Brand Spanking New Information On The Assination Of Governor Charles Bent

Governor Charles Bent

Some interesting information my wife and I discovered while doing our research on my family.

The assassination of Governor Charles Bent on the night of 19 January 1847 was a complicated affair carried out by some New Mexicans and Taos Indians, heroes and patriots all of them. The actual killing was gruesome, as are all killings, but it was an assassination.  The guy, Governor Bent, ended up dead and it was called a murder, but he was assassinated by New Mexican patriots. Make no mistake about it.

The Buenaventura Lobato and Mrs. Juana Catalina Valdez-Lobato mentioned in the article by E. Bennet Burton, quoted below, and published in the book noted below are in all reality Buenaventura de Jesus Valdez, my 2nd cousin several generations removed, and his wife Juana Catalina Lovato.

Buenavuntura Valdez was born 31 Jannary 1789 in Pojoque, New Mexico to Pedro Antonio Valdez y Bustos and Maria Manuela Gonzales. 

Mrs. Juana Catalina Valdez-Lovato was in reality Buenaventura's wife. She was Juana Catalina Lovato, born circa 1798, the daughter of Antonio Jose Lovato and Maria Josefa Chavez. Juana Catalina Lovato was the mother of  Maria Paula Lovato born 28 December 1811 in Taos. The birth of Maria Paula occurred when Juana Catalina Lovato was single.  Juana Catalina Lovato's daughter Maria Paula later married Charles Hipolyte Trotier Beaubien and was the mother of Narciso Beaubien who was also killed that fateful night.

So a short explaination is in order, Buenaventura de Jesus Valdez who the article states that in a public speech, afterwards admitted his local leadership in the uprising was married to the aunt of Narciso Beaubien, Juana Catalina Valdez. It is fair to assume that if Charles Hipolyte Trotier Beaubien, Narciso's father and husband of  Maria Paula had been in Taos at this moment, he would have been killed too.

In a book titled "Old Santa Fe, A Magazine of History, Archaeology, Genealogy and Biography" Volume 1, 1913 - 1914 published quarterly by the Old Santa Fe Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico and edited by Ralph Emerson Twitchell on pages 176 - 209 there is an article by E. Bennett Burton in his paper "The Taos Rebellion" mentions a Buenaventura Lobato and a Mrs. Juana Catalina Valdez Lobato as follows;

The massacre at Taos was under the leadership of Pablo Montoya and Tomasito, a Taos Indian, the last named, with a murderous band, going to the home of Governor Bent and while engaging him in conversation through the closed door, fired, striking him in the chin and stomach. The door was then broken in and the Indians filled the body of the fallen man with arrows, three of which he pulled from his head and face as he lay prostrate. As the Indians were slashing his wrists and hands with their knives and axes, a Mexican named Buenaventura Lobato entered the room and seeing what they were doing, cried" "I did not tell you to kill him, but only to take him prisoner!" Lobato, in a public speech, afterwards admitted his local leadership in the uprising. Governor Bent was scalped before he died.

In the meantime, seeing that resistance was useless. Mrs. Boggs, the wife of Thomas Boggs, Mrs. Carson and Mrs. Bent, all members of the governor's household, began to dig a hole in the adobe wall of the room, using an iron spoon for the purpose, hoping to enable the governor to make his escape. Though too late to save him, they were able to make their own way into the adjoining house. They were pursued, and Mrs. Boggs and Mrs. Carson begged on their hands and knees that the assailants spare the lives of Mrs. Bent and her children. This the murderers permitted, and the three women and the Bent children escaped to the home of Mrs. Juana Catalina Valdez-Lobato, where they remained until the arrival of the troops from Santa Fe fifteen days later.

More information on Governor Charles Bent at Wikipedia below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bent

NOTE: If anyone is interested in the genealogical information or sources leave a note and email so I can respond.

Getting Lost In The Milieu

Merriam‑Webster

Define milieu: the physical or social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops.

