James Silas Calhoun: First Governor of New Mexico Territory and First Indian Agent by Sherry Robinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: James Silas Calhoun: First Governor of New Mexico Territory and First Indian Agent by Sherry Robinson Jerry Thompson James Silas Calhoun: First Governor of New Mexico Territory and First Indian Agent. By Sherry Robinson. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021. Pp. 390. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, appendix.) After serving eighteen difficult months as the first governor of New Mexico Territory, James Silas Calhoun departed Santa Fe for Washington in May 1852 as crowds from Tesuque, Santa Clara, and Nambé Pueblos saw him off. Suffering from scurvy and unable to stand, the governor rode in a bed in an ambulance in the wagon train of James Hubbell. From St. Louis, he hoped to go on to Washington and then to his home in Georgia. At Fort Union, the post commander, Major James H. Carleton (not John H. Carleton as indicated throughout the text), certain the governor would not reach the states alive, had a wooden coffin made for him. Calhoun died at Hickory Point, thirty-eight miles west of Westport, Missouri, on June 30, 1852. Appointed governor by President Millard Fillmore, Calhoun had taken the oath-of-allegiance on a platform under the portal of Santa Fe's Palace of the Governors. As governor, Calhoun faced daunting problems, seeing as many as fifty visitors a day, making numerous appointments, dealing with the turbulent politics of the territory, and ordering a census. There was not one cent in the territorial treasury, and many of the Indigenous tribal groups in New Mexico were restless and hostile. Although born into poverty in 1799 at Boggy Gut Creek, Georgia, and orphaned at an early age, Calhoun rose to become the mayor of Columbus, Georgia, an able lieutenant colonel of volunteers during the war with Mexico, and American consul in Havana, Cuba, where he learned Spanish. Calhoun arrived in New Mexico as the first Indian agent in 1849 during a turbulent time. "Matters in this territory are in a most deplorable condition—infinitely worse than you possibly can imagine," Calhoun wrote (137). Moreover, the state of Texas was continuing to press claims to all the land east of the Rio Grande, including settlements such as Albuquerque and Santa Fe. In fact, Texas was threatening to send an army of 2,500 men to take eastern New Mexico by force, if necessary. Governor [End Page 271] Peter H. Bell warned he would arrest any military officer who interfered. In Washington, President Zachary Taylor threatened to take command of the U.S. Army in New Mexico and hang Texan interlopers as traitors. Anxious about expansionist Texans, Nuevomexicanos feared they would be "forced into an unnatural and repugnant association with Texas" (165). Robinson disputes historian Howard Lamar's theory that Calhoun, an ardent Whig, created a political machine of sorts in the territory. Not long after arriving in Santa Fe in the late summer of 1849, Calhoun headed west with Lieutenant James Hervey Simpson in an expedition into Navajo country. Although Calhoun possessed great sympathy for the Native Americans, one of the misfortunes during the expedition was the killing and scalping of the six-feet, six-inch Navajo chief Narbona, who was said to be in his eighties and crippled with arthritis. With respect to many of the Native Americans, Calhoun, like many of the citizens and military in the territory, believed in "compulsory enlightenment," even at the point of a bayonet, if necessary (129). Besides the Navajo, the Comanche and Apaches should be "penned up" and made to cultivate the soil, Calhoun argued. Following the misplaced logic of both the Spanish and Mexicans, Calhoun, like many others, thought Native Americans should become good Christians rather than maintain their own beliefs. Calhoun also asked the legislature to pass a law to prohibit free Blacks from the territory. Perceptibly, Calhoun brought on the fury of abolitionists. Robinson points out there were only seventeen free Blacks in the territory at the time, including Jim Beckwourth, who ran the best saloon in Santa Fe. Using numerous quotes from primary and secondary sources, and sixty illustrations, Robinson spins a compelling and entertaining biography of Calhoun that is exceptionally well researched and soundly written. Nothing in Calhoun's life is left...