University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 2008 Land, Speculation, and Manipulation on the Pecos Stephen Bogener West Texas A&M University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Bogener, Stephen, "Land, Speculation, and Manipulation on the Pecos" (2008). Great Plains Quarterly. 1352. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1352 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. LAND, SPECULATION, AND MANIPULATION ONTHEPECOS STEPHEN BOGENER The Pecos River of the nineteenth century, manipulation of federal land laws followed the unlike its faint twenty-first century shadow, removal of Native Americans, the displace­ was a formidable watercourse. The river ment of Mexican American communities, stretches some 755 miles, from the Sangre de and the departure of major players in the Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe to its cattle industry of the American West. One eventual merger with the Rio Grande. Control of the most ambitious engineering and irriga­ over the public domain of southeastern New tion ventures in nineteenth-century North Mexico came from controlling access to the America developed here from a simple idea Pecos, its tributaries and springs. In the arid in the mind of lawman Pat Garrett, better environment of New Mexico's Pecos Valley, known for slaying William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy corporate accumulation of land through the Kid. Eventually, irrigation investment schemes attracted well-known capitalists from Europe, the East Coast, and Colorado Springs. Beginning in the late 1870s, through 1925, Key Words: environmental history, Homestead Act, a succession of people tried to transform the irrigation, Mexican American history, Pecos River river -and the desert embracing it. The purpose of this article is to reveal some Stephen Bogener is an assistant history professor at West Texas A&M University, where he teaches and of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­ conducts research on environmental history, public tury speculative impulses for harnessing water. history and the American West. Dr. Bogener has As a case study, the Pecos River of New Mexico served as archivist and coordinator of outreach for the goes a long ways towards an understanding Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, and his of the conflicts arising between those bent books include Lubbock: Gem of the South Plains, and Ditches Across the Desert: Irrigation in the on following Jeffersonian notions of yeoman Lower Pecos Valley. democracy in settling the American West, and those whose speculative interests lingered into the twentieth century alongside the advent [GPQ 28 (Summer 2008): 209-29] of the Reclamation Service. This study also 209 210 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2008 reveals, in part, the hubris of trying to create most of whom came from Texas.2 A number of an agricultural oasis in an arid region fraught such characters filtered into the region. The with environmental roadblocks. first major Anglo settlement in what would This topic is addressed by examining the become Eddy County was Seven Rivers. Until violent nature of the Pecos region which the 1890s Lincoln County encompassed most continued even after the government moved of eastern New Mexico, an area larger than the Mescalero Apache and forced the Navajo Massachusetts, and settlements relied on the from the Four Corners region to the Bosque U.S. government for law enforcement.3 Redondo, near Fort Sumner. Following the Lincoln County War and the displacement of BOSQUE REDONDO cattle king, John Chisum, the article follows the opportunistic Eddy brothers, New York The largest influx of Anglos into the area transplants who pioneered a cattle operation in followed on the heels of the military presence Colorado, and their meeting with Pat Garrett, at Bosque Redondo following the 1863 cam­ who was an early promoter of irrigation in paign against the Mescalero Apache. The U.S. eastern New Mexico. As Charles Eddy's ambi­ military established a Pecos River post called tions grew, the story takes the reader briefly Fort Sumner near the present-day town of the to Colorado Springs where Eddy recruited same name.4 The irrigation system built here wealthy investors, and into the business of by Indians represented the first major effort manipulating the nation's various land acts to at irrigation along the Pecos River itself. The accumulate vast holdings along the Pecos. The fort was laid out next to a favorite camping importance of such vast acreage could only site of the Apache known as Bosque Redondo, be realized through massive labor projects of meaning round grove, referring to a small dam and canal building, carried out primar­ group of cottonwoods in a bend of the river. ily through the physical. exertion