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“READY FOR ANY DUTY, UNTIRING, AND FULL OF ENERGY” Samuel F. Tappan Takes Up the Hunt for the Espinosas |
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“The summer of 1863,” wrote Frank Hall, early Colorado legislator and later historian, “was marked by a protracted drouth which dried up the streams, and prevented growth of crops in the limited area then cultivated.” Then, “[e]arlier than usual, about the middle of October, one of the severest winters ever known in this latitude set in, with frequent heavy snows and very cold weather.”1
The extremes were indeed remarkable, since the winter of 1862–63 had been unusually mild and spring had come delightfully early.2 But by the beginning of August the scorch of summer was so severe it had begun to wear down the spirits of many, including an editorialist for the Weekly Commonwealth:
Saturday morning came in close and murky as usual for the last few days. Before 9 o’clock the mercury was at 94. A few dark clouds casting heavy shadows towards the mountains and some bilious looking thunderheads peeping from behind the range, gave a slight promise of the long wished rain. About noon, the clouds dripped a little, just enough to wet a handkerchief, and then the rainy season passed inconveniently over. We resigned ourself [sic] to our fate in a very melancholy mood.3
Yet, before that month was out, signs of wintry weather were already showing themselves around the Front Range. “There was frost night before last on Clear Creek, six miles west of here,” reported the Rocky Mountain News Daily on August 26, “and several inches of snow fell on the nearer mountains.”4 We do not know what conditions were like in the remote San Luís Valley where, two days before the News spoke of frost and snow, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel F. Tappan rode into Fort Garland to assume command.5 Tappan was relieving First Lieutenant William B. Moore, who had taken temporary charge of the post after Captain Davidson, of the E. Wayne Eaton affair, relinquished it twelve days previously, pending Tappan’s arrival.6
The onset of winter was always unpredictable in the San Luís. Frost was common in September and October and heavy snowfalls were erratic, sometimes holding off till December and on other occasions coming in early October, at times whitening the mountains while leaving the valley floor untouched. Sometimes snows were very light or even nonexistent until January, and then they could persist far into the spring months. The winters were almost always cold and blustery.7 But nothing in the records suggests anything but a sunny and agreeable clime on the day Samuel Tappan came to Garland.
Tappan was not the kind of man to shrink from wind, weather, or hard duty. He was a slight but still imposing figure of medium size, and with a penetrating gaze. A heavy mane of dark hair swept up like wings from a part low on the left side of his head, complemented by a thick mustache and a rounded chin that was somewhat withdrawn but strengthened nonetheless by a firm, full-lipped mouth and evenly trimmed chin-whiskers. His manner conveyed an impression of coolness and composure, touched perhaps with a faint suggestion of superiority.
Technically the San Luís was part of the Eastern Ute Indian Reservation, whose agency, under Lafayette Head, was located at Conejos. Fort Garland had originally been built in 1858, successor to Fort Massachusetts, the first military post in what was to become Colorado. The purpose of Massachusetts was to protect the largely Hispano inhabitants of the valley from the Utes and to guard the passes through the Sangres. But Massachusetts had turned out to be badly placed in a swampy, unhealthy area and six years later was abandoned in favor of Garland—though some would question whether the change was beneficial. With its short summers and long winters, Garland was generally considered the least desirable post in the entire Southwest.8
After initially resisting encroachment by Hispanos from northern New Mexico,9 the Utes had by 1863 begun grudgingly to accept the inevitable, that with increasing immigration from the south by Hispanos and from the north and east by Americans, they would eventually lose control of the San Luís. As a matter of fact, the authorities of Colorado Territory in 1863 were already laying plans for a treaty with the Utes that would push them westward into the San Juan Mountains.
