BY C.M. MAYO — October 4, 2021 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.
Texas is giant in so many ways, including its literature. However, the literature on its Guadalupe Mountains is relatively sparse. This isn’t surprising when you consider how remote these mountains are—by car from El Paso, only after an hour and half do they rise up to their full splendor from the floor of the Texas desert. They make for a “sky island,” watered woodlands surrounded by the salty desert of what used to be a vast sea. There were never any towns in the Guadalupes’ wooded valleys; into the 19th century these valleys were inhabited by the Mescalero Apaches for seasonal hunting camps, until they were driven out by the U.S. Army, and the railroad tracks laid down across the desert, alongside the telegraph lines. Suffice to say, without the aid of fossil fuels, first coal, then oil, it was brutally difficult to travel over this region. Even today most travelers blow on by the Guadalupes at 80 miles an hour towards points west or east. As one who has served as an artist-in-residence in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I well know what glories (and not a few rattlesnakes) these mountains hold. I am at work on my memoir / portrait of Far West Texas but of course, others have written about the Guadalupes, and their works inform mine. Herewith, a few favorites from my working library:
“The Guadalupe Mountains stand nearly 9,000 feet tall, spanning the far western fringe of Texas, the border of New Mexico, and the meeting point of the Southern Plains and Chihuahuan Desert. Long an iconic landmark of the Trans-Pecos region, the Guadalupe Mountains have played a critical role for the people in this beautiful corner of the Southwest borderlands. In the late 1960s, the area was finally designated a national park.
“Drawing upon published sources, oral histories, and previously unused archival documents, Jeffrey P. Shepherd situates the Guadalupe Mountains and the national park in the context of epic tales of Spanish exploration, westward expansion, Native survival, immigrant settlement, the conservation movement, early tourism, and regional economic development. As Americans cope with climate change, polarized political rhetoric, and suburban sprawl, public spaces such as Guadalupe Mountains National Park remind us about our ties to nature and our historical relationships with the environment.”
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W.C. Jameson’s Legend and Lore of the Guadalupe Mountains (University of New Mexico Press, 2007) and The Guadalupe Mountains: Island in the Desert (Texas Western Press, 1994), with tales of Indians, wildest nature, secret gold mines and ghosts, are essential reading for any would-be Hollywood screenwriter.
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A Brush with Passion: The Work of Clark Cox, edited by Wendy Parish and Jeannie Sillis (Carlsbad Caverns-Guadalupe Mountains Association, 2003) is my personal favorite. Clark Cox (1861-1936) was a professional scene painter for opera and theater. For some time he worked out of New Orleans, then moved to Dallas, at which point he began to make annual pilgrimages to paint landscapes in the Guadalupe Mountains. His strike me as the kind of watercolors Beatrix Potter would have painted, had she ventured so far afield. And having hiked these landscapes myself, these many decades later, I so admire how Cox captured their subtle beauty.
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Paul Cool’s Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande (Texas A & M University Press, 2008) is a major scholarly history of the El Paso Salt War of 1877, a bloody conflict between newly-arrived Anglo businessmen and local Mexican salt harvesters. I had the honor of interviewing the author for this blog back in 2016.
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Mark Santiago’s A Bad Peace and a Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018) is a superbly researched history of a war that had been, essentially, entirely forgotten. From the catalog copy:
“This book challenges long-accepted historical orthodoxy about relations between the Spanish and the Indians in the borderlands separating what are now Mexico and the United States. While most scholars describe the decades after 1790 as a period of relative peace between the occupying Spaniards and the Apaches, Mark Santiago sees in the Mescalero Apache attacks on the Spanish beginning in 1795 a sustained, widespread, and bloody conflict. He argues that Commandant General Pedro de Nava’s coordinated campaigns against the Mescaleros were the culmination of the Spanish military’s efforts to contain Apache aggression, constituting one of its largest and most sustained operations in northern New Spain. A Bad Peace and a Good War examines the antecedents, tactics, and consequences of the fighting.