of Mexican The Mescalero had the choice of moving to immigrants and native Mexican Americans. a reserve established near the fort or being Finally, in 1893, and again in 1904, flood waters further hounded by U.S. soldiers. The Apache, destroyed many of the grandiose dreams of who were organized into small semi-autono­ making the desert bloom. Those left in the mous bands, trickled into the region one group Valley continued to confront the vagaries of at a time, until by March 1863 the military, the Pecos, and turned to the new Reclamation having established contracts with local cattle­ Service for help. men and Texans such as Charles Goodnight, was feeding over four hundred men, women, ThE WILD WEST and children at the fort. Although some one hundred Mescalero fled west to join their Gila New Mexico attorney and historian William cousins, by the summer of 1863 the Apache at Keleher characterized the Pecos Valley during Bosque Redondo settled into laying out fields, the last half of the nineteenth century as a planting crops, and setting up shelters.s wide-open stage for adventure, danger, and At this point, the American military, using opportunity. Since the American occupation questionable logic, embarked on a series of of New Mexico during the Mexican War, campaigns to place other Indians of New New Mexico suffered from cultural conflicts Mexico and the Southwest on reservations. among Anglos, Hispanics, and the Comanche, The military began settling some 9,000 Navajo Apache, Ute, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, among their long-distant cousins on the lands and Navajo.! Keleher attributed the "color and at Bosque Redondo-lands that by then the adventure" of Lincoln County in the 1870s and Mescalero considered their own. The march of 1880s to cowboys, camp followers, saloon keep­ these Navajo from the Four Corners region­ ers, gamblers, gunfighters, and horse thieves- known as the "long walk"-was carried out LAND, SPECULATION, AND MANIPULATION ON THE PECOS 211 by Kit Carson, who had previously joined in Besides Chisum, many of the settlers up rounding up the Mescalero. Carson, for his and down the Pecos came from Texas. Land in part, was apparently torn between following New Mexico attracted Texas cowboys into the orders and what he considered to be a foolish region, but an equally important push factor Indian policy.6 caused many Texans to leave their native The Mescalero's growing resentment of state. In 1878 the state of Texas issued an the Navajo did not initially stymie the work official 226-page book to peace officers listing already in progress. The Mescalero built a and describing fugitive outlaws. Texas offered slaughterhouse, dammed the river, and irri­ generous bounties totaling almost $100,000 for gated crops and trees, which they planted the bringing of such fugitives to justice. Texas nearby. Unfortunately for the Indians and effectively rid the state of desperados, but they military alike, the irrigation venture was a reappeared in New Mexico and other western dismal failure. Worms, blight, hail, floods, territories.13 drought, and complaints about the effects of One of the Texans who moved to the Pecos water on the human digestive system all Pecos Valley in the 1870s was Patrick Floyd combined to undermine irrigation efforts in Jarvis Garrett, sometime cowboy, buffalo Fort Sumner.7 hunter, gunfighter, gambler, horse breeder, and lawman. Not only would Garrett become a CATTLE CULTURE AND VIOLENCE legend for killing Billy the Kid, but he proved instrumental in first promoting irrigation in Despite the army's failure in settling the the valley,14 Garrett wanted to build a dam Apache and Navajo at Bosque Redondo and across the Hondo River, the chief tributary of the danger inherent in a frontier setting, Texas the Pecos, to send water across the desert to cattlemen saw the grazing potential of lands areas previously thought worthless for farm­ in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico.s Charles ing. He may have envisioned accumulating Goodnight and Oliver Loving, working to land through the Homestead Act or the Desert fill government contracts for beef at Bosque Land Act of 1877.15 Redondo and to stock ranges in Colorado, Charles Eddy and his brother, John, who trailed cattle along the Pecos River beginning had been ranching in Colorado, began running in the 1860s.9 cattle on a 20,000-acre ranch along the Pecos The military removal of the Indians from River in 1881.16 The Eddy brothers established eastern New Mexico opened the land to Anglo their New Mexico cattle operation opposite a settlement. Goodnight and others, including large spring system near Seven Rivers, a vil­ John Chisum, who settled near Roswell, New lage of "dozens of hard-core drifters, drovers, Mexico, weathered the uncertainties of the gunmen and fugitives ..