Providing military protection for an upcoming treaty conference with the Eastern bands of Utes10 at the Conejos agency was one of the assignments Tappan had been sent to Fort Garland to carry out.11 Another was to end what he termed “La Penitente … self torturing of Mexicans.”12 Near the top of the list,13 however, was “Capturing Espanosas [sic] who had murdered 32 persons.”14 Presumably these orders had been given him by Colonel Chivington, commander of the Colorado District, in consultation with Governor Evans. Capturing or killing the Espinosas had now become one of the highest priorities of the Territorial government.
Tappan and Chivington were bitter enemies at this time and it is not difficult to glimpse a measure of spite in Chivington’s selection of his second in command, a highly accomplished and well-regarded officer carrying the rank of lieutenant colonel, to take charge of the worst post in the Southwest usually commanded by a captain, a rank two grades inferior to Tappan’s. But on the other hand, the Espinosas were now big game—the biggest in Colorado—and perhaps Evans, if not Chivington, thought Tappan the officer best equipped to bring them down.
Samuel Tappan is an unjustly neglected figure in the history of the American West, but in his own time was widely respected, and as cordially disliked, as a military officer, journalist, antislavery activist, and advocate for the rights of Native Americans. This item from the Weekly Commonwealth, published a little over a year before he arrived at Fort Garland, expresses the positive opinion many of his contemporaries held of him:
Lieut.-Colonel S. F. Tappan.
We are very highly gratified to hear from both officers and men of the First Regiment, the highest ecomiums [sic] upon the character and conduct of this most excellent officer.
Col. Tappan entered the service as a Captain, at a time when the services of true men were greatly needed. He entered it with great diffidence, modestly doubting his own ability to do his full duty as an officer, on account of his previous ignorance of military affairs.
But from the moment he entered the service, he applied himself diligently to the work of mastering his profession.—Ready for any duty, untiring, and full of energy, he has been steadily growing in ability, and in the affection of both officers and men of his command.
The testimony of those of the Regiment whom we have seen is unanimous in his praise as an officer and a gentleman.
At the battles in which the Regiment was engaged, he exhibited great coolness and bravery, and proved himself to be the right man in the right place.
Upon the resignation of Col. … Slough [first commander of the regiment] Col. Tappan modestly refused the appointment tendered him of the Colonelcy of the regiment—his right according to his rank—and himself urged the appointment of Major Chivington to the place. … He is beloved and honored by his … Regiment.15
Ovando Hollister, who served under Tappan during the Texan invasion and observed him at the battle of Pigeon’s Ranch on March 28, 1862, wrote of the man’s courage under fire, “Lieut. Colonel Tappan sat his horse during the [enemy] charge, leisurely loading and firing his pistols as if rabbit hunting.”16
But John Chivington was not among Tappan’s admirers. Though Tappan had performed well during the 1862 battles, Chivington had emerged as Colorado’s greatest hero. Before Colonel Slough’s resignation he had ached to command the regiment and then, gaining that position owing to Tappan’s deference, had longed to control the District of Colorado. No sooner did he reach that goal than he hankered to be promoted general. Though a Methodist minister, Chivington was a rough, burly, belligerent character whose ambition knew no bounds—just the sort of fellow the ruffians of the First Colorado preferred.17
Chivington’s animus toward Tappan probably stemmed from the fact he owed Tappan his place at the head of the regiment. By stepping aside and permitting Chivington to assume a command that was justly his, Tappan had forced Chivington into an obligation, and had also, perhaps not unintentionally, come off looking like a man of high character while exposing Chivington’s unseemly greed for advancement. Nothing annoys a swaggerer like owing a favor to someone, especially if that someone is seen as conniving and perhaps disingenuous. Perhaps the act Tappan had meant to be interpreted as self-abnegation had looked to Chivington more like hypocrisy and a case of invidious comparison. Whatever the reasons, the two were now enemies, and Tappan, however modest, was not above spitting venom at his superior. Historian Duane Smith quoted the following letter Tappan wrote to Chivington:
I understand that you have in the presence of several [people] threatened if the officers of our regiment meet together to take into consideration the affairs of the regiment and I am among them I shall be put in irons. … I confess that I am exceedingly annoyed and excited to anger when I hear that you in my absence threatened me with this and that you speak of me with contempt. I most earnestly and sincerely protest against such proceedings. … Do not exercise the power conferred upon you to gratify your personal spite and sacrifice the interests of our country for the gratification of your political ambitions.18
Tappan came by his lofty principles honestly; he was a Yankee abolitionist, born at Manchester, Massachusetts, in 1831.19 The Tappans were a prominent New England clan, counting among their ranks clergymen, politicians, inventors, writers, poets, philanthropists, educators, and businessmen. Despite these impressive connections, young Sam Tappan of Manchester received a common school education and afterward took up the lowly cabinet-making trade.