“This conflict occurred immediately after the Spanish military had succeeded in making an uneasy peace with portions of all Apache groups. The Mescaleros were the first to break the peace, annihilating two Spanish patrols in August 1795. Galvanized by the loss, Commandant General Nava struggled to determine the extent to which Mescaleros residing in “peace establishments” outside Spanish settlements near El Paso, San Elizario, and Presidio del Norte were involved. Santiago looks at the impact of conflicting Spanish military strategies and increasing demands for fiscal efficiency as a result of Spain’s imperial entanglements. He examines Nava’s yearly invasions of Mescalero territory, his divide-and-rule policy using other Apaches to attack the Mescaleros, and his deportation of prisoners from the frontier, preventing the Mescaleros from redeeming their kin.
“Santiago concludes that the consequences of this war were overwhelmingly negative for Mescaleros and ambiguous for Spaniards. The war’s legacy of bitterness lasted far beyond the end of Spanish rule, and the continued independence of so many Mescaleros and other Apaches in their homeland proved the limits of Spanish military authority. In the words of Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spaniards had technically won a ‘good war’ against the Mescaleros and went on to manage a ‘bad peace.'”
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Last but not least of the favorites to mention, is Donald P. McGookey’sGeologic Wonders of West Texas (self-published, second printing, 2007). This is uber-nerdy geology, but essential reading for anything to do with the Guadalupe Mountains, for these are geologic wonders indeed. To quote McGookey, page 70:
“The Guadalupe Mountain rocks are of a very large and long barrier reef, the Capitan Reef. This type of barrier reef is very similar to the present day Great Australian and Belize Barrier Reefs. The continuity of sediments down the slope into the basin facies are the best found anywhere in the world. In places like McKitrick Canyon it is an easy hike from rocks of the top part of the reef to those deposited in the basin. Total relief between the reef and deeper parts of the basin is over 5,000 feet.”
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Finally, two extra-crunchy videos:
Eleanor King’s video “Conflict Archaeology: The Untold History of the Buffalo Soldiers and the Apache in Texas”
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This recent Zoom by archeologist Dr Bryon Schroder is not about the Guadalupe Mountains per se, but about cutting-edge research on paleolithic hunters in the larger Big Bend Region of Far West Texas. I include it here because it gives an overview of peoples who would have also hunted in the Guadalupe Mountains.
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I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
I am still turtling along in writing my book about Far West Texas, which has involved not only extensive travel in the Trans-Pecos and some podcasting but reading– towers of books!– and what a joy it was to encounter one so fascinating as Paul Cool’sSalt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande.
A meticulously researched and expertly told history of the El Paso Salt War of 1877, Salt Warriors is essential reading for anyone interested in US-Mexico border and Texas history, and indeed, anyone interested in US history per se.
The El Paso Salt War of 1877 was sparked by
“Anglo” businessmen staking claim to the massive salt
bed that lies just west of what is now the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Local
Mexican-Americans, known as Paseños, considered the salt deposits community
property, in accord with Spanish Law.
While the salt may have been free to anyone who
would shovel it up, that required an arduous journey across the desert with
carts pulled by oxen, and under constant threat of Indian attack. For
Paseño farmers who eked out a living in this drought-prone region, the salt
they could harvest was vital for curing food, pelts, for livestock licks, and
above all, as a cash commodity– much of it sold to mines in Mexico, where it
was used for refining silver. The Paseños were outraged when Judge Charles H.
Howard, a recent arrival from Virginia, informed them that they would have to
start paying his father-in-law, a German businessman based in Austin, for the
salt.
From behind the windshield, approaching Guadalupe Mountains National Park from US 62, which goes through the salt lake. Photo by C.M. Mayo
In the wake of the El Paso Salt War, several people on both sides of the conflict had been killed, some horribly (Judge Howard was murdered, and his body mutilated and thrown down a well), the town of San Elizario sacked, several reputations ruined– some fairly and others unfairly, as Cool argues– and a wedge of suspicion and resentment driven between communities that is still, more than a century later, not entirely healed.
