‡ The Navajos were the most numerous tribe around Santa Fe, numbering an estimated 12,000.
§ Catalogued later on the march to California by Captain Emory.
‖ They were, however, allowed to chew, and their temples at the time were supplied with spittoons at the ends of pews.
a Anyone not aspiring to the Mormon faith was a “Gentile,” Jews included.
b The Mormons’ clothing was poor because they hadn’t purchased any. Instead they sent all the money received for their military clothing allowance back to Winter Quarters for the purchase of emigrant supplies.
c Five wives of Mormon officers were allowed to accompany their husbands, but they had to provide their own mules.
d Cooke had managed to purchase twenty “good” mules in Albuquerque, but almost immediately Kearny requisitioned them to take Frémont’s dispatches on to Washington.
e The tipster was forty-six-year-old Mme. Gertrudis “La Tules” Barceló, an infamous card sharp and gambling hall operator in Santa Fe, known for her prominent wig and false teeth, who had heard it from her mulatto servant, who was married to someone involved in the conspiracy.
f The colloquy here is from Eisenhower’s book, quoting from an unpublished manuscript of Teresina Bent Scheurich, Charles Bent’s daughter, who was a witness to the event.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Doniphan’s Expedition
Alexander Doniphan was the kind of man writers of Westerns dream about. President-elect Abraham Lincoln summed it up niftily some twenty years after Doniphan’s legendary exploits in the Mexican-American War when he met the distinguished Missouri lawyer in February 1861. Doniphan was part of the so-called Peace Commission composed of prominent men from twenty-one states that went to Washington in an eleventh-hour effort to head off civil war and, at least, managed an audience with Lincoln.
“And this is Colonel Doniphan,” Lincoln intoned, “who made the wild march against the Navajos and Mexicans. You are the only man I ever met who in appearance came up to my expectations.”
It was true enough. At six feet four Doniphan was a giant of a man, especially for his day and time, dashing and ruggedly handsome with piercing hazel eyes, a nose straight as an ax handle, and thick auburn hair that he often wore collar length. It was said, without verification, that women swooned when he entered a room. Celebrated for his eloquence and quick legal mind, the thirty-eight-year-old Whig was also renowned for his sense of fairness. It was he, after all, who as state militia commander had broken up the Mormon kangaroo court-martial and saved Joseph Smith and the other Saints from the firing squad during the 1838 dustup in Missouri, then wound up representing the Mormon Church in its efforts to save its property.
Most of the thousand-odd men Doniphan commanded were Missouri farm boys who had enlisted to see the world, or at least some part of it, before they got married or died, and to fight the Mexicans, just for the hell of it. Doniphan, though educated, was still one of them and joked and talked their turkey, settled disputes, and called them “boys.” He took into consideration that they were undisciplined compared with regular army troops and, when not under Kearny’s direct orders, often asked their opinions of military matters large and small. They loved him for it.
It was 236 hard miles due south from Santa Fe to El Paso del Norte, the foremost city in northern Chihuahua. During the first part of the march the First Missouri Volunteers, presently 856-strong, would have to contend with Indians, rough terrain, freezing cold, and the overwhelming Mexican army that was eternally rumored to be coming up to meet them. But at least they would have water, as they followed the Rio Grande south out of the mountains and onto the plains.
The second half of the trip, however, they would leave the river as it turned east and contend with the dreaded and aptly named Jornada del Muerto, “Dead Man’s Journey,” across a barren arid desert of ninety-three excruciating miles. Along the way they would encounter petrified forests and steaming earth, ferocious wolves and the inevitable Indians and rattlesnakes.
The expedition got on the march December 4 from Santa Fe, but a large part of the First Missouri Volunteers was already well down the trail owing to the Indian treaty expeditions. Also strung out along the trail were Magoffin and the other traders and their three hundred wagons, waiting for an army escort in case of trouble. Doniphan had planned to travel light and quick to join General Wool, without his artillery, but persistent rumors suggested that Wool was not in Chihuahua at all. What this portended, Doniphan did not know for sure and could not divine.