But in 1848 he entered a mercantile house in Boston and while there came under the influence of such abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Galvanized by these mentors against the institution of slavery and appalled by enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, a radicalized Tappan emigrated to Kansas in 1854, where he became one of the founders of the Free State settlement of Lawrence. There he involved himself in the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves pass through Kansas into the Northern states. It was not long before he came into conflict with proslavery Border Ruffians from Missouri, with whom Free Soilers were contending for supremacy in Kansas Territory.20 During this period Tappan also became a correspondent for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, reporting on the struggles in “Bleeding Kansas.”
Tappan associated himself with the Emigrant Aid Society and helped smuggle Sharps rifles (named Beecher’s Bibles for the prominent abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher) to Free Soil settlers. He performed a number of duties in the various legislative bodies associated with the forging of a Free State constitution for Kansas and contributed materially to the eventual overthrow of the proslavery faction and the admission of Kansas to the Union as a state where slavery was prohibited.
In July 1860, Tappan, infected with Pike’s Peak gold fever, left Kansas for Colorado. “Arriving in Denver I found the city actually ruled by desperate characters and murders of frequent occurrence,” Tappan wrote in an 1895 autobiographical sketch. “Becoming connected with the Daily Herald21 I antagonized the rowdy element by advocating the organization of a city government, and late in Dec. 1860, was mobbed by them, cut with bowie knives, a crowd gathered and the mob dispersed.”22
After this temporary diversion into investigative journalism and the establishment of law and order, Tappan finally went looking for gold in the Central City diggings.23 His cousins Lewis and George Tappan came to Denver, too, and, electing to supply miners rather than try mining themselves, soon established one of the city’s best-known general stores; Lewis was also one of the founders of El Paso County.24
With the coming of the Civil War, Sam Tappan found himself “commissioned to enlist a company of infantry volunteers for the war,” which he succeeded in doing, only to run afoul of Denver’s lawless element once again, this time a gang led by gambler and Rebel sympathizer Charley Harrison, who would one day perish at the hands of Osage Indians while trying to conquer Colorado for the Confederacy.25 In August 1861, Tappan was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers in which Chivington held the rank of major.
After the defeat of the Texans, Tappan was assigned to Fort Scott26 in Kansas and then to command of Fort Lyon27 on the Arkansas River in the plains country of Colorado Territory. When the Firsters were officially designated a cavalry unit, Tappan returned to Denver to mount and drill them; he was engaged in that duty when he was ordered to assume command of Garland. He marched to Garland “with 400 cavalry, 200 infantry and a Battery.”28
While Tappan was settling in at Garland, Governor Evans was finalizing arrangements for the upcoming treaty conference with the Utes at the Conejos agency. The council was set for October 1 and much of Tappan’s attention during September must have been devoted to planning military security for the conclave; in mid-September he was also forced to make a “flying visit” to Conejos to prevent “a big fight … between several hundred Kiowas and a large body of Utes” evidently beginning to gather for the conference;29 he would have had little time to devote to his mission of hunting down the Espinosas. Set to attend the treaty-making were Evans, Chivington, and Lafayette Head; Simeon Whiteley, agent for the Ute Western bands; Michael Steck, New Mexico’s superintendent of Indian Affairs; and John Nicolay, President Lincoln’s secretary—quite a collection of luminaries. They had gathered at Fort Garland by September 28 and on the morning of September 30, left the post for the conference, with Tappan in command of Companies D, E, and I of the First Colorado and the Right Section of McClain’s Colorado Battery.30
An unverified rumor has persisted over the years that the Espinosas, angered by Evans’s refusal to pardon them as Felipe’s recent letter31 had demanded, hoped somehow to penetrate the Conejos treaty conference in order to assassinate the governor or, failing that, to ambush him on the road.32 If indeed they formed such plans, Felipe and his nephew failed to carry them out and the treaty conference proceeded without interruption, though a Mexican was murdered the day before the council opened, apparently by a soldier.33
Reporting from the treaty-making site, “Battery” described the tense scene at the beginning of the conference:
The governor, Col. Chivington, Lieut. Col. Tappan, and other prominent officers of the Colorado troops are here.
