Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 27

early Africans in New Mexico

Painting, Estavanico by Granger. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. New Mexico is often referred to as a land of three cultures, meaning the Native Americans, who’ve lived here for at least 11,000 years, the Hispanics who moved into the state beginning in the 1500s, and Anglo-Americans who moved in along the Santa Fe trail beginning in the 1800s. That description is misleading and makes the state look far less diverse and culturally rich than it is.

One of the first “outsiders” who set foot in New Mexico was neither Hispanic nor Anglo. In fact, he wasn’t even European. Mustafa Azemmouri, was a man of many names. History books usually call him by his slave name: Esteban, sometimes spelled Estevan. He’s also referred to as Estevanico, Esteban de Dorantes or Esteban the Moor. Estevan was born in the port city of Azemmour, Morocco, sometime around 1503. In 1513 he was captured by the Portuguese and became a slave. Sometime around 1521 he was purchased by Andres de Dorantes of Bejar del Castanar, who joined an expedition to explore Florida in 1527. After the expedition went badly, the survivors made crude boats and rafts and tried to sail to Mexico, floundering on the Texas coast near present day Galveston. Only 80 of the original party of nearly 500 made it this far; after five years of enslavement by the local Indians, the number was down to four.

In 1534, these four men escaped their captors and began the long walk back to Mexico. They moved from tribe to tribe, acting as medicine men as they went. Estevan proved to be gifted in languages, and became fluent in several Indian dialects. He carried a medicine rattle, a feathered, beaded gourd given to him by a chief, as his good luck symbol and trademark. The men followed the Rio Grande, entering Mexico near El Paso. They finally arrived in Mexico City in July of 1536, where the Viceroy, enchanted by their tales of a golden city, organized an expedition to Arizona and New Mexico. Estevan guided the group, which was led by a Franciscan priest named Fray Marcos de Niza.

When Estevan arrived in at Hawikuh, a Zuni pueblo in Northwest New Mexico, the inhabitants saw that his medicine gourd was trimmed with owl feathers, a bird that symbolized death to the Zuni. Thinking him evil, they killed him.

Estevan was only the first of many Africans who came to New Mexico as slaves or servants. Many of the Spanish brought their slaves with them to the new world. Another is Sebastian Rodriguez, who was born sometime around 1642 in Angola, Africa and came to New Mexico in 1692. Records indicate that Governor Diego de Vargas, the man charged with resettling New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, brought Rodriguez with him as he traveled north. Rodrigues had been the drummer and town crier for the garrison in El Paso. He continued to serve in that capacity once Santa Fe returned to Spanish control. Rodriguez was able to both marry and acquire property. Records show he purchased land in Santa Fe in 1697. One of his sons continued in his father's positions as Santa Fe’s town crier and drummer in Santa Fe. Another son became one of the first settlers of the northern village of Las Trampas.
​
Rodriguez wasn’t the only African to enter the state with the reconquest. Among the over eight hundred persons that Vargas brought into the area were twenty-seven families listed in the records as Negro or Mestizo. Many of these families were given grants in the mountain communities north of Santa Fe. They married and mixed with their neighbors, both Spanish and Native, their cultures melding into something unique to Northern New Mexico. 

Captain Alexander McRae

Families divided, brother against brother. It's one of the themes of the American Civil War. Alexander McRae's story is an example of it.

Alexander McRae was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on September 4, 1829. He had four brothers.  

A West Point Graduate, McRae served in Missouri and Texas before coming to New Mexico in 1856, He served at Forts Union, Stanton, and Craig. McRae also spent some time at Bent's Fort, in what is now Colorado. He steadily rose up the promotion ladder, becoming Captain of Company I, 3rd Cavalry Regiment in August of  1861.

When the Civil War broke out, McRae's father wrote to him, urging him to change sides. ​Captain McRae retained his commission and stayed faithful to his country while his four brothers, James, Thomas, John, and Robert, served the Confederacy. 

As reports began to trickle into New Mexico of a Southern invasion, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, the commander of forces in New Mexico Territory, hastily formed an artillery battery. He placed the six pieces at Fort Craig, the most southerly of the forts held by the Union Army, and gave Captain McRae charge of this unit.  ​McRae's battery performed with great success during the first hours of the Battle of Valverde, which took place at a Rio Grande crossing a few miles north of Fort Craig on February 21, 1862 .   

Finally, Confederate Colonel Thomas Green led a charge on the Union guns. Screaming the Rebel yell, the Confederate forces advanced in three separate waves that totaled nearly 750 men. The Rebels, armed with short-range shotguns, pistols, muskets, and bowie knives, watched for flashes from the artillery, then dove to the ground for cover. This strategy made them appear to be suffering a high casualty rate,  yet they kept coming. This spooked the men manning the Union guns, particularly the inexperienced and ill-trained New Mexico Volunteers, who broke and splashed across the Rio Grande in a disorganized retreat.

