Land grab war
A fascinating new history of Wild West lawlessness
‘THE VIOLENCE COLFAX AND COUNTY CORRUPTION WAR: IN TERRITORIAL NEW MEXICO’ By Corey Recko University of North Texas Press (2024, 222 pp.)
ONE OBSERVER OF THE SHOCKING outburst of violence in 1875 New Mexico noted: “The country was thrown into a fearful condition and at times it seemed with the light of a match it might set the whole country ablaze.”
If you didn’t already know that this region of the Wild West was once ruled by lawlessness and vigilante justice, this new history by author Corey Recko (“Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain”) is a good source to enlighten you.
Land was the motivator of resentment — specifically, who owned the land. When New Mexico territory became part of the United States in 1848 upon the conclusion of the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, compounded by the acquisition of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, questions of ownership and boundaries proliferated. The largest land grant in dispute was the Maxwell Land Grant, originally called the Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant; the size of the grant, at 1.7 million acres, was larger than the amount allowed under Mexican law, 97,424 acres, when it had been given out as part of Mexico.
The grant, assumed by Charles Beaubien’s daughter Maria de la Luz and her husband Lucien Maxwell, was located east of Taos and fertile in soil, rich in resources, such as gold mining, and with a growing population. The new town of Cimarron was booming by the 1860s. By 1869 the original Maxwells sold the land to a group of New Mexico lawyers, including Stephen B. Elkins and Thomas B. Catron, who allowed a new survey to put the grant acreage back at 1.7 million, despite that in 1871 the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano ruled the grant at 97,424 acres, with the rest to be used for public domain.
Elkins et al (to be known as the Santa Fe Ring) plowed ahead to develop and subdivide the land for their own profit, and tried ejecting the settlers, known as the squatters. The company became known as the Maxwell Land Grant and Railroad Company and they even started a newspaper, the Cimarron News.
Enter the important protagonists. The young man hired as executive officer of the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company, William Raymond Morley, observed the land grab machinations of the Santa Fe Ring close up and resolved to aid the squatters and voice that opinion in the newspaper. His wife Ada and mother-in-law Mary McPherson would become passionate whistleblowers of official corruption. And added to the combustible mix was the newly appointed governor of New Mexico in 1875, Samuel Beach Axtell, who would firmly take the side of political patronage and tightly held reins of power
With the two sides hotly dug in, all it took was the spark of ignition — the murder of an outspoken anti-Ring witness Reverend F.J. Tolby in September 1875. The lack of official investigation spurred more violence and an oppressive bill passed by the territorial legislature in January 1876 that attached Colfax County to Taos County for judicial purposes. The reason cited was the apparent “anarchy” of the county. Citizens were outraged.
Author Recko moves through these layers of detail with an orderly precision. He punctuates the chapters with period photos of the characters, looking dour, the men with mutton-chop whiskers. An appendix reveals Tolby’s poignant letters to his family, extolling the delights of living in Cimarron at the time as well as a letter published in the New York Sun in June 1875 lambasting the “petty despotism” of the Santa Fe Ring.
And finally, to the rescue, the federal investigator sent to make order in the territory in April 1878, aptly named Angel: Frank Warner Angel, representing the Department of Justice and Department of the Interior. His extensive report asserting that governor Axtell “was a tool of designing men” helped get the governor swiftly removed. He was replaced by Lew Wallace, most famous as the author of “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.”