Bloodless grand entry with no gun aimed – New Mexico State Quarter Coin

Today, the New Mexico State Quarter Coin remembers the General Kearney’s entry into Santa Fe and the beginnings of Fort Marcy 170 years ago.

From The National Magazine, A Monthly Journal of American History, August 1885 issue:

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To the Editor of the Magazine of Western History:

In your Magazine article on “Both Sides of the Rio Grande,” occurs a paragraph, p. 395, which is a misconception, which I would beg leave to advert to.

At our place under the hill (whose summit is Fort Marcy) we watered our garden by means of the Acequia coursing along its base from the east.

Keen briers of the tiny cactus splintered the gaiters of my lady from Columbus, as man, woman and lad clambered up the hill to this ancient fort one summer Sunday in Santa Fe, “in the sweet gone by and by.”

We gazed then and there to the south and west upon the spires of Placer mountains, and the shimmering, blue dome of the Sandia mountain, beyond which lies Albuquerque, on this side of the Rio Grande.

This lady (Lady de C. aforesaid) writes me from a distance, suggesting that the paragraph in “Both Sides of the Rio Grande,” page 395 of your Magazine of Western History, does not sound right, and sends me some entries which we had made in common once upon a time.

She had furnished entries for the late Colonel Meline (representative of the Cincinnati Commercial) — some points for letters republished in ‘Two Thousand Miles on Horseback.’

AS TO THE ENTRY OF KEARNEY IN ’46.

The Issue. — The article aforesaid seems “possessed” that General Kearney (General Sherman’s idol) walked into Santa Fe to the hills north and east of the city, where he built a fort, and after laying the city under range, walked down to the plaza, captured the city, and made proclamation, etc.

Date alleged, August 4.

Evidence.— The army of General K. carried its Cæsar and its commentaries. The grand entry (bloodless) occurred August 18. 1846.

Not a gun was aimed.

The head of the army entered about three o’clock in the afternoon, the rear, about six.

On the nineteenth orders were given to build the fort; the map was furnished on the twenty-first.

Work began August 23.

We learn that on the thirty-first of August there were thirty masons (of the territory) engaged.

When it is considered that General Kearney left Santa Fe for the Pacific on the second of September, it is said he died without the sight of the finished fort.

Two weeks and a day in the city — then over the hills and far away to San Diego.

In October, 1846, a topographical engineer writes of Fort Marcy and its proud flag towering above Santa Fe:

From the center of the plaza it is six hundred and sixty-four yards to the centre of the fort; the fort is from sixty to one hundred feet above the plaza.

Ten guns command the city. It was calculated for two hundred and eighty men.

The conquest of Santa Fe was not so much force of arms as barter and sale.

The American used policy and money.

Nothing so much amazed the peaceful provincial as the transition on the eighteenth of August, 1846, from the eagle of the cactus and serpent (but non-slaveholding) republic to the eagle of the United States of the north.

Not a musket, not even a cannon, aimed.

Trooping into the city the norsemen walked, waded through the crops, and some of the yeomanry ventured out cautiously to reconnoiter and to do the best in the premises.

My informant then and there that day saw it was Soldados amid his grain and started to run, but was pursued and overhauled.

“What is your name?”

With lively fear of being shot, the name was forthcoming.

“Report, sir, at the palace on Thursday.”

Witness, wondering, wandered home, made his will, and then confessed.

He obeyed the order at the palace which had been made on the march amid the milpa fields that day.

The oficial looked at his notes.

“How much was your milpa damaged by the army?”

“Nothing, your Excellency,” faltered the dazed ranchero.

In ten minutes a sum at least three times the actual damage was placed into the trembling hands of the citizen, who retired doubly subjugated.

“Our armies pay their way and your religious rights are respected , your wives and daughters are respected.”

This was the true taking into possession of New Mexico.

That act was conquest (condensed letter for the type of history).

That act, with a ration and a per diem at the quartermaster’s for all who work (and their name was legion who gladly labored) are the two aeta.

In the new order of things at Santa Fe, with the fort removed to a central location, with the streets and avenues named, I find our old place stood upon Washington street, or the old Taos road, due east of the capitol.

Yours truly,

Theodore S. Greiner, Chicago, 324 W. Randolph street, June 29, 1885.

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More information on the beginnings of Fort Marcy, a footnote in The Expeditions of Zebulon Pike by Edward Coues, published in 1895, included:

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Santa Fe is not “on the Rio Grande,” as often loosely said, but at least 20 m. (direct) E. of that river, and considerably further than this up from the mouth of the small stream on which it is situated, in a rather out-of-the-way place.

This creek, Rio de Santa Fe, or Rio Chacito, comes down from the lofty Santa Fe mts. under which the town nestles, and runs with a general S. W. course into the Rio Grande between the town of Pena Blanca and the old pueblo of Cochiti—places 3 m. apart.

Cochiti is a Keresan pueblo on the W. bank of the Rio Grande; present pop. perhaps 250.

Pena Blanca, often called Pina Blanca, on the E. bank, is a place where the Rio Grande can be forded, to take the old road from Santa Fe to Fort Wingate.

Santa Fe was first entered and occupied by the Army of the West under General Stephen Watts Kearny, Aug. 18th, 1846—his cowardly Excellency Don Manuel Armijo having blustered and promptly evacuated the place on the approach of our forces.

The site of Fort Marcy was selected by Lieutenants W. H. Emory and J. F. Gilmer, in a commanding position 600 yards from the plaza of the town, and the work began on the 23d.

On Sept. 22d General Kearny issued his manifesto for the government of New Mexico, under the authority of the President of the United States; appointing as governor Charles Bent (soon afterward cruelly massacred at Taos), and as secretary Donaciano Vigil; other territorial officers appointed were Richard Dallum, Francis P. Blair, Charles Blummer, Eugene Lertensdorfer, Joab Houghton, Antonio José Otero, and Carl Bavbien—the last three as judges of the supreme court.

A copy of the original document, in Spanish, is given in Lieutenant J. W. Abert’s report Ex. Doc. No. 41, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., pub. 1848, p. 453.

The population of Santa Fe at that time was somewhere about 3,000; it is now only a little over 6,000.

It was probably the site of a pueblo before 1500; but the present town has no authentic history back of 1608, when it was founded by Juan de Onate as a capital or seat of government.

The town may boast an unbroken record as such from that day to this, in spite of changing hands several times.

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The New Mexico State Quarter Coin shows with an image of Fort Marcy, circa 1868.

New Mexico State Quarter Coin