Paul Cool is a former Army Reserve officer and resident of Arizona with an avid interest in the US-Mexico borderlands. He kindly agreed to answer my questions via email.
C.M. MAYO: When and why did you develop your avid interest in the US-Mexico border?
PAUL COOL: It came late in life, but traces back to growing up in Southern California and marrying a young lady whose paternal grandparents came to El Paso during the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, I spent nearly two decades trying to write a book about the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic era, and only recently turned to the borderlands for material.
C.M. MAYO: What prompted your interest in the Salt War?
PAUL COOL: I have always been drawn to historical eras marked by the collapse or relative absence of order, justice, and social restraint, periods when ambitious or unscrupulous individuals are more able to give free rein to their personal desires and vices at the expense of the larger community. The late Roman Republic. Revolutionary France. The frontier West.
In 1999, I drove from Seattle to
Baltimore via El Paso, where I happened to purchase Walter Prescott Webb’s
history of the Texas Rangers. His book contains a chapter on the Salt War. It
was obvious there was an interesting story here, but it was buried beneath the
ethnic bigotry running through Webb’s take. I then read C. L. Sonnichsen’s
little book on the Salt War. The writing was vivid, and his account grabbed me
in a way Webb’s had not. I felt closer to what happened, but the characters
were still archetypes and stereotypes.
C.M. MAYO: Outside the region this conflict is almost unknown. Why do you think this is?
PAUL COOL: Several reasons. The Spanish-speaking losers in the conflict disappeared into Mexico, and were in no position to write the history. As for the Anglos, many of the protagonists died, and they were soon replaced as by others who came to El Paso with the railroad, lacking any concern for the past. The story was buried because it was about a world that no longer existed, and no one cared about.
Second, the story did survive as a
chapter in Texas Ranger history, but since the Rangers surrendered to an enemy
repeatedly characterized as a “howling mob,” Texans generally considered the
Ranger performance a thing of shame and no one made any effort to expand our
knowledge of the episode for that reason.
Third, from the perspective of
Anglo sources, no iconic Anglo figure arose to grab our attention and turn the
story into the stuff of legend north of the border. I think the 1916-1918 Arab
Revolt illustrates what can happen with a hero. Think of Lawrence of Arabia’s
impact on Western understanding of the Arab Revolt. Without Lawrence, no
newspaper coverage by Lowell Thomas, no Seven Pillars of Wisdom, no
David Lean film, no Omar Sharif as Ali or Zhivago! Lawrence’s story, and
all that followed, is a misreading, to be sure, but corrective history is now
available. It is possible that Mexican sources will reveal the existence of a
hero, possibly Barela, possibly someone who we don’t yet know, and the
information needed to provide the foundation of a heroic narrative. The
romantic in me hopes that further research uncovers such a figure who can raise
awareness of this popular yet tragic rebellion, south of the border first, then
migrating up here.
Latino historians are and have long
been aware of the Salt War and its place in Mexican American history. When I
asked Dr. Arnoldo De
Leon, a preeminent authority on Tejano history, why Latino scholars
had never tackled the subject, he explained that they are playing catch-up,
that there are so many stories still in need of telling, so many that continue
to wait their chance.
C.M. MAYO: Of the results of the war, you write (p. 4) “In the long term, the distrust and marginalization of Paseño citizens by Anglos was deepened.” Your book does an excellent job of showing why this was but at the same time, you show that the insurgency was not “a bloody riot by a howling mob but in reality a complex political, social, and military struggle.” After your book came out, did your argument meet any notable resistance?
PAUL COOL: The academic community has generally applauded the appearance of Salt Warriors, although some reservations about my approach have been expressed. For example, one reviewer justly criticized the book for its reliance on north-of-the-border sources, to the exclusion of any archival material inside Mexico. I do not speak or read Spanish, and did not have the resources to hire others to dig through material that might or might not tell the story I wanted to tell. I had a choice: I could leave the story untold because I could not do a so-called “definitive” version (which is always elusive anyway), or I could tell this story to the best of my ability and hope that others would follow up to provide new perspectives.
