Cantonment Burgwin, New Mexico 1852-1860

Excerpt from Arizona and the West (17:1, 1973)

Between the Mexican War and the Civil War the United States Army, of an authorized strength slightly over 10,000 officers and men, was scattered among some one hundred posts from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Few army installations corresponded so closely to the popular notion of a western fort and the functions of its garrison as Cantonment Burgwin, a tiny post near Taos, New Mexico. Built for defense and not comfort, there was but one gate and no windows in the outer wall. No hostile Indians could hope to overrun such a classically designed fortification. During the critical era of the 1850s, expeditions from the post forced raiding Indians further into the mountains and freed the settlers around Taos from the fear of depredations. The military contingent at Cantonment Burgwin also assured against the danger of another uprising by the local New Mexicans, similar to the Taos Revolt in February of 1847. Though small, unpretentious, and relatively insignificant, Burgwin illuminated the special problems of remote, small, short-lived installations throughout the West.

United States officials recognized the strategic significance of the Taos area soon after their conquest of the region in the Mexican War. Located between the deep Rio Grande gorge and the imposing Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies, the Taos Valley provided an important route from Santa Fe north into Colorado. Roads leading west from the Santa Fe Trail also passed nearby. Moreover, the 1847 Taos Revolt and subsequent reports of unrest demonstrated the intensity of anti-United States feeling which persisted among both Pueblo Indian and Mexican residents of the area. Only a strong military force could prevent another bloody uprising. Finally, attacks from the Utes, Jicarilla Apaches, and Comanches constantly menaced the northern New Mexico frontier, and Taos provided a convenient staging point for expeditions sent to chastise these marauders.

Renewed consideration of the region's strategic importance came early in August of 1852 when Colonel E. V. Sumner, commanding the Ninth Military Department, visited Taos. Reorganizing territorial defenses had occupied him almost continuously since arriving in the Southwest just over a year earlier. Having located his headquarters at Fort Union, sixty miles east of Taos along the Santa Fe Trail, he was now selecting sites at which smaller contingents could be stationed. Sumner also knew that soldiers had stayed in the Taos area after suppressing the 1847 uprising, occupying rented quarters for nearly five years. Activities had been sufficiently infrequent and inconclusive, however, that military authorities often doubted the need for their presence. As part of his reorganization plan, Sumner himself had closed the installation just two months before, in June, 1852. Its garrison had gone north to found Fort Massachusetts on the northeastern edge of the barren San Luis Valley in southern Colorado.

The withdrawal was only temporary, however, for in August Sumner was ready to establish a new post in the Taos area. To begin the work he selected Company I, First Dragoons, commanded by an 1850 West Point graduate, Lieutenant Robert Ransom, Jr. Ransom arrived at the site on August 7 and probably conferred with Sumner for two or three days before the latter prepared a letter, on the tenth, specifying the site. On his return to Fort Union, Sumner issued General Orders No. 33, dated August 14, directing the founding of Cantonment Burgwin. Lieutenant Ransom officially established the post two days later. The name honored Captain John H. K. Burgwin, who died during the 1847 fighting to retake Taos Pueblo; the term cantonment vaguely suggested less permanence than a fort but more than a camp.

Sumner himself selected the precise location for the new post. In keeping with his desire to keep soldiers away from population centers, he directed Ransom to station his company at the junction of two small streams, the Rito de la Olla (Pot Creek) and the Rio Grande del Rancho, some ten miles southeast of Taos and fifteen miles east of the Rio Grande. Several factors favored this site. It stood among the main wagon road from Santa Fe to Taos and north into Colorado, the protection of which was a major military objective. Moreover, the nearest settlement was Talpa, about three miles to the west; two miles further was the village of Ranchos de Taos, which boasted the closest bar. A long ride was needed to reach the larger town of Don Fernando de Taos. Since no one lived in the immediate vicinity, the need to purchase land or declare a military reservation never developed. Government livestock could graze freely on the rich grass covering the valley floor. Water was plentiful. But such relative remoteness also had its drawbacks, especially for the soldiers. "Surrounded by mountains," wrote Private James A. Bennett of Ransom's company, it looked "as though we were shut out of the world."

Sumner also specified the design and suggested the immediate mission of the new cantonment. Eight privates under a non-commissioned officer were to begin cutting hay immediately, while the remaining three dozen men started erecting barracks and stables. The commander provided plans for the buildings, using a design which could be put up quickly and at little expense. Necessary tools would soon arrive from Fort Union. Apparently Sumner feared imminent trouble in the area, for he also authorized Ransom to use his own discretion in deciding whether to aid local officials. In any case, he was to accompany the men on any mission. Leaving the young officer and his company to begin work, the district commander returned to Fort Union with assurances that he would be back the following month.

Construction activities proceeded rapidly during the late summer despite problems of supply and the amount of work required. Sumner promised to send the needed tools and equipment immediately, but several weeks apparently passed before sufficient [equipment] had arrived to begin constructing quarters, stables, storehouses, and other buildings. Then trees had to be felled, lumber cut, walls erected, and mud roofs laid and allowed to dry. Despite many difficulties, the project had been completed by early November, before the cold winter set in.

The finished complex followed a pattern repeated in forts throughout the West. As Private Bennett, who served in several different locations, noted, it showed "what a fort is like in this country." Logs standing next to each other created an impregnable, windowless facade measuring 120 feet north to south by 220 feet east to west. Eight-inch thick clay roofs covered the inside rooms, whose adobe chimneys gave the false impression of parapets. Inside were two plazas separated by a row of rooms and connected by a passageway. The low-ceilinged rooms facing onto the larger, northernmost court contained quarters, mess hall, kitchen, and offices. The second, slightly smaller compound originally stabled the unit's horses, but it may later have provided barracks as well. Outside, several smaller buildings (perhaps added later) contained officers quarters, a small dispensary, the guard house, and laundresses' rooms. A sutler opened his store just across Pot Creek.