It is the current belief of those who ought to know, that the Utes will make no acceptable treaty unless force be used to compel them to; and is equally the general opinion that force will be used. So the prospect for a fight is good.
There are but few Indians to be seen in or about town as yet, although it is said there are not less than five or six thousand encamped on the creeks and in the canyons not many miles off. Major Head, Indian Agent, has stated there would be twenty-five thousand on hand on the day appointed for the treaty.
We are expecting six companies of cavalry and a battery of artillery from Fort Union, which, added to the troops already here, will make a force capable of whipping two Ute nations.34
Nothing so dramatic transpired, however. Of all the Indian bands invited, Agent Whiteley’s Western Utes remained in the mountains; some Capotes and Weenuches started for Conejos but then changed their minds and returned home; and fifteen hundred Tabeguaches attended, along with one Capote chief and three Muache chiefs who, because their bands had not appeared in numbers, could not become parties to any agreement made.
A treaty was successfully negotiated and signing occurred on October 7.35 Signatories included Governor Evans, Steck, Head, and Whitely, and Ute chiefs Red Color, Blue Flower, Colorow, Arrow (Ouray), One That Slides Under the Snow, Blue River, Red Wind, Lock of Hair, White Warm, and Left Hand. Witnessing the signing were Nicolay and Charles E. Phillips, assistant secretary to the treaty commission; Chivington, Tappan, and two captains of the First Colorado; and interpreters Juan V. Valdez, Bernardo Sánchez, and Amador Sánchez.36
By the terms of the treaty the Tabeguaches relinquished all their lands east of the Continental Divide plus Middle Park. In exchange for their new, more restricted western reservation the Utes received annuities, provisions, and livestock. Essentially the ceded lands were those already occupied by Anglo and Hispano settlers and miners and their towns.37
An editorialist for the Weekly Commonwealth lauded the work of the treaty commissioners, noting with enthusiasm that the ceded lands amounted to an area equal to one-third of Colorado Territory and that “the lower part of the San Luís valley will be surveyed as soon as possible and opened to settlement,”38 a consummation long devoutly wished by land-hungry Anglos and one certain to visit even more grief on Hispano colonists already bedeviled by Territorial taxes, fears of military conscription, and the threatened loss of their Indian slaves.