One other criticism I will mention
is that I gave my opinion of the key participants, of their individual
responsibility for the chaos and destruction that took place, and even of their
moral failings. Some said that is not the historian’s job. It is best to just
state the facts and let the reader decide. That may be true, but in this case,
I felt that the story of the Salt War had been so repeatedly twisted over time
that a clear statement of who was responsible was in order. One can never
really know the hearts and minds of people who died more than a century before,
but I feel confident in my opinion of who was most responsible for the tragedy.
C.M. MAYO: What lessons does the Salt War offer us today? I am thinking of some of the dynamics we see played out with other insurgencies and their repression, and the dynamics that ensure. On p. 235 you write “‘Throughout history,’ today’s U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers learn, many defeated insurgent movements ‘have degenerated into criminality.'” My understanding is that this would apply both to some of the defeated Mexican-American and allied Mexican insurgents, as well as to many ex-Confederates who were then coming into the Southwest and taking up careers as rustlers, and bank and train robbers.
PAUL COOL: Any population is always going to include “hustling individualists” who are most interested in getting what they want, whether it is inordinate power or wealth at the expense of the larger population, or the satisfaction of some baser need, including taking something from someone else in a violent or disturbing manner.
The question is, does the presence
of an equally applied law and a just order prevent or at least put a damper on
that?
In the first instance, one group,
whether it’s Gilded Age entrepreneurs and their political allies, or their 21st century heirs on Wall Street and
in government, uses “law” to corral wealth and power at the expense of the
general population.
In the second, violent criminals
trade on the lack of “order” to achieve much the same ends, perhaps more
bloodily, but not necessarily on a smaller scale.
What transpired in post-Salt War El
Paso, in terms of increases in criminal activity by gangs and individuals, was
probably not much different in nature than what happens any place the authority
structure collapses, whether in Iraq, Revolutionary France between Louis XVI
and Napoleon, or the Soviet Union after Gorbachev.
But something additional happened
in El Paso, new to the American West but not uncommon in world history. There,
the sheriff hired mercenaries to enforce order against perceived enemies, in
this case the Mexican American population. Those mercenaries included career
criminals led by John Kinney. What happened in El Paso became, for a few years,
the way sheriffs did business in the American borderlands, and was repeated
during the Lincoln County War (again with Kinney leading a band of criminals)
and in Cochise County, Arizona during the final stage of the so-called
Earp-Cowboy troubles.
C.M. MAYO: You were a former Army Reserve officer. How did this inform and color how you saw some of the individuals in this story?
PAUL COOL: The event had largely been treated as an ugly civil disturbance requiring military policing. I decided to approach it as a “war” brought on by clashing cultures, economic drivers, and untrammeled ambition.
My own military career was slender,
but my first thirty years were spent as the son of a decorated combat hero and,
as a Reserve officer, in close association with officers and men who also met
that definition. The military is made up of people from the general population.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen are, in that sense, much like the rest of us. But
in addition to military knowledge, i.e., how to fight and win, the military honestly
attempts to inculcate certain ideal qualities, including honor, integrity,
reliability. People, whether the population you’re sworn to protect or your
buddy in the next foxhole, suffer and die unnecessarily when these qualities
are forgotten or ignored. The military I knew does try to adhere to them.
There is, of course, so much more
to the military ethos, but I mention these factors because they influenced the
course of the Salt War. There were army officers, such as Lieutenant Rucker and
Colonel Hatch, who attempted to use their influence and authority to prevent
violence and to quickly, peacefully put a lid on it. But it just so happened
that, at the critical point, the officer on the scene, Captain Thomas Blair,
possessed probably less integrity than any other officer in the U.S. Army. He
was a smooth charmer, and no one realized his lack of character. Had Rucker not
been replaced by Blair, or had Blair possessed ordinary integrity, it seems to
me likely that some of the violence might have been short-circuited. Who knows?