The hardships of life in northern New Mexico increased with the arrival of winter. "The wind whistles loudly by us," Bennett wrote in his diary the first day of 1853. "Snow beats against the windows...the mountain which overhangs us and towers almost to the skies is clothed in its garb of white snow and dark evergreen foliage. The drooping branches of these trees cast a sombre hue upon the rocky clefts upon which the trees are rooted. The long dismal howl of wolves is heard." Such difficult conditions only accentuated the morale problems common to all Western forts. Several men deserted almost as soon as the troops arrived, and others followed regularly.

The first of what became a long series of Indian campaigns operating at least in part from Fort Burgwin began late in February of 1854 when a party of Utes raided the settlement at Culebra north of Taos and stole thirty horses. No sooner did Major [George A. H.] Blake learn of the attack than he ordered sixty dragoons under Brevet Major Thompson and Lieutenant John W. Davidson in pursuit. Accompanying them were surgeon David Magruder, Ute and Apache agent Kit Carson, and about twenty Taos volunteers. The party headed north through the San Luis Valley and into the mountains. They spotted tracks and other signs, but failed to locate any Utes. Deep snow and extreme cold finally forced them to abandon the march. By mid-March all troops had returned to Burgwin. Little resulted from the expedition.

When the Ute expedition proved of slight value, the soldiers' next encounter with the Indians was disastrous. Hearing that a large band of Jicarilla Apaches had camped near Picuris Pueblo, Carson arranged to meet them at Cantonment Burgwin on March 25. The Indians seemed friendly and "well disposed, toward all citizens." Their demeanor changed very rapidly, however. For reasons which were not entirely clear, two days after the conclave, Blake ordered Lieutenant Davidson and sixty men in pursuit of the Jicarillas. The morning of March 30 Davidson located their camp near Cienguilla Creek in the Moreno Valley east of Taos. The Indians caught the troops in a vulnerable position and commenced fighting which continued for more than three hours. In what became almost a complete rout, twenty-two soldiers were killed, another twenty-three wounded, and forty-five horses lost. Finally Davidson, who received slight wounds, led his retreating men back to Taos.

Encouraged by their victory, the Indians pursued the fleeing soldiers back toward Cantonment Burgwin. By the time Kit Carson, who heard of the attack while en route to Santa Fe, reached the cantonment, he found that the Indians had approached close enough to steal a number of horses. The livestock was recovered, but an attempt to capture the raiders by surrounding the village of Ranchos de Taos yielded only ten Apaches. Still the nearby mountains echoed with the cries of Indian war whoops; many observers feared an imminent attack on Fort Burgwin or even the town of Taos.

As word of the Cienguilla disaster spread, Burgwin became the headquarters for a major retaliatory campaign against the Jicarillas. To command the expedition, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke hurried across the mountains from Fort Union. Other units of the First Dragoons and Second Artillery rushed into the area from the south. In addition, the military adopted the common practice of recruiting local volunteers (largely New Mexicans and Pueblo Indians) as spies and trackers. James H. Quinn, a well-known Taos merchant, commanded them. With Carson as chief guide and Blake detailing most of the Burgwin garrison, the expedition totaled about two hundred men.

Departing Taos on April 3, the army crossed the Rio Grande and after four difficult marches located the Indian trail. Cooke followed it through extremely rugged country and deep snow until he found the Apaches camped in a rocky canyon near Agua Caliente. After a hard fight, the Jicarillas fled into the mountains, abandoning a number of women and children in the chilling cold. Cooke burned the enemy camp, destroyed huge quantities of food and other supplies, then pursued the Indians across a high mesa overlooking the Chama River. Eventually the trackers concluded that additional pursuit was useless, and the campaign was abandoned. Everyone returned to Taos.

Even though Major Blake left Burgwin in early May to reoccupy Fort Massachusetts for the summer, active pursuit of the Apaches continued from Burgwin. Major William T. H. Brooks, who assumed command of the cantonment later that month, headed a force of dragoons, infantry, and volunteers which searched unsuccessfully for Apaches as far north as the Conejos River. Late in May Major James H. Carleton, who had been stationed in Albuquerque, led yet another expedition north through the San Luis Valley and east into the Raton Mountains. They followed an Indian trail high into the mountains before reaching a camp of twenty-two lodges. At least one Jicarilla was killed in the main assault, and more fell in smaller fights that followed. Pursuing the scattered bands of fleeing Indians proved futile, however. After reaching the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as far south as Moreno Pass, the soldiers returned to Taos in mid-June. "I have never had the good fortune to travel with a finer command of officers and troops," Carson commented afterward, "nor ever have I seen better marching."

Unfortunately, all these military efforts did little to stem Apache depredations. Almost the same day that General Garland over-optimistically reported that the Jicarillas had been "most thouroughly humbled," Judge Charles Beaubien reported from Taos that the same Indians were constantly raiding settlements throughout northeastern New Mexico. Cattle had recently been stolen from remote ranches; wagons carrying goods from the east were being attacked. When unfounded rumors circulated that rancher Lucien Maxwell's settlement along the Rayado had been attacked and its residents massacred, soldiers rushed across the mountains from Burgwin to provide some protection. Meanwhile, Quinn and Carson kept constantly on the move in efforts to subdue the Indians.

For the full article by Lawrence R. Murphy, refer to Arizona and the West, pp. 5-26.

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