Despite McRae's remaining gunners firing shell and cannister as fast as they could, the Texans reached the battery. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued as the Union soldiers sought to defend their position. Samuel Lockridge, a Texan officer reportedly shouted, "Surrender McRae, we don't want to kill you!" McRae supposedly replied, "I shall never forsake my guns!" Both Lockridge and McRae were killed in the melee, some sources suggesting by each other. 

The captured guns went to San Antonio when the Confederate forces retreated. They became known as the Valverde Battery and were used against Union troops for the remainder of the war.
Because he fought for the Union, McRae's service record went unrecognized in his home state. In their story on the battle at Valverde, the Fayetteville Observer did not even report his death. However, McRae became an honored figure in New Mexico history. There are streets named after him in the New Mexican towns of Las Cruces and Las Vegas, and a canyon named for him in Sierra County. The remains of Fort McRae, a late Civil War and Indian War Army post named for him, now lay beneath the waters of Elephant Butte Lake. I could find some earlier reports of it being a destination for scuba divers, but the adobe walls have probably succumbed to time and water by now.  ​

Alexander McRae's body was exhumed in 1867 and transported to West Point for burial. McRae’s large black tombstone is only four markers away from the one dedicated to George Armstrong Custer. Guides frequently note it as the resting place of one who stayed with the Union. In his official report of the Combat of Valverde, Colonel Canby, wrote:
Among the killed is one, isolated by peculiar circumstances, whose memory deserves notice from a higher authority than mine. Pure in character, upright in conduct, devoted to his profession, and of a loyalty that was deaf to the seductions of family and friends, Captain McRae died, as he had lived, an example of the best and highest qualities that man can possess.

​In time, the South also recognized Captain Alexander McRae. A marker now stands in front of the Old Historic Cumberland County Courthouse, which was built on land that was homesteaded by his grandparents. While he is not a speaking character, Captain Alexander McRae's death is part of the battle scene in Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel Valverde. Valverde is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War. 

Peanut Pie

The last slice of the latest peanut pie in our house. The author and her sons at Devil's Den, Gettysburg During the summer of 2000, my husband and I took our three sons on an historical vacation. Among the places visited were Williamsburg and Gettysburg, both places where we ate peanut pie in local taverns, so that the pie is associated in our minds with American history. 

Many histories of peanuts say that they came to America in the 1700s, carried from Africa along with slaves. While that may be true, they are not originally from Africa. Peanuts seem to have originated in South America, in Peru. They were taken back to Africa by the Spanish before coming to North America.

Wherever they came from, I'm glad they made it into my family's repertoire. This recipe is adapted from the Chowning's Tavern Pie from historical Williamsburg. ​ Peanut Pie For the Crust: 

1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C shortening

Cut shortening into flour and salt mixture until it resembles cornmeal in consistency, with some particles the size of small peas. 

3 TBS ice water
1/2 TBS vinegar

Mix water and vinegar and sprinkle over the flour mixture, 1 TBS at a time, mixing until the dough clumps together. You may not use all the liquid.

Press together, then place on a floured piece of waxed paper or parchment. Roll out until it is larger than your pie place. Invert the paper over the pie plate to fit in. Flute edged. 

For the Filling: 

3 large eggs, 
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 TBS melted butter

1 cup peanuts (you may use salted or unsalted, but I prefer unsalted, roasted Virginia peanuts with the skins removed.)

Beat the eggs, brown sugar, corn syrup and vanilla together in a large bowl. Add the melted butter and peanuts. Pour into the pie shell and bake in a preheated oven at 350 until the filling is set in the center and the pastry is lightly browned, about 45 minutes.

​ Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator who lives high in the mountains of central New Mexico. She wrote about Gettysburg in her novel, The Bent Reed, which is available in ebook and paperback.

George Washington Carver

When many people hear the name George Washington Carver, they think of peanuts. But the American agricultural scientist and inventor’s greatest contributions may have been in soil conservation, environmentalism, and helping the poor.

Carver was born a slave sometime in January 1864 in rural western Missouri, and freed at the end of the Civil War. When he was in his 20s, he moved to Iowa and began attending Simpson College, then Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), where he was their first African-American student. Iowa State Agricultural College was the country’s first land-grant university, and its mission was to teach the applied sciences, including agriculture. Carver studied botany.