Tappan attracted favorable notice throughout the proceedings. “Typo” wrote that the lieutenant colonel drilled the military units “about every day” during the week and at one point caused six rounds each of shell and canister to be fired by the Battery in the presence of the Indians, the sights and sounds of which “completely astonished” the Utes. He further confided the firing was “indeed splendid, considering that it was the first time … the boys had practiced” with either type of projectile.39
“Typo’s” rival, “Battery,” agreed that Tappan “kept [the troops] pretty busily drilling most of the time, a part of the military science he thoroughly understands.”40 It would be interesting to know how he and Chivington, given their differences, managed to get along, but perhaps, surrounded by dignitaries both white and red, they contrived to offer an appearance of congeniality. “Typo” offered a counterintuitive glimpse of a festive sing-along by the famously truculent Chivington and others “at Major Head’s Plaza,” but Tappan’s name is conspicuously missing from the list of genial choristers. “The welkin was made to ring in the chorus of ‘Rally Round the Flag, Boys,’ ” the correspondent exulted.41
In their respective articles both reporters confessed they had looked forward to the Conejos visit hoping to enjoy the region’s famous fandangos and pretty señoritas—hopes that were dashed when they learned the bad conduct of the troops stationed there over the previous weeks had left all Americans in bad odor with the local population. “Thus it is,” lamented “Typo,” “that the sins of the few are visited upon the many.”42
“Battery’s” article, filed on October 12 after the troops had returned to Fort Garland, covered a number of other incidents of the conference, ending with the observation, “We have been favored with a little excitement,”43 a remark that would prove a considerable understatement once the nature of the excitement revealed itself. “Typo,” also filing on the twelfth, elucidated: “For the past ten days there has [sic] been several rumors floating around about one or two persons having been shot at in the neighborhood of Sangre de Cristo Creek.”44
In fact the Espinosas had struck again, this time only a few miles from Fort Garland itself, and now Sam Tappan would turn his whole attention back to the most vital task he had been sent to the San Luís to perform: hunting down the renegades and bringing an end to their campaign of terror.
NOTES
1. Hall, History of the State of Colorado, I: 306.
3. Weekly Commonwealth, August 6, 1863.
4. Rocky Mountain News Daily, August 26, 1863.
5. Weekly Commonwealth, September 3, 1863.
6. Fort Garland Commanders by Dates in Command, http://www.fortgarlandmuseumfriends.com/Officers.htm, accessed May 18, 2008 (no longer available as of March 3, 2013).
7. Walter Clemmons, Mrs. Walter Clemmons et al., “Winter in the San Luis Valley,” The San Luis Valley Historian, Vol. II, No. 1 (Winter 1970): 34–38.
8. Thompson, New Mexico Territory During the Civil War, 39.
9. Pauline S. Sharp, “Kit Carson at Fort Garland, C.T.,” The San Luis Valley Historian, Vol. II, No. 2 (Spring 1970): 12: “By the 1850’s New Mexican settlers … were moving up the well-traveled trails from Santa Fe and Taos, Ojo Caliente and El Rito, even Abiquiú, into the land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. … Many had come before them as settlers on the two large land grants [the Sangre de Cristo and Conejos grants] given to wealthy, influential citizens who, in order to validate the grants, were to have settlers on them within ten years. Thus were the northern frontiers of New Mexico to be colonized.” As we saw in Chapter 7, the Espinosas of El Rito were among those settlers. The plaza of San Luís, fifteen miles south of Garland, was the earliest Hispano settlement. Many followed, including the Espinosas’ plaza of San Rafael. The residents of all these communities, together with the few Anglo settlers in the area—especially the ranchers on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristos along the Culebra and Huerfano rivers and in the Spanish Peaks country—relied on the protection afforded by Fort Garland.
10. Virginia McConnell Simmons, The Ute Indians Indians of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000), 18, 112. Technically the post served only the Muache Utes but many Tabeguaches used it also. There were thirteen Ute bands. Other than the two mentioned, these were the Pahvant, Moanunt, Sanpits, Timpagonots, Uintah, Seuvarits, Yampa, Parianuche, Sabuagana, Weenuche, and Capote.
11. Negative copy of holograph of note of Tappan headed, “Six Months at Fort Garland,” MSS 667, FF2, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society.
12. Ibid. This attempt to prevent the ceremonial mutilations practiced by the Santa Hermandad does not seem to have produced much in the way of results. Quintana, Pobladores, 75, recounts an undated occasion when, one Good Friday, a cavalry troop sent from Fort Garland attempted to break up a Penitente crucifixion reenactment. The soldiers arrived at the point in the ceremony when the Hermanos, representing their anguish over the “death” of the “crucified” and perhaps also the earthquake and storm said to have followed the passion of Christ on the cross, performed the tinieblas, a loud outcry and rattling of chains and wooden noisemakers called matracas. The tumult frightened the troop horses, which became unmanageable and unseated many of their riders. Simmons, “The Penitentes,” 17, relates the same incident. It is a measure of Anglo misunderstanding of the practices of the Penitentes that the Territorial government thought it best to try to put an end to them. Another item on Tappan’s list was “securing release of Navajo Indians held as slaves,” also an Anglo move to wipe out a traditional Hispano practice. There is no evidence Tappan attempted to carry out this order.
