The Spring Creek Fire started by a Danish dropout and the sordid compound occupied by unwelcome intruders near Amalia, NM, have given us glimpses of some serious social misfits who belong in custody and court. But I’m a historian, not a reporter, so today instead I’ll write about what was happening nearly 200 years ago.

There were bad fits and good fits back then, too.

After Mexico had ousted Spanish rule in 1821, the Spanish-speaking residents in our region were living in the new Republic of Mexico. The San Luis Valley had nomadic Indians but without year-round homes, although they claimed it was theirs. When rival Indian tribes or unwelcome Spaniards intruded, they were challenged, sometimes with battles that usually were successful.

The land in this Valley at that time was pristine, lying between the Sangre de Cristos and the San Juans from Poncha Pass all the way down through Sunshine Valley to the drop-off of the Taos Plateau near Questa (Red River) on the east and Taos Junction on the west, with the Rio Grande River and its tributaries running through this huge basin. On the south, Ute Peak and San Antonio Mountain stood like sentinels, guarding this wilderness. No political boundaries were needed even by the Spanish people who lived farther south.

A few miles south of the Valley on the east side was the Taos Pueblo and a Spanish land grant at Taos, some of whose occupants probably hazarded traveling from time to time into the San Luis Valley on their way to or from the plains. In the 1820s and the following decade, the Indians and Taoseños were suddenly joined by increasing numbers of foreigners, the trappers and traders.

   Often the newcomers used what was called the Taos or Trappers’ Trail, by way of the Huerfano River, Sangre de Cristo Pass, and Taos. Most on this trail passed through what later became Costilla and Amalia, NM, San Pedro Mesa on the north, and the area of what later would be occupied by the Upper Culebra villages and Sanchez Reservoir. Fewer travelers passed along the west side of San Pedro Mesa because of the absence of water sources between the Rio Costilla and Culebra, although if the travelers were mounted and moving faster, they could get along on the dry side.

Many of them had French Canadian and St. Louis origins or were frontiersmen from the States whom the Mexican government now welcomed for economic reasons. The local Mexicans were accepting, too, for the most part.

Others heading to and from Taos from the beaver country in the northern Rockies and Wasatch areas also used routes like the northern branches of the Old Spanish Trail. The names of the trappers and traders of that era are legendary.

During this period many of them hung out at Taos during the off-season. This mix of former residents and newcomers got along well enough ostensibly, though who really knows what some thought and said behind closed doors? Several of the foreigners adopted Spanish names, married local women in the Church, and became Mexican citizens. One of these, the French Canadian Carlos (Charles) Beaubien, even wangled the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant from the corrupt office of Governor Manuel Armijo in 1843, along with other land in eastern Colorado with Lucien Maxwell.

But in 1846 the takeover of New Mexico by the U.S. Army took place, and in early 1847 the Taos Rebellion occurred. In early 1847 the new American governor, Charles Bent, was murdered at his home in Taos, as were Beaubien’s son and business partner among others, exposing a major gulf in the community’s harmony.

A few in the Mexican population decided that the time was ripe to seek a different home.