It was only later, through Blair’s bigamy, that the value of his word was
revealed to all.
The military also attempts to
instill discipline, to convince young soldiers to follow the rules, something
that goes against the grain for many, from teenagers to independent-minded
middle-age men. Discipline enables a unit to carry out its missions and
prevents the naked exercise of power in service to personal wants. The Salt War
illustrates the importance of discipline and leadership. We read that the
various companies of the Ninth Cavalry occupying the Mexicano towns
carried out their pacifying mission without any complaints, whereas soldiers
from the company of the Tenth Cavalry engaged in a variety of violent personal
and property crimes. The difference was the discipline instilled by the leaders
of the Ninth Cavalry, but not the Tenth, both prior to and during the military
action.
C.M. MAYO: A modern recounting of the Salt Wars usually makes Judge Charles H. Howard into a simple character, an arrogant, stubborn and greedy villain, the outsider who swiped the community’s salt and then, even to the point of endangering both himself and others, insisted on pressing his client’s claim. One of the things I appreciated about your book is that you explained in more depth some of Howard’s probable motivations and, in particular, the mid-19th century Virginian concepts of honor to which he would have ascribed. The fact that he was bereaved after the death of his wife and deeply indebted to his father-in-law, the purported owner of the salt lakes, was another crucial factor you point out.
It seems to me that you have made a powerful effort to objectively present the different points of view in the conflict. Was this something that came easily or did it take a while?
Were there any individuals whose motivations were particularly obscure to you, or even now remain so?
PAUL COOL: While I don’t subscribe to the “great man” theory of history, I do believe that individuals make a difference, whether it’s Jean-Paul Marat steering the French Revolution along a more violent course or young Charlotte Corday who feels bound to save France from Marat. I believe that the Salt War was filled with such characters, whose personalities and behaviors were instrumental in leading the county into a downward spiral. That was not fully evident from the published record, because Salt War history was for decades largely a matter of historians regurgitating the same tale: largely nameless, faceless, hapless Texas Rangers surrender to a Mexican mob led by the evil Chico Barela. Nothing worth investigating further. But once I dug into sources not previously used, such as the federal government’s records, or personal correspondence that popped up in newspapers or located in the governor’s records, a different story emerged. At some point, for some reason, I decided to investigate the lives of key players before and after the Salt War. And that’s where I found the keys to their actions in 1877, most notably in the cases of Blair and Kerber.
Howard is a figure out of Greek
tragedy. He wore his arrogance on his sleeve, but arrogance is a trait, not a
motive. What was his motive? What impelled him to send a county over a cliff?
It had to be something deep and personal. Howard himself spoke and wrote of his
debasement by the Paseños, of his overriding debt to his father in law, of his
depression after the loss of his wife. Losing his honor, he wanted only to
regain it, and it did not matter who he harmed in the process. He was raised in
a society that educated him to believe that personal honor trumped all. I
don’t believe that he saw that he had any choice. He could only act as he
did.
I am afraid that, despite the best
efforts of New Mexico historian, Dr. Rick Hendricks, I never quite got a handle
on Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, the man most demonized by contemporary Anglo
sources. Toward the end of my work, I did add a paragraph that attempted to
make sense of Father Borrajo, based on Dr. Hendrick’s guidance, but then in the
final flurry of chopping and editing the manuscript, the passage got deleted
from one spot and not replaced in another. I didn’t notice until the book was
published. I tell myself that these things happen, but it’s a mistake I’d
rather sweep under the rug. I’d love to revise Salt Warriors after Dr.
Hendricks publishes his Borrajo biography. I think that would fill a large gap
in the story I’ve told.
The Paseños were a tough nut to
crack. They did not write the histories, their thoughts are largely absent from
the written record, and the victors universally denigrated their motives and
characters. I got past that in two ways. First, I decided to make the Paseño
community a character. Who were these people at the Pass of the North?
