Lt. Alexander B. Dyer to “set up an artillery battery, consisting of a 6-pounder and the howitzers, 250 yards from the western flank of the church and began firing at 2 p.m. and continued for two-and-a-half hours before retiring to Don Fernando [de Taos] for the evening,” according to Col. Sterling Price’s Official Report on the Revolution in New Mexico, in “The Conquest of California and New Mexico,” Cutts, J.M., 1847.

Torrez writes that “after a fierce two-day battle, the Americans succeeded in breaching the walls of

the old church and routing the New Mexicans … When the smoke cleared from the battlefields, an estimated 250-300 Indians and Spanish were dead, dozens were prisoners and the church, San Geronimo, was in ruins.”

The weeks and months that followed saw trials and convictions of the insurgents, along with public hangings on Taos Plaza and on Bent Street.

“The church, sitting there destroyed is a continual reminder of our interaction with the United States as a result of that uprising in 1847,” newly appointed Taos Pueblo Gov. Gary J. Lujan told the Taos News earlier this month. “What followed was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which, I think, settled the imposition of new rule and brought everyone to the table, but what it did not do was [settle] any kind of reparations from the United States in terms of the men, women and children who were killed in the church. So, the church is a continual reminder of that.”

The rebels had gone to the church in hopes the age-old tradition of sanctuary would be respected. It was not.

The church destroyed in the fighting was the second built at Taos Pueblo. The first was destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. The ruins of the second was used by the tribe for many years as a cemetery. The third, built in the late 1800s, stands today on the village plaza.