The traders, many of whom had made the trip numerous times and were well acquainted with the Mexicans, almost unanimously said Doniphan would be “crazy” to order his small force into Chihuahua unless Wool’s army was already there. But Alexander William Doniphan was not a man to welsh on an order. Kearny had told him to go into Mexico and, after carefully weighing the risk, he intended to do it—first ordering a mounted company to ride hastily ahead and scout things out.
He also sent a “fast post” (messenger) to try to find Wool and bring back news of his location and intentions, but meantime he took the precaution of ordering his ten-gun artillery battalion and 125 artillerymen to join him on the march. It consisted of two five-gun batteries commanded by two West Pointers, Captain Richard H. Weightman and Major Meriwether Lewis Clark, Kearny’s brother-in-law. At Santa Fe there was a brief delay caused by Colonel Sterling Price, who was busy putting down the Taos rebellion and did not wish to part with the guns, but after a bit of a wrangle both Weightman and Clark started their caissons down the Santa Fe Trail.
Moreover, Doniphan first wisely decided to send out one company of cavalry, under Captain William Gilpin, then another under Captain John Reid, as forward reconnaissance. Aside from the cold, and the rough nature of the ground, and horse-thieving Indians at night, the march wasn’t so bad because it was almost all downhill as they descended the mountains. The singular feature noticed by all the men was the abandoned and forlorn nature of the countryside.
A few brave New Mexican souls clung on in the 150 or so miles of fertile valley along the river that led into Chihuahua, but because of the Indian terror most inhabitants had long since fled to the relative safety of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, or some other large town. Ranchos that had once boasted orchards, fields, and vineyards now everywhere lay fallow, their haciendas’ roofs caved in and vines overtaking their windows. Flocks and herds were nowhere to be seen. Once thriving copper, silver, iron, and coal mines were deserted, as were furnaces, smelters, and smithys. Everything seemed in decay. Even the population, such as remained, “are in a state of decline and degeneracy.” One diarist compared it with the northern frontiers of ancient Rome, “as the Goths, Vandals, or Huns overran her territory,” adding “only that the Indians are far more savage.” Such was the level of protection that the government in Mexico City had provided its citizens.
As the traders’ caravan and First Missouri Mounted Volunteers traversed this remote and unhappy valley southward out of the mountains an improbable character came trotting up on horseback from the opposite direction. He was Lieutenant George Frederick Augustus Ruxton, twenty-five, late of Her Majesty’s Eighty-ninth Foot, decorated hero of the Carlist Wars in Spain, African explorer, and member of the Royal Geographical Society. Six months earlier, the ever-inquisitive Ruxton had steamed out of Southampton on a Royal Mail packet bound for Veracruz, where he embarked on a single-handed overland journey of observation in northern Mexico and the American West. After an informative tour of Mexican cities and countryside, Ruxton ventured north into Chihuahua, with his horses, mules, a Hawkin rifle, and a dog as his favorite companions, crossing the dreaded Jornada and eluding rampaging Apaches. At one point he had encountered the party of Governor-General Armijo, fleeing Santa Fe with his wagon train full of loot. The general, whom Ruxton described as “a mountain of fat,” suddenly “rolled out of his American Dearborn” and “inquired as to what they were saying in Mexico respecting its [New Mexico] cap
ture by the Americans without any resistance.” Unfazed, Ruxton replied, “There was but one opinion expressed—that General Armijo and the New Mexicans are a pack of arrant cowards; to which the former governor answered, ‘Adios! They don’t know that I had but 75 men to fight 3,000. What could I do?’ ”
After parting company with General Armijo, Ruxton continued up the Rio Grande, encountering from time to time the bodies of dead Mexicans massacred by Apache and Comanche, their corpses being picked over by flocks of repulsive zopilotes, or Mexican turkey vultures. Presently he came upon a laager, or encampment, of the First Missouri, which, to Ruxton’s Sandhurst-educated sensibilities, left much to be desired.