Faced with a century-long relative isolation from Spanish, Mexican, and
American authorities and support systems, what kind of community did they
establish and build? How did it function? What did that maintenance and
development of a community say about its leadership? Guesswork on my part was
necessary, but traits did present themselves and a portrait I trust did emerge.
Second, in the case of the Paseno’s
leaders, I was able to draw conclusions about their leadership skills based on
their military actions, which were quite elaborate. One thing that the evidence
revealed is that the Paseños had a long history of self-defense, whether
against Apache raiders or the demoralized Confederates who retreated from New
Mexico. It was obvious that the Paseño community had a core of leaders they
turned to, men who had previously considered how best to respond to threats,
and had put their lives on the line to lead those efforts. I had no direct
evidence enabling me to get inside the minds of Chico Barela (or “Varela”),
Sisto Salcido, or other leaders, but the reports of what actions they took was
very revealing. For example, the traditional Anglo account is that Barela was a
man not given to keeping his word. A different reading is that he was a master
of using deception to misdirect his enemy’s attentions and actions. He could
spot an opponent of weak resolve and then guide his actions by telling that
opponent what he wanted to hear. He played his opponents no less than Napoleon,
Robert E. Lee, or Rommel. That’s something you do in war, if you can.
Ultimately, Barela and his little army bit off more than they could chew, but
they conducted a skillful military operation that achieved short-term results
no one among the Anglos expected.
C.M. MAYO: About Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, who as you say was “most demonized by contemporary Anglo sources,” would you like to share the lost paragraph?
PAUL COOL: Unfortunately, whatever paragraph I had on Borrajo was in some unknown spot in some unknown draft that never got indexed. However, whatever I put in was influenced by this 2002 corrective view by Dr. Hendricks, who, since 2010, has been New Mexico’s State Historian. I do think Borrajo’s intolerance of the Protestants and the French-based Catholic teachings of the then current parish priest, Father Pierre Bourgade (later archbishop of Tucson), helped to keep the population stirred up, even if he was not the greedy demon falsely portrayed by his enemies. Unfortunately, Borrajo’s appearances during 1877, the climax of the crisis, are few and references to him at that point are probably less reliable than usual.
C.M. MAYO: Louis Cardis, the Italian-born businessman and stagecoach owner is a most intriguing character. Was it possible to find out more about his origins other than that he was from Piedmont and might have served as a captain in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s army?
PAUL COOL: There was more about his life story and others that just had to come out to get the book down to size. Anything I found that explains his actions did stay in the book. He is another character who, where the written record is concerned, is largely seen through the eyes of others. I detect no bigotry toward his constituents, none, but he did not do all he could to protect them from the power structure that was moving to seize their grandfathered rights in the salt lakes. For example, he signed his name to the 1876 Texas Constitution that enabled private citizens to own saline deposits, but never after, as far as I can tell, spurred his constituents to take legal action to forestall Anglo ownership.
C.M. MAYO: As you proceeded with your research, what most surprised you?
PAUL COOL: This project started as a planned 2-3 chapters in another book. I was surprised by the complexity and the epic sweep of the story, and by the characters who could leap off the page in the hands of writers much better than me. (If there were a viable market, this story deserves a ten-hour TV miniseries starring Russell Crowe and Edward James Olmos, among others.) If I could have made Salt Warriors twice as long, I would have. Pity the poor reader had I owned my own publishing house.
C.M. MAYO: You were able to talk to several of the descendants on both sides of the conflict. Were you surprised by how they saw it?
PAUL COOL: The families that remain in San Elizario knew they had reason to be proud of their ancestors, but over the years, exposed only to increasingly vague oral tradition and the Anglo-centric writings of later historians, they had largely lost the details of what really happened. In some cases, I had to reject the tradition, but in other instances, I thought tradition held up and explained what the records obscured. It was the first time I had to make sense of oral tradition, to treat it as evidence that deserved to be weighed rather than ignored.
On an early visit to San Elizario,
a leader of the local historical and genealogical society showed me where
tradition said certain key events happened. My research often showed otherwise,
and a few years later I was happy to return the favor, incorporating the
written evidence. We still had doubts about this and that event and had a great
time trying to make sense of the surviving evidence, including tradition.