When he graduated in 1896, Carver became the first black man in the U.S. to hold a degree in modern agricultural methods. He took those lessons south to Alabama, where Booker T. Washington, the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, was opening an agricultural school. What he saw as he rode the train south broke his heart. Instead of the golden wheat fields and the tall green corn of Iowa, he “scraggly cotton, stunted cattle, boney mules, and fields and hill sides cracked and scarred with gullies.” Because of his training, Carver knew that the poor condition of the land was due to the overplanting of cotton, a lucrative crop that depletes the soil. Carver knew that something had to be done to make the soil rich again. One of his solutions was peanuts. Because of a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that live on their roots, peanuts produce their own nitrogen, fertilizing themselves and restoring nutrients to depleted soil. Additionally, their growing periods are different than cotton, so peanuts and cotton could be grown in the same fields on a rotating schedule. Finally, peanuts are high in protein and more nutritious than the “3M--meat, cornmeal and molasses” diet that was the foundation for most poor farmers’ diet.
​
Most black farmers in turn-of-the-century Alabama were so close to ruination that they weren’t willing to try something new. Carter encouraged them by coming up with literally hundreds of recipes and uses for peanuts, including peanut bread, peanut cookies, peanut sausage, peanut ice cream, and even peanut face cream, shampoo, dyes and paints.

But Carver was not just pushing peanuts; he was pushing a lifestyle that connected the farmer to his soil, enriching both. He encouraged farmers to grow other vegetables so they would spend less money on food. Rather than going into debt buying fertilizer, he encouraged composting. Well before the hippies and back to nature movements reached the mainstream, Carver pushed the interconnectedness between the health of the land and the health of the people who lived on it.  "It has always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of ‘my people’ possible and to this end I have been preparing myself these many years; feeling as I do that this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.”
When Carver died on January 5, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that “The world of science has lost one of its most eminent figures.” 
​Peanut Butter Cookies, two ways
Peanut Blossoms

George Washington Carver may have invented a recipe for peanut butter cookies, but it wasn’t this one. This cookie first appeared in 1957 as a prize winner in a Pillsbury Bake-Off contest.

1 ¾ cup flour
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup shortening
½ cup peanut butter
2 TBS milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
 
¼ cup sugar, set aside in a shallow bowl
About 48 milk chocolate candy kisses
 
Preheat oven to 375°
 
Combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, shortening, peanut butter, milk, vanilla, and egg at low speed until stiff dough forms.
 
Shape into 1” balls. Roll in the bowl of sugar.
Place 2” apart on a cookie sheet.
Bake at 375°for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from over and immediately press a candy kiss into the center of each.
Let cool 2 minutes before removing to a cooking rack.
                                                                                Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Variation:

Peanut Butter Crisscross Cookies
Make dough, shape into balls and roll in sugar as above.
Place 2” apart on a cookie sheet.
Flatten each cookie by pressing a fork dipped in sugar into it in a crisscross pattern.
Bake at 375°for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Immediately remove to a cooking rack from cookie sheet.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her books are written for middle schoolers and adults, and are mostly works of historical fiction. 

This article is, she believes, the first installment in a monthly series on famous Americans and cookies inspired by their stories. She intends to compile all the stories and recipes into a cookbook to give out to my friends, family and fans at the end of 2021. If you'd like a copy, go to her website and join her email list. 

Louisa Hawkins Canby: The Angel of Santa Fe

Louisa Hawkins Canby earned the epithet Angel of Santa Fe by showing compassion to wounded Confederate soldiers during their 1862 occupation of Santa Fe, New Mexico. For this humanitarian act, some people have called her a traitor. They would do well to consider her a diplomat and a savvy negotiator, whose act of mercy saved the city and its inhabitants a lot of grief.

​Louisa Hawkins was only 19 years old when she met Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, a West Point cadet who had come home to Crawfordsville, Indiana on summer furlough. Edward, as he was called by most, and Louisa were both Kentucky natives, and seemed smitten with each other from the start. They married during the summer of 1839 after both had graduated: he from West Point and she from Georgetown Female College in Georgetown, Kentucky. Louisa then followed her husband through his many posts in California, New York, Wyoming and Utah. They had one child, a daughter they named Mary, but she died while still very young. By 1860, Canby was commander of Fort Defiance. He procured a large house in Santa Fe for Louisa to use during his many campaigns.  At the beginning of the Civil War, the one armed William Wing Loring was the Commander of the Department of New Mexico, an area that covers what is now the states of Arizona, New Mexico and the southern tip of Nevada. Loring resigned his commission to join the Confederacy, and the post was given to H.H. Sibley, who also left to join the South. Edward R.S. Canby then received the post and a promotion to Colonel.

​Concerned of a Confederate invasion from Texas in the south, he stationed himself at Fort Craig a fort that protected the northern edge of the Jornada del Muerto, a dry section of the Camino Real. He left Louisa in the relative safety of Santa Fe, far to the north. Canby’s concerns proved real when a Confederate force led by Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley began moving up the Rio Grande River valley in late 1861. Finding Fort Craig heavily fortified, the Confederates bypassed Canby. The two armies engaged each other several miles upstream of the fort, at a place called Valverde Ford. The battle ended when the Union troops returned to Fort Craig and the Confederates continued north. Canby then commanded all troops in the northern part of the state to pull back and converge on Fort Union. The troops were to destroy or hide weapons, ammunition, food, equipment, and blankets prior to their retreat.
​
Instead of leaving with the army, Louisa Canby and several other officers’ wives chose to stay in Santa Fe. When the Confederates marched into town on March 10, these women formed a delegation to meet them. Mrs. Canby asked that the city not be sacked, and that its citizens not be molested. In return she promised to aid the Confederate army’s sick and wounded and worked with Archbishop Lamy to provide shelter for the men. ​ After a brief respite in the city, the Confederate Army continued its journey north, towards Fort Union, but when they heard distant cannon fire, the people of Santa Fe knew that a battle was taking place in Glorieta Pass, the narrow passage through the Sangre de Cristo mountains that held the Santa Fe trail. Soon, wounded Confederates were limping back into the capitol city.