13. Ibid. Dealing with the Espinosas was the second task on Tappan’s list. The first was to “execute a Mexican soldier for murder.” However, Tappan, a man of firm principles, believed the soldier charged with murder had not been legally tried and refused to execute him on grounds the act would have been unconstitutional. He claimed his decision was later upheld by the US Supreme Court after Secretary of War Stanton repealed the order of execution and two acts of Congress sustained Stanton’s position. It is interesting that Tappan, like Eaton before him, believed Hispanos were American citizens who deserved equal protection under the laws.
14. Tappan, “Six Months at Fort Garland.”
15. Weekly Commonwealth, September 25, 1862.
16. Hollister, Boldly They Rode, 70.
17. Smith, The Birth of Colorado, 113. Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, 205, note 45, gives this biographical portrait of Chivington: “John Milton Chivington, who left his pulpit to take up the sword during the Civil War, was born near Lebanon, Ohio, on January 27, 1821. He died in Denver … October 4, 1894. [He] joined the conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Pleasant Green, Cooper County, Missouri, and was ordained a preacher in 1848. A powerful and persuasive personality in camp meetings in Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska, [he] moved to Denver in 1860 and became presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain conference. Opposed to slavery on principle, [he] joined the army at the outbreak of the war.” Keleher quotes a historian of the Colorado Volunteers, Dr. William Clarke Whitford: “Chivington developed extraordinary military ability, although he had had no military training before he abandoned the pulpit for the battlefield. In action he became the incarnation of war. The bravest of the brave, a giant in stature and a whirlwind in strife, he had, also, the rather unusual qualities that go to make soldiers personally love such a leader, and eager to follow him into the jaws of death.” Chivington would, on November 29, 1864, lead the infamous attack on the camp of peaceful Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado, a controversial act he defended to his dying day as a heroic battle with dangerous hostiles. Other men who had been involved in the Espinosa affair were also present at Sand Creek, including George L. Shoup, by then a colonel; Lieutenant Luther Wilson; Captain John McCannon; and Joseph Lamb. Tappan had argued with Chivington against the attack and later was appointed head of a military commission investigating the colonel’s conduct. Chivington was condemned for the Sand Creek Massacre but resigned from the army and, thanks to a general amnesty at war’s end, suffered no penalty. He died admired and respected by many white Coloradans.
18. Ibid. Regrettably Smith does not give the date of this letter or describe the particular circumstances that occasioned it. From internal evidence it was penned some time after the date when Tappan deferred to Chivington, yielding command of the regiment to the latter.
19. Tappan, Samuel F., unpublished autobiography, Kansas State Historical Society, Manuscript Department, Misc. Tap–Tra; also http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/sftappan.html, accessed March 15, 2010 (no longer available as of March 3, 2013).
20. Ibid.
21. Evidently the Daily Herald of New York City.
22. Ibid.
23. Smith, The Birth of Colorado, 113.
25. Ibid. Tappan wrote that he had brought his company into Denver and encamped them when “the roughs made an attack upon my sentinel but were soon arrested, and released upon their paroles. I then disarmed the city taking all the rifles and muskets, also ammunition, I could find[,] giving receipts for them. That night [the] sentry [was] again attacked and [the] shot came from the rear of Charles Harrison’s saloon gambling hall and theatre. I immediately entered the hall and ordered the crowd to disperse, about 500, disarming all I did not know as loyal and arresting Harrison … and others, taking them to camp, there keeping them for about a month and then surrendering them to the US Marshall [sic].” This account contains so much one-man derring-do as to raise suspicions about its veracity. No other source mentions such a showdown with Harrison. Hollister, Boldly They Rode, 4, says, “collisions” with the “town secesh” sometimes occurred, “but they never resulted in anything serious.” Hollister, 6, quotes an undated newspaper report that “Capt. S.F. Tappan” and his 101 men of Company B had arrived in Denver “from the mountains.” For Harrison’s fate see Chapter 3.