C.M. MAYO: In reading about the organized crime in El Paso in the wake of the Salt War– in particular of cattle rustler John Kinney and his alliance with Sheriff Kerber– it’s tempting to make modern day comparisons with modern day drug trafficking, etc. Would you? Or was it something very different?
PAUL COOL: Well, it was much, much, less organized, and the crimes much more impromptu than we see with modern drug traffickers. My subsequent research has led me to believe that a better analogy would be the Bahamian pirates of the early 18th century, those who established a base of operations on Nassau temporarily free of British authority. (El Paso had a government, but totally ineffective keeping order.) There were criminal leaders (Blackbeard, for example), but individual pirates were more or less free to sign on to this piratical raid or that. They had to strictly follow orders during any voyage—at sea, everyone’s life depends on it—but otherwise were independent contractors who, between “jobs,” had no duty to follow anyone. Likewise, men might follow Kinney or not. That they raided with Kinney today did not prevent them from riding off to commit their own crimes tomorrow, or just sit around playing cards and drinking rot-gut till they went broke.
C.M. MAYO: One of the most astonishing things to me about the entire episode is that nearing the end of the book (p.280) we learn that the government never granted Zimpleman ownership of the salt lakes! So what happened after that? Who took possession of them? Who owns them now?
PAUL COOL: I too was astonished by that. I did learn that some business did extract salt into the 20th century, but more than that could not tell you. I simply had to move on.
C.M. MAYO: Anyone who drives east out of El Paso en route to Carlsbad NM passes right through the salt lakes. But to really see them, what is the best place to view them?
PAUL COOL: If one is simply traveling east or west, on the way to or from El Paso, one can get a good view at several points along Highway 62/180. My book’s cover painting, by artist Bob Boze Bell, is based on a photograph (found inside on the page facing the Introduction) that I took from this highway. A more immersive experience can be gained at the Gypsum Salt Dunes inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The lakes stretch for 100 miles, so I imagine there are any number of good sites for viewing.
C.M. MAYO: One of the stops on one of the routes from the Rio Grande out to the salt lakes is Hueco Tanks, an oasis with some important rock art that is now a State Park and Historic Site. For anyone interested in the history of the Salt War, is there any place there that would be especially relevant to see?
PAUL COOL: Among the signatures carved into the rocks of Hueco Tanks is that of Santiago Cooper, one of the Texas Rangers who survived the siege and battle of San Elizario.
A walking tour of San Elizario is essential. Many of the buildings date from 1877 and before.
With the benefit of the bird’s eye view painting in my book, it is possible to
follow the course of the actual fighting, as well as place other events that
took place in town. A walking tour guide is also available at the museum,
giving historic and architectural details on surviving structures.
In the city of El Paso, a very few
buildings survive, most notably the Magoffin House. One should also visit
nearby Mesilla, New Mexico, near Las Cruces, where A. J. Fountain published the
newspaper that gave the fullest, if one-sided, reporting of the events inside
El Paso County. The town square dates from before the salt war.
C.M. MAYO: Anything else you think I should have asked?
PAUL COOL: There was one other sound criticism of my book that deserves comment. In part because I did not use Mexican sources, I did not link the Paseños to Mexican national thinking and traditions regarding liberty, property, justice, and the right to rise in defense of one’s rights. Instead, I quite clearly linked them to traditions of New England’s minute men and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
I did that for two reasons. First, I know more
about U.S. traditions, and can stand on more solid ground. Second, I
intentionally attempted to make a point to an American audience. The
political philosophy driving the Paseños was of a universal nature but could be
and was expressed at the time by them (page 141) in terms that New Englanders
of 1775, Continental Congress delegates of 1789, and the Anglos who moved to El
Paso could understand, had their minds been open. However much the Paseños
acted within the traditions of the long Mexican quest for justice within the
law, they certainly acted within the U.S. tradition.