“From appearances, no one would have imagined this to be a military encampment,” he wrote later in a journal of his travels. “The tents were in a line, but there all uniformity ceased. The camp was strewn with the bones and offal of the cattle slaughtered for its supply, and not the slightest attention was made to keeping it clear from accumulations of filth. The men, unwashed and unshaven, were ragged and dirty, without uniforms, and dress as, and how, they pleased. They wandered about listless or were sitting in groups playing cards, and swearing and cursing, even at the officers, if they interfered to stop it (as I witnessed).”
These were serious enough charges, but Lieutenant Ruxton was just getting warmed up.
“The greatest irregularities constantly took place. Although [they were] in enemy country, sentries, or a guard, were voted unnecessary; and one fine day, during the time I was here, three Navajos ran off with a flock of eight hundred sheep belonging to the camp, killing two volunteers in charge of them. The most total want of discipline was apparent in everything.” Sandhurst it was not.
Now Ruxton got on his soapbox, as if he had drawn a crowd in Piccadilly Circus. “The American can never be made a soldier,” he exclaimed. “His constitution will not bear the restraint of discipline, neither will his very mistaken notions about liberty allow him to subject himself to its necessary control.”
Ruxton observed (correctly) that America had ample natural resources and easy opportunity for all; he concluded (incorrectly) that military service in the United States was “unpopular, and only resorted to by men who are too indolent to work, or whose bad characters prevent them seeking other employment.”
“Of drill and maneuver,” Ruxton lamented, “the volunteers have little or no idea. ‘Every man on his own hook,’ is their system.” But, he finally conceded, “These very men, however, were as full of fight as game cocks.”
What, if anything, the maligned Missourians would have made of Ruxton’s evaluation of them is not known, but after wining and dining him for several days they sent him on his way north toward Santa Fe, in the company of a military engineering detachment.
The Jornada del Muerto, which the main body of Volunteers entered on December 18, was pretty much as advertised, which is to say that it was an ordeal. “The Jornada being an elevated plain,” wrote Private Jacob Robinson, “the climate is extremely cold, and many of us suffered very much on our march through, being obliged to travel by night as well as by day.”
“Good as the road was,” remarked Lieutenant George Gibson, some of my oxen gave out, and were abandoned. We marched until about nine o’clock at night, when we camped on the open prairie.” And Lieutenant John T. Hughes told his diary, “In passing this dreadful desert, there was neither water to drink nor wood for fire. Hence it was not possible to prepare anything to eat.” At night, the wolves were so bold they would creep right up to the campfires, and men shooting them set off many false alarms of enemy attack.
The First Missouri departed the Jornada several days later at a place they came to call the Dead Men’s Camp, after two Mexican spies who were slain there by an American sentry. There, beside clear streams, they “feasted and reposed” and recruited their animals for a few days before moving off toward El Paso del Norte, fifty miles south, present-day site of Juárez, Mexico. On Christmas Eve, after a march of fifteen miles, they picked up the Rio Grande again and soon word came back from the forward reconnaissance that a considerable Mexican force was being assembled at El Paso, under a general with the familiar and imposing name of Ponce de León. There would be no bloodless conquest, then, as at Santa Fe, but the Volunteers “were in fine spirits” and “their blood was up.”
On Christmas Day, “a brilliant sun, rising above the Organ Mountains to the eastward, burst forth upon the world in all his effulgence.” So said Private Hughes. In celebration, “the men had turned frolick-some,” and some fired off their weapons, while others “sang the cheering songs of Yankee Doodle, and Hail Columbia.” The weather had turned pleasant, and they took up the march in the wide fertile valley of the Rio Grande, not expecting to meet the enemy until they entered the Great Pass itself, between the mountains that led into El Paso del Norte. The mood of the men matched the weather as they ambled along in route step, reins slack, casually laughing and boisterous, more like adventurers than man killers. In the distance were low-lying hills; thick, dried, brownish chaparral covered them like the fur of some bush-dwelling animal.
After eighteen miles they camped alongside an arm of the river called the Brazito. They were nine miles northwest of El Paso and Doniphan gave them the rest of the day off for Christmas. It was early yet, and many of the men were sent out to graze horses or gather water or wood for their supper fires. To the east and slightly south of them was a series of sandy hills beyond which rose the Organ Mountains; to their rear was the river. At this point the column was spread out for several miles along the Camino Real.