When Louisa Canby heard that some soldiers were unable to return due to extreme hunger, exhaustion or loss of blood, she drove her carriage along the route, delivering food, water and blankets. Mrs. Canby then hired several farm wagons, which she rigged with tent cloth hammocks to transport the wounded more comfortably. Her home became a hospital; her dining room an operating room where Confederate surgeons dressed wounds and performed amputations on shattered limbs while she herself served as nurse.

She also showed the Confederates where stores of blankets and food had been hidden, greatly alleviating their suffering.

On either April 1 or 2, General Sibley rode up from Albuquerque and thanked Mrs. Canby for caring for his men. It is likely he also reminisced about their earlier encounters when he and her husband had been on the same side. Canby and Sibley had graduated from West Point within a year of each other and had served together in several different posts before the war divided them. Soon after, the rebel troops began retreating southward. The 100 critically wounded left behind remained under the care of Mrs. Canby and the other officer’s wives until the Union army returned and took them in as prisoners of war. It was not a moment too soon: by then, the food stores in Santa Fe had been seriously depleted.
​
When some citizens objected to aiding the enemy, Mrs. Canby argued “Whether friend or foe, the wounded must be cared for. They are the sons of some dear mother.” What those citizens, and later detractors would fail to acknowledge was that, by providing aid to the wounded, Mrs. Canby and her group of women prevented the sack of Santa Fe. Its buildings and its people were left unharmed by the Confederate occupation because of her act of mercy.  “Whether friend or foe, the wounded must be cared for. They are the sons of some dear mother.” ​ After the war, Louisa Canby continued to follow her husband to posts in Washington D.C, Louisiana, Delaware, Maryland, Texas, North and South Carolina. and finally, Portland, Oregon, where she continued to work in her community. When he was killed by a Modoc leader named Captain Jack on April 11, she refused to leave her bed for a week. The people of Portland were so grateful and devoted to her that they raised $5,000 as a gift to help supplement her modest widow’s pension. Louisa devoted the last sixteen years of her life to promoting the memory of her husband and his many achievements. When she died, on June 27, 1889 at the age of 70, she was buried beside her husband in Indiana. Her will returned the full $5,000 to the people of Portland. 
Louisa Hawkins Canby is but one of many historical figures that will appear in Peralta, the third book in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy about the Civil War in New Mexico. Books 1 and 2, Valverde and Glorieta, are available in hardcover and ebook. 

Civil War Gravestones

Some of the people in Valverde and Glorieta are fictitious, and therefore have no gravemarkers. They were never born, and they will never die as long as readers keep them alive.

But other characters in both stories were real people, with lives that began long before I wrote about them - lives that were filled with events that I didn't include in my novels. 

William Marshall, who has a small role in my novel Glorieta was the last man killed on the first day of the battle that raged on March 20 in Apache Canyon. He had survived the day's fighting and was collecting discarded Confederate weapons and disabling them when one went of, mortally wounding him. He is buried at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Frederick Wade and John Norvell, who both served with the fictional Jemmy Martin, survived the war and went on to live long and full lives. Their memories, published in newspaper accounts, helped give life to my novel Valverde.  After resigning his commission with the Colorado Volunteers after the Battle of Valverde, John P. Slough was first given command of a brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, then was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and finally became the military governor of Alexandria, Virginia. When the war ended, President Andrew Johnson, appointed Slough to serve as chief justice of the New Mexico Territorial Court. Slough returned to New Mexico and helped fund the Civil War monument in Santa Fe that was recently torn down and the Veteran's Cemetery.

Slough had a fiery temper and a keen sense of justice that often put him at odds with the locals. His decisions to accept Pueblo Indians as U. S. citizens who could testify in his court and his attacks on the peonage system led for some to call for his removal. Slough died when a member of the Territorial Legislative Council whom he had argued with shot him in a pool hall argument. He is buried in Cincinnati, Ohio. Another character with a fiery temper was James "Paddy" Graydon, who appears in Valverde. Three years after the Civil War, Graydon was involved in controlling the Mescalero Apaches in southern New Mexico. After Surgeon John Whitlock accused him of needlessly killing a number of braves, the two ended up dueling at Fort Stanton. Graydon was killed, and Whitlock was then killed by Graydon's men.  He was buried at Fort Stanton, but twenty-four years later his remains were reinterred at the Federal Cemetery in Santa Fe that Slough helped create.  Like most Federal Veteran's Cemeteries, the one in Santa Fe contains row upon row of white headstones, giving it a look as uniform as a rank of soldiers. But there are a few exceptions. The most unique marker does not come from the Civil War period, but it deserves notice. It belongs to a Private named Dennis O’Leary, who died at Fort Wingate in 1901. According to local legend, O'Leary himself carved the statue, then committed suicide on the date he had inscribed. However, military records say he died of tuberculosis, a common illness of the period.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives in New Mexico. You can read more about her and her books here. 

