Living, Mangas Coloradas was an enigma; dead more than one hundred years, his demise has been equally mysterious. Chief of the murderous Copper Mine band of Apache Indians, who ranged much of southern New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico, he was, physically, a giant among a nation of people…
T. Edward Shumaker As a young man of about twenty-six, Hugh N. Smith enlisted in the army to serve with Colonel Alexander Doniphan (1808-1887) in the US-Mexico War. The war had broken out between the two North American republics in 1846, the same year that Kearny arrived in Santa…
By Mark Thompson In 1819, of Tome with a grant of land on the east side of the Manzano Mountains in Valencia County. Although never surveyed, it was estimated to cover…
Testamento del finado Manuel Martínez (1775-1842) Transcribed from copy of original document by Vicente M. Martínez and Elena Nápoles Goldfeder, PhD. En el nombre de Dios Todopoderoso y de nuestra Señora la Virgen María concebida sin mancha de pecado original desde el primer instante de su ser Purísima, Amen….
WPA Writers Project Interview with Elfego Baca By Janet Smith for the WPA Writer's Project "I never wanted to kill anybody," Elfego Baca told me, "but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first." Elfego Baca belongs…
Biography of Alfred Alexander Freeman, noted politician and judge. Alfred Alexander Freeman was born in Tennessee on Feb. 7, 1838, and by 1859 had been admitted to the practice of law. He enjoyed a successful political career in Tennessee, elected several times to the state legislature and losing a…
By Mark Thompson New Mexicans who use U.S. 285, Colorado 17 and U.S. 24 to get to the Vail Valley of Colorado, or maybe just use La Veta Pass as an alternative to Raton Pass when heading to Denver, know instinctively from the place names that the area commonly…
Articles of a treaty made and entered into at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the first day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, by and between Col. E. V. Sumner, U.S.A., commanding the 9th Department and in charge of the executive…
By Rick Hendricks Ulysses S. Grant once ran for governor of New Mexico. No, not that Ulysses S. Grant! The would-be governor was born Donald R. Waskey to Calvin and Margaret Waskey in Baltimore, Maryland, about 1938. Waskey apparently entered the Air Force and became a nuclear weapons mechanical…
by Mark Schiller At the conclusion of every adjudication, the United States Attorney for the Court of Private Land Claims, Matthew G. Reynolds, wrote a summary of the proceedings for the United States Attorney General. On 26 June 1894, Reynolds wrote his report summarizing the adjudication of the San…