26. Ibid.
27. Weekly Commonwealth, July 30, 1863.
28. Tappan, “Six Months at Fort Garland.”
29. Weekly Commonwealth, September 17, 1863.
30. Rocky Mountain News Weekly, October 21, 1863.
31. See Chapter 10.
32. Simmons, The San Luís Valley, 142; Secrest, “The ‘Bloody Espinosas,’” 13; Taylor, Colorado South of the Border, 213, says Evans and Chivington came into the San Luís not for the Ute conference but to “facilitate the hunt” for the Espinosas and that Felipe and his nephew planned to grab Evans “between Greenhorn and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains,” demand that he pardon them, and kill him if he refused. Secrest writes that Chivington and Evans “attempted to salve the growing fears over the ongoing murders” and transferred Company I of the Second Colorado Volunteers, which had been ordered to protect the Cañon City vicinity from the Espinosas in April, to Conejos “to protect Evans and Chivington, there to remain all winter to calm the populace and try to catch the Espinosas.” Newspaper accounts of the time, however, show that elements of the First Colorado Cavalry had been stationed in Conejos for some time (see Chapter 10, this volume) and that army elements also remained in the area after the treaty conference. Scott, Tom Tobin and the Bloody Espinosas, 122–124, again quoting from an “Espinosa diary” that is not known to exist, gives an extensive and detailed description of how the two supposedly plotted to kill the governor. Tobin, “The Capture of the Espinosas,” 61, says, “While the Governor was at Major Head’s [for the Ute conference], [the Espinosas] saw him through the window at Major Head’s but did not know the Governor [by sight]. [They] came to the Sangre de Christo [sic] Mountains to head off the Governor and see if he would pardon [them], and, if not, kill him.”
33. Weekly Commonwealth, October 28, 1863, story dated October 12. Was this the soldier Tappan mentioned as accused of murder in his note “Six Months at Fort Garland”? Tappan referred to this soldier as a Mexican, and “Battery,” in mentioning the incident in his October 28 bulletin to the newspaper, makes it clear the killer was supposed to be an Anglo: “I know that there are soldiers mean enough to do almost anything, but I believe they study their own interests too much to be committing the murders … that are charged to them.—While they behave themselves they can have all the fun they want, and be on good terms with the inhabitants, have no privilege denied them, and have every desire gratified. On the contrary, they make themselves a terror to the people; the women leave or hide, their men are [surly?], and the ‘fandangos’ broken up. It seems to me that Colorado soldiers appreciate this, and are not such fools as to cut short their only fun and frolic merely from an ambition to cut a ‘greaser’s’ throat.” If indeed there were mysterious murders roundabout Conejos at this time, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the culprits were the Espinosas, who had promised to “commence a war of extermination against Mexicans and Americans” if they were not pardoned (see Chapter 10).
34. Weekly Commonwealth, October 15, 1863.
35. The text of the treaty may be found online at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/uta0856.htm, accessed March 3, 2013. It was ratified March 25, 1864, and proclaimed December 14, 1864.
36. Ibid.
37. Simmons, The Ute Indians, 117–118.
38. Weekly Commonwealth, October 22, 1863.
39. Rocky Mountain News Weekly, October 21, 1863.
40. Weekly Commonwealth, October 28, 1863.
41. Rocky Mountain News Weekly, October 21, 1863.
42. Ibid.
43. Weekly Commonwealth, October 28, 1863.
44. Rocky Mountain News Weekly, October 21, 1863.