November 11: Birthday of a Famous Soldier

Patton at VMI ​I’m sure you all know that Veteran’s Day used to be called Armistice Day, and is set on the anniversary of the end of WWI. What you may not know, since it’s entirely coincidental if still appropriate, is that it’s also George S. Patton’s birthday. It seems fitting that we honor all veterans on the birthday of a man who devoted his life to military service.
​
George Smith Patton Jr. was born into a life of privilege on November 11, 1885. His father was the district attorney for Los Angeles County and his mother was the daughter of Los Angeles’ first elected mayor. He went to VMI for one year before transferring to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he proved himself to be a mediocre student but a brilliant athlete. It’s ironic, and I’m sure not coincidental that Patton’s statue at West Point is placed with his back towards the library.  Did you that he was also an Olympian? Patton was the first American to compete in the Modern Pentathlon, a new event at the time of the 1912 Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden. Inspired by the pentathlon of ancient Greece, in which a soldier carried a message over a long distance, riding horseback, swimming a river, and running, the event was only open to military personnel in 1912. Patton, a first lieutenant stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia, was chosen based on his track and field, fencing, sharpshooting performances at West Point. He placed twenty-first in the shooting, seventh in the swim, fourth in fencing, sixth in riding and third in running; not a good enough showing to earn a medal or much attention from the press.
Patton did receive a lot of press for something that happened in 1916, when he was in Mexico during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa. Patton was leading a foraging expedition to buy food for the American soldiers when one of his interpreters identified a man at one of the stops as a bandit. Patton began a search of nearby farms. He ended up in a gun battle with three men, one of whom was Julio Gardenas, a senior leader of Pancho Villa’s gang. All three of the Mexicans were killed. Patton had their bodies strapped the bodies to the hoods of Dodge Touring Cars they were driving, then returned to camp. It was probably the first time that an American used motor-vehicles in a military attack.
Patton, of course, went on to fame with larger vehicles than touring cars, and he continued to act audaciously, commanding attention from the press. Few veterans command attention like Patton did, but all deserve our attention and our appreciation.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

By November fall is definitely here. In New Mexico, October sees the glories of the Balloon Fiesta and the aspens and maples in the state change color. Even the cottonwoods in the bosque down near the Rio Grande have one glorious, golden season. But by November all that glory is usually over.

These muffins will bring a little brightness back into your morning. The orange juice enlivens the batter and the cranberries give the muffins a nice burst of tartness.
Cranberry Orange Muffins
Mix together
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup oil
 
2 3/4 cups manic muffin mix
1 tbs orange peel
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries
​ Preheat oven to 350. Line 18 muffin tins with paper muffin cups. 
Mix the wet ingredients, then add the dry ingredients and stir until there are not dry areas left. 
​
Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 25 minutes, until the tops of the muffins are browned a bit. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator who lives in rural New Mexico. She is currently working on an historical novel set in New Mexico during the Civil War, and another one that takes place during World War 1.

Are you on her friends and family email list? Those who are got an ebook that compiles a year's worth of muffin recipes as a Christmas gift in 2019. If you'd like to join, fill out the form here.

The Drummer Boy

A short story by Jennifer Bohnhoff, 
based on the Characters in
​her Historical Novel, Valverde
They lined up now, in three long rows behind the low sand hill. The front line, all 200 of them,  prone against the hill while the back two lines, the second wave of 250 and the third wave of 300, squatted on their heels. Behind them, sergeants walked up and down, shouting at the men to make sure their guns had a priming cap in place, to shoot low, and not until they were within effective range. 
The whites of their eyes, Jemmy thought, then wondered where he’d heard that before. 

Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
 
He glanced right, at Jaspar Jones, whose hands trembled and whose eyes looked as round as a rabbit’s.  Plenty of white showing, all the way around.  Jones’d make a fine target if the Abolitionists were looking for the whites of his eyes. Jemmy looked past him at the line of men.  Some twitched in anticipation of the fight to come.  Some used the backs of their hands to wipe tears from their faces. Some prayed, their hands clutched together as their lips moved with the earnest intensity that only the doomed can know. Some men lay so still that he wondered if they’d gone to sleep.

Behind him, Colonel Green called for the men’s attention. The line quieted.  Everyone trusted “Daddy” Green to do right by them.  