A detachment of cavalry scouts had brought in a handsome white stallion captured from a Mexican reconnaissance detail. Several officers, including Doniphan, were gambling for it in a game of three-card loo when an odd cloud of dust appeared on the southern horizon in the direction of El Paso. At first they thought it was prairie dust blown up by the wind, but it soon dissolved into a chilling tableau that must have shivered Doniphan to the bone. As the dust settled, it revealed the dressed infantry lines of a Mexican army, more than thirteen hundred strong, drawn up about half a mile away, accompanied by flags and banners and resplendent in their uniforms, as opposed to the ragged and bedraggled First Missouri, which looked like a rabble.
There was Mexican cavalry, too. As Private Hughes recalled it: “They exhibited a most gallant and imposing appearance, for the dragoons were dressed in a uniform of blue pantaloons, green coats trimmed with scarlet, and tall caps plated in front with brass, on the tops of which fantastically waved a plume of horse hair or buffalo’s tail. Their bright lances and swords glittered in the sheen of the sun. Thus marshaled, they paused for a moment.”
If this disagreeable development had nonplussed Doniphan he didn’t show it. “Boys,” the colonel said, throwing down his cards and jumping to his feet, “I held an invincible hand, but damned if I don’t have to play it out in steel now!” He buckled on his saber and began giving orders. Buglers blew the call to arms, but the men were scattered hither and yon, up and down the column and on all sides of the road. Some dropped their wood or water buckets or rushed their horses to the remuda, but others took their time, assuming it was just another of the false alarms that had been caused in recent nights by sentries shooting at threatening wolves.
If the Mexican commander had immediately marched on Doniphan he likely would have prevailed in victory for, as it was, only about 500 of 850 First Missourians were able to scramble into a line of battle. Worse, Doniphan was naked of artillery, since the regiment’s guns from Santa Fe had not yet caught up.
Instead, the Mexican general sent out a rider, dressed in all his martial finery, “who approached on a furious steed, bearing a black flag” tied to his lance, which, when he was sixty yards from the American line, “he waved gracefully in salutation.”* The flag, a pennant actually, was inscribed on one side with the slogan “Libertad o Muerte” (Liberty or Death) and on the other was a pair of skulls and crossbones. r />
Doniphan, who did not speak Spanish, sent out his interpreter, Thomas Caldwell, and his adjutant, James DeCourcy, to see what the man wanted. Turned out he wanted Colonel Doniphan to come with him into the Mexican lines and see General Ponce de León.
“If your general wants to see him, come and take him!” Caldwell told the Mexican, “unwittingly using the phrase of the Spartans at Thermopylae,” according to a lieutenant who witnessed the exchange.
This seemed to enrage the Mexican, who exclaimed, “Then we shall break your ranks and take him!” “Carajo! [A curse on you!] Prepare for a charge! We give no quarter, and we ask none!” he cried as he dashed back to his lines waving the black flag of death.
The episode was a welcome delay: as Caldwell translated the conversation to Doniphan, more and more American troops fell into line and prepared to receive the charge as infantry, in what would soon become the Battle of the Brazito. Several dozen slaves also joined the battle line, including one who belonged to Doniphan. There were two ranks in line, actually, and as they watched the Mexican army wheel right to fall full force on the American left flank they loaded and cocked their weapons. Then Doniphan gave them a curious order, nowhere to be found in the military handbooks.† “Prepare to squat!” he shouted, and the men, unsure of the meaning, thus prepared themselves, as the order was repeated by captains, lieutenants, and sergeants all down the line.
Forward marched the Mexican army as if on dress parade, with a band playing in the background. A brass six-pounder howitzer in the center of their formation began belching rounds that passed over the Americans. The Mexican dragoons, in their shakos and fine green-and-red-trimmed jackets, swooped down upon the American left but the Volunteers fired off a tremendous volley that knocked the head of the column to eternity. The rest wheeled and began to flee, pursued by a detachment of twenty First Missouri horsemen that Captain Reid had hastily assembled, which “hewed them to pieces with their sabers.”