Revolt at Taos: The New Mexican and Indian Insurrection of 1847

Western historian Crutchfield (The Way West) returns to a subject he previously explored in A Tragedy at Taos. This time, Crutchfield extends his investigation further than the reports of the prevailing Americans and Texans, delving deeper into the January 1847 Taos Revolt by pueblo Native Americans and New Mexicans, whose allegiances still lay primarily with Mexico despite the surrender of the armed forces of the former Mexican governor in August 1846 as part of the larger Mexican-American War. The assassination of Charles Bent, the newly appointed territorial governor of New Mexico, resulted in a large armed conflict of Taos Pueblo and Mexican-identifying peoples against the U.S. Army. Yet U.S. civil law was used to charge (and ultimately hang) leaders of the insurrection for treason against America after a jury trial by relatives of the American victims in May 1847. Crutchfield employs original documentation and period news reports to trace modern perceptions of the Taos Revolt as influenced by later writers, including novelist Willa Cather, whose Death Comes for the Archbishop vilified Taos priest Padre Antonio José Martinez.