“Boys,” he called, “I want Colonel Canby’s guns! When I yell, raise the Rebel yell and follow me!”  

All along the line, men affirmed the Colonel, some with cheers and others with quiet “yes, sirs.” Jemmy felt his resolve harden into a knot in his throat. Afraid his voice would come out in a squeak, he nodded his assent. 

He looked left and noticed Wee Willie squatting close by, his drumsticks clutched in his fists, his jaw set with a gritty determination that made the boy look old beyond his years. Willie’s pale skin looked even paler than usual, his black eyes sunken into his face. He was a curious one, that Willie: so small that Jemmy couldn’t look at him without wondering how his Mama could have let him run off to war. Some said he was an orphan, but that was just a rumor. Willie never spoke. He hung around the edges of the camp, eating what others offered him, sleeping on the floor of the Colonel’s tent like a pet pup.

Just beyond Willie, John Norvell and Frederick Wade hunkered shoulder to shoulder.

“Fred, we are whipped, and I will never see my mother again!” John said in between wracking sobs.  

Jemmy closed his eyes, trying to wipe the image of Norvell’s tears from his mind. He raised one shoulder and then the other, lessening the tension in his back. The shoot low part bothered him.  Sure, it was just fine if he did it.  He was in the first line of men and there’d be nothing in front of him except blue coats.  It didn’t matter if he hit them in the head or the kneecap.  Shot was shot, and a Yank with a ball in him wouldn’t be trying to return the favor. But Jemmy wasn’t so sure he wanted the second or third waves of men, the men who came behind him, to be shooting low. He didn’t cotton to taking a ball in the back. Not from one of his own. Not when it might be mistaken as a mark that Jemmy was running from the Federal line instead of toward it. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a coward.

The ghostly sun, a pale disk behind thin, gray clouds, hung high overhead, a little past the apex. Snow had started again, tiny dry pellets brought in almost horizontal that it bit his cheeks and made his eyes water. Why did the wind have to come from the west today?  Why couldn’t it be at his back, pushing him on towards victory?  It seemed like God himself was against him. 

He stretched his neck, thrusting his chin forward so he could look over the top of the hill without exposing the crown of his head. There, not 800 yards from him, Federal cannons pointed directly at him, their open muzzles looking like astonished mouths.  Soon, he knew, they’d be belching fire at him. Fire, and deadly chunks of metal.

Jemmy shook his head hard. He had to stop talking scary to himself or he was going to end up like Norvell or Jones. Shaking his head didn’t dislodge the images that swirled around in his head like ghost stories. He knew he needed to hear the sound of his own voice, to talk himself calm like he did with his mules.
“You ain’t got nothing to be scairt of,” he told himself in as convincing a manner as he could muster.  “The men behind you is there to support you, not shoot you in the back. And the snow and wind? It done mask our sound. It’ll confuse the Federals into thinking there’re less of us than there are.  An’ grapeshot and canister’s aimed at the generals and such. Them cannons ain’t interested in a little guy like me.”

Jemmy gave his head a firm nod, but ghastly, terrifying images kept pushing his convictions from him. He frowned. If he couldn’t be brave from himself, perhaps he could be brave for someone else. He grabbed We Willie’s shoulder, pulling the drummer boy into a side embrace.

“This here’s your first fight, son, but you got nothing to be scairt of,” Jemmy said, more to himself than to Willie.  “God’s on our side, sure as shoot’n. He ain’t going to let us down. When we let go our rebel yell, them Abs’ll skedaddle back to their fort with their tails between their legs and we’ll take possession of those fine guns. So don’t you worry none.  It’s on to San Francisco for us.” 

Jemmy pounded the drummer boy into his side with a series of encouraging whacks.  He didn’t know if he had said anything to calm Wee Willie, but he was beginning to feel better already.

 Willie pulled away from Jemmy. He scrambled back to his feet. He held up his fists, the sticks ready to beat the advance, sending men over the hill and into the cannon’s line of fire. 

“You are mistaken, Private.” Willie’s little voice lilted as high and light as birdsong. The sound of it surprised Jemmy. He was sure this was the first time he’d ever heard the drummer boy speak. “This is not my first fight. I have been leading men into battle since time immemorial. It was I who beat the advance at Waterloo.  I who beat at Yorktown. At Agincourt.  And Thermopylae. But you are right in one respect: I have nothing to be afraid of.” 

The boy pulled back his lips in a grin that was more grimace, and the two rows of teeth gave his pale face a skull-like appearance. Jemmy swore that his eyes gleamed a bright and burning red. Jemmy’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, but before he could draw breath, Colonel Green’s voice filled his ears.

“Up, boys, and at ‘em!”
​
Wee Willie beat the advance and two hundred men bellowed the rebel yell and clambered over the hill.  