Getting lost in the milieu  happens all of the time, to a lot of people. It happens to a whole lot of people, this is where the "Heinz 57" label comes from for some folks when you ask them about their nationality or what their background is. It happens for several reasons:

Distance from home base, wherever it might be.
Not liking your background for one reason or another.
Persons actually working at changing their background.
Living in a different cultural environment. Can be close or far, it does not matter.

New Mexican Hispanics are the group I usually watch and see the changes coming and how they reflect on our community in the present, the here and now. 

In all reality is has never been static, not now and not ever.

This is where the Genizaros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen%C3%ADzaro) come from and this is where the Genizaro went.

This is where New Mexicans who have mixed have gone, to one degree or another.

Not that it really matters, it is just something that happens and is always happening.

The reason for this weblog is my attempt to inform and help some who might be interested.

La Vregunza De Ser Nuevo Mejicano

The shame that some New Mexican Hispanos live with because of being Hispanic. There seems to be no end to the variations of racial pretensions on the part of some New Mexicans. They cannot seem to get far enough away from just being who they are without trying to be something else. It is hard for me to be able to tell when, what era, this started in or if it has always been this way. My best guess is it started when the Americans arrived in 1846 and they saw the whole population of New Mexico as made up of three separate groups, the Spanish, the Mexican and the Indian.

The identity rush was on.

Not much time goes by when I do not see or hear another cockamamie utterance on what this or that New Mexican thinks he or she is. There seems to be no end to us wanting to be something other than what we are. This has been going on long enough that those who come in contact with us are sometimes afraid to broach the subject.

Quoted in his book "The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande" published in 2002 by the University of California Press and written by Charles Montgomery he quotes:

In 1930 Reyes Nicanor Martinez  speaking of his sisters, Cleofas Martinez,  wedding to Venesclao Jaramillo remembered their marriage as an example of how families of Spanish stock conserved their traditions and kept their blood pure. "Weddings like theirs he wrote "served to preserve unimpaired the refinement and culture of these families, which still distinguishes them from the rest of the population of New Mexico".

Maria Cleofas Martinez de Jaramillo herself described her idyllic life and wedding in her own book titled "Romance of a Little Village Girl" published by the Naylor Company in San Antonio, Texas in 1956 and again the University of New Mexico Press in 2000.

But those books and that particular family aside... the effort by New Mexicans to be who they are not is beyond adequate documentation in one post on this weblog. Suffice it to say, there are many, many instances and many, many different groups who New Mexicans try to identify with other than who the odds favor that they really are.

I tell you that is is an embarrassing situation when forced to confront and discuss it. Not a good subject to bring up as the conversation forces some serious introspection on the one part and a complete denial on the other.

One comment on the weblog a while back probably put it best, we ought to self identify as New Mexicans and when challenged we could then explain the tangled web our ancestors wove.

The final word on this will not come for many, many generations. We, New Mexicans, seem to have more than our share of people who will go to no ends to deny being who we are. It just does not seem enough.

Interacting With Spirits

Interacting with spirits sounds like witch craft and in all reality it is. It does not matter what spirits you are trying to interact with. Christian spirits are still spirits. Jewish spirits? Hindu 7 headed spirits? A priest praying to spirits? Billy Graham praying to spirits. A guy in a saffron robe praying to spirits?

You get the picture.

No better and no worse than the Voodoo guy cutting the head off of a chicken for some other spirit. No difference at all. No difference to someone praying to a buffalo skull.

The results will be similar.

It gives people comfort, weak people get some comfort weaker people get more comfort. They do not have the ability to deal with reality without some form of a spirit. The need for supernatural spirits to assist, to guide, to pray to and seek assistance from is very powerful emotion.

The preachers, the white collar folks, the saffron robe guys know this, they absolutely know it. They understand what it takes to motivate these individuals. What do you think they teach at their divinity schools. They know the human weaknesses, the frailties. They also know how to take advantage of them. Look at the churches and their placements in our cities. This gives us a glimpse of what they really think of us.

Bottom line is that interacting with spirits is expensive and sucks the ability to think critically from practitioners. They do not call it the opiate of the masses for nothing.