​

The Ghosts of Valverde

A short story by Jennifer Bohnhoff, 
based on the characters in 
Valverde, book 1 of the 
Rebels Along the Rio Grande Trilogy
Raul waited until heard the servant slip the timber into the braces, blocking the door. One couldn’t be too careful these days. The Confederates who’d been too sick or injured to head north after the Battle of Valverde had been in Socorro nearly two months, long enough to heal and wander the town looking for a little whiskey, a fight to pick, or a girl. Willing or unwilling didn’t matter. Anything to relieve their boredom. Mama was still young enough, and beautiful enough, to attract attention.

He looked up and down the dusty street. Finding it empty, he hitched the basket into the crook of his arm and headed toward San Miguel church, where he turned into the graveyard. Raul set the basket atop a sandy mound that had already begun to cement itself together again, healing like the girl beneath it never would. An image of Lupe stretched on her bed flashed into Raul’s mind. He moved the basket, horrified he might have placed it on her chest.  He straightened and scanned the road. He hadn’t been followed.

“Mama told me to give this to you. She misses you. So do I.” Raul stuck his hand into the basket and pulled out a tortilla. He folded it in quarters and set it on the grave. Raul sat back on his heels and stared at the bit of bread. Lupe was beyond eating anything, ever again. Still, there was comfort in sharing with her. She had died at such a difficult time that none of the usual observances had happened; quickly buried, with no velorios, no neighbors bringing food, nothing to attract the attention of the Confederates. It had been a hard and lonely time for Mama, made harder by her husband and brother’s absence. There was not much that the two men agreed on, but they had appeared to be of one accord in hiding of the flock and stock from the Confederates. Raul tilted his head back, scanning high in the hills. Was either Papa or Tio watching him? Which one he should he be watching himself? They were so different from one another; he could not follow both.

A little whirlwind rose up, scoured from the earth by the afternoon heat. At the first sting of sand on his face, Raul closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. When he opened them again, the tortilla was covered with a fine dusting of grit. Raul stood up and dusted his trousers. The mice, or racoons, or whatever it was that ate the ofrendas left for the dead wouldn’t mind a little dirt with their meal.
He crossed to the low adobe wall at the back of the graveyard and looked around once more to be sure that no one watched before he sat atop it and swung his legs over. From the back of the church, he climbed into the hills, checking over his shoulder several times to see if he was being followed. The town seemed asleep, dazed by the heat of the day. Raul pulled the neckerchief from around his neck and mopped his face as another whirlwind rose into a swirling column of dirt, struck a gravestone, and collapsed on itself, dying almost before it had begun. It was only April, but already afternoons had become oppressive enough to create dust devils, diablos de polvo.

Raul dropped over a ridge and the village disappeared from sight. He scrambled up a sandy arroyo as it wound up into the hills. Gasping for breath, he switched the basket to his other arm.

“Mi’jo, you sound like an entire troop of soldiers,” a voice said from somewhere above him. Raul twisted his head back and saw his father, Cresenio, silhouetted against the sky.

“It’s this loose rock. It crunches and rolls under your feet.” Raul gestured down, and his father snorted.

“That, and you’re gasping like the bellows in the blacksmith’s shop. You don’t get out enough. You’re getting soft, like your uncle. Pretty soon, you’ll be good for nothing but balancing account books and arguing in court.”

Cresenio leaped down from the boulder and led the way up the arroyo. Raul slipped and slid as he struggled to keep up. His short legs could not match his father’s long strides, but he didn’t dare ask his father to slow down.  Crescenio snapped his head to one side so that his words carried over his shoulder. “It’s a good thing it’s me who heard you coming, not some Apache. You would have looked like a porcupine by now.”

“You seen any Apaches?” Raul shaded his eyes and scanned the hills, which shimmered in the heat, making it almost impossible to pick out movement. He stumbled, nearly dropping the basket.

“I seen nothing.” Crescenio spit contemptuously, his voice tinged with bitterness. “No Indians. No soldiers, Union or Confederate. We’re wasting our time up here. But your uncle, he is too afraid of the Confederates.”

“Not much to be afraid of, at least for us men,” Raul said as he panted for breath. “Most are just limping, hollow-eyed skeletons. The rest are buried outside of town. Father Sanchez wouldn’t let them be buried in the churchyard.”

“They’re not the ones Tio’s afraid of.” Crescenio jerked his chin north, indicating the thin, green line delineating the bosque that flanked the Rio Grande. Somewhere down there, a defeated Confederate Army was limping its way back towards Texas. Raul had heard the rumors. Everyone in town had, and all eyes scanned the northern horizon for a return of the dust cloud that hung over an army on the move.
The arroyo made a sudden turn and entered a deep bowl hidden by steep walls. Zorro and Torro, the two blue-eyed sheepdogs, appeared out of the grass and growled. Crescenio snarled a command, so they circled and dropped back into the grass, content they had fulfilled their guard duties. Cattle and sheep ranged throughout the bowl, mowing the spring grass. Raul noted a couple of Tio’s shepherds perched on rocks high in the walls, rifles across their knees, their broadbrimmed hats tipped forward so that he couldn’t tell whether they were awake or asleep. At the back of the valley, where two cottonwoods kept watch over a small, spring-fed pond, Tio Pedro sat on the stairs of the little, round-topped wagon that the herders now shared with their employer and his brother-in-law-bodyguard. It was surely a tight fit.

“Ah! You’ve captured a spy,” Tio Pedro said playfully. He set down the book that had been cradled in his lap and held out his hand. “I say we confiscate his basket and see what’s in it. How is that sister of mine?”

 “She is lonely and bored, and still very sad,” Raul answered.

“But safe? And well? And Arsenio?” Crescenio demanded.

“Mama is safe. And well. And Arsenio is recovering.” Raul saw the slight tic of relief that his father didn’t want him to see. Crescenio wanted everyone to think he was steely and strong, but underneath the sharp exterior lay a man who loved his bubbly, vivacious wife, grieved for the daughter he had lost, and worried still for the son who had nearly accompanied his sister in death.

“We should be with her.” Crescenio gave his brother-in-law a sharp, sidewise glance.

“Not until those Texicans have passed through.” Tio responded, in an equally sharp tone. Clearly, that this was an argument they had often.

“What? You don’t want to sell to them as they pass through town? From what I hear, they are desperate for food.” Crescenio asked mockingly.

“If they had any money, I might consider it. But their paper money is no better than their word, and their coin long gone. And desperate men are dangerous men. Better to stay here.” Tio Pedro pulled back the cloth that covered the basket and chuckled with satisfaction. He pulled out a tortilla and ate it. When it was gone, he handed one each to Crescenio and Raul, then tossed a couple to the sheepherders, who had silently drifted down from their rock perches and were hovering nearby. Raul rolled his tortilla and nibbled on the end, his eyes darting between his uncle and his father as he appraised them both.

Tio Baca was one of the richest men in town, and his thoughts always centered on his money and how he could make more. He worried less about whether the Union or the Confederates could hold the little town of Socorro than he did about which side could pay the most for his goods.  Raul’s father, on the other hand, had come from poor stock, and prized his pride more than money. He hated both the Northerners and the Southerners, and wanted both out of New Mexico. Raul sat between the two men, pulled first towards the argument of one and then the other.

The wind picked up at the opening of the box canyon, ruffling Zorro and Torro’s coats. Raul watched it swirl into a column of grass bits and dust. The hair on the back of his head rose. A tingle ran up his spine.

“It’s been a strange year. Extra cold this winter, but little snow. And now, diablos de polvo, this early,” Tio said. “Know what the Navajo call them? Chiindii. Spirits.”

Crescenio shivered and crossed himself. “Don’t go talking about spirits. Not with all the deaths we’ve had.”

Tio Baca laughed. “Surely you don’t believe in ghosts! They went the way of the Inquisition, and witches. We’re living in the age of science, now!”

“There are plenty of things left that your Galilleos can’t explain,” Crescenio said with a snarl.

Raul set his tortilla aside, unnerved by the argument. He didn’t want to think about ghosts, not with the faces of so many dead men haunting his dreams at night. Ever since the battle at Valverde Ford, he had found himself jerking up from his sleeping mat, gasping for breath like a drowning man, his heart pounding, his body soaked with sweat. The faces, blood smeared and broken, hovered over him long after he awakened, and he would find himself outside, staring at the stars as he tried to calm himself.  But stars reminded him of the thousand Confederate fires he had seen while standing on the parapet at Fort Craig, and that memory would start his heart pounding once again.

Raul felt his heart pounding now as he got to his feet and left the argument behind him. Maybe his father was right, and the world of the dead existed here, beside his own. Maybe his uncle was right, and there were no such things as ghosts. The dead were just dead. He would have to side with one man or the other on this, as he would have to decide which was right on the question of foreigners in his land, and how he was to live his life. He loved and honored both men. How could he choose between them?

Zorro and Torro raised their heads and watched him pass between them with suspicious and hopeful eyes. When he was beyond the protection of the canyon, Raul sat on a boulder and stared at the immense land spread before him, the parallel lines of mountains and bosque snaking northward towards a distant horizon. The wind picked up again, whistling through the rocks and forming another dust devil. This one seemed to hover in front of him, shimmering and shifting until it almost coalesced into a figure of a young girl.

“Lupe?” His sister’s name slipped from his lips, half gasp and half prayer. Though barely audible, it seemed to have the strength to make the wind collapse on itself, dissolving into nothingness. Raul stared at the place where the shape had been, and saw, far in the distance, flashes of metal like a thousand falling stars amid a faint cloud of drifting dust. The time for indecisiveness was over.
 ​ Thank you for reading my short story. If it intrigues you, please join my friends, fans and family newsletter list or visit my website so that you can learn more about my work. You can buy Valverde here. ​