Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

by Hampton Sides

  Carson understood the purpose of the proposed raid perfectly and later described it with his usual directness: “Our object was to get the Californians’ animals.”

  The dragoons and the Marines camped a few hundred yards from each other in a narrow valley only two miles from San Pasqual. It was a rainy night covered in a gelid fog. As most of the men shivered in their heavy wet blankets, Kearny decided to send a small detachment over to Pico’s encampment and assess the situation under the cover of darkness. A reconnaissance party was hastily arranged, composed of six dragoons and a Mexican quisling named Rafael Machado who had deserted from the Californian forces.

  Around ten o’clock this motley team of spies took off on mules into the mist. Soon they arrived at the outskirts of slumbering San Pasqual. The dragoons sent Machado forward on foot to coax an Indian to come out and provide details about Pico’s force: How big was it? Where were the men sleeping? Where were their horses pastured? Machado crept into the village and, sure to the plan, found an Indian who was willing to talk to the Americans. (“The Indians were very inimical to the Californians,” one of Kearny’s men later wrote, “and always ready to betray them.”) But the dragoons thought that Machado was taking too long to accomplish his task. They heard a dog barking, and in their worried impatience they raced toward the village to get a better look. When they did, the jangle of their swords against their saddles alarmed Pico’s night watchmen.

  The sentries cried out, and the dragoons, having found Machado, spurred away in the fog. But in the confusion of their flight, someone dropped a blue jacket that was stamped “U.S.” A Mexican sentinel found the garment and brought it to Pico, who promptly called his men to horses. Soon all the Mexicans were aroused from their sleep. They dashed from the mud huts of the village and ran to their mounts, yelling, “Viva California! Abajo Los Americanos!”

  The American reconnoiter had backfired; in a blundered instant, the element of surprise was lost.

  Sometime after midnight the dragoons galloped into camp and informed Kearny of the debacle. The general wasted no time—he ordered an immediate attack. If the advantage of surprise had been forfeited, he still had the advantage of darkness; Pico had no idea of the size and strength of Kearny’s pitiful army. By first light Pico’s spies would be sniffing around, and they would quickly discover Kearny’s vulnerability. The time to strike was now, he felt, before a bad situation worsened.

  The American camp erupted in wild shouts. It was so cold and damp that the bugler could not get off a note of reveille. The wet blankets were crusty with frost, the men groggy and cold. But once they realized the situation, they sprang to life—as one understated diarist put it, “There was a good deal of excitement and desire for a brush with the enemy.” Within fifteen minutes the dragoons were all on their mules and trotting toward San Pasqual. Soon they united with Gillespie and the Marines, and together the two parties marched to war. The bugler had sufficiently warmed his lips to blast a few notes of a battle song called “Charge as Foragers” (a “forage” was an antiquated term for a raid).

  When they reached the brow of a hill overlooking the now-stirring hamlet of San Pasqual, Kearny stopped in the scrub and addressed his men. Their country expected much of them, he said. He wanted them to encircle the village and seize the horses. If they had to kill the enemy they should do it, but he wanted to capture as many Californians alive as possible—it was not to be a slaughter. The fight, he suggested, would probably be close-in. Their carbines would not be worth much in the misty darkness, so they should have their swords at the ready.

  “Remember,” Kearny said, “one point of the saber is far more effective than any number of thrusts.”

  And then, in the early hours of December 6, 1846, his one hundred dragoons turned their animals toward San Pasqual, which lay a mile off across the low brush country. Soon they were stretched in a long, jumbled column, two abreast. Carson started out near the vanguard with Kearny and Emory, the three men working their way down the steep hill in the filtered gray light of the predawn.

  Chapter 26: OUR RED CHILDREN

  On the cold, dazzlingly bright morning of November 21, Col. Alexander Doniphan met at Bear Springs with an assembly of fourteen Navajo headmen. Narbona showed up as he said he would, although he was not feeling well enough to speak and entered the encampment borne on a litter. A red rock mesa formed a natural wall, and a cool stream coursed through the gently sloped landscape of piñon and juniper. The site was perfectly familiar to Narbona, for Bear Springs had for centuries been a gathering place of the Diné.

  Some 500 Navajos and 300 Americans now congregated in the surrounding hills to watch the proceedings.

  Colonel Doniphan rose and spoke first. An enormous man with a stentorian voice and the bearing of a poised trial lawyer, he had won over many juries back in his hometown of Liberty, Missouri; this was another trial, of sorts, and he intended to win it.

  “The United States,” he began, “has taken military possession of New Mexico and her laws now extend over the whole territory. The New Mexicans will be protected against violence and invasion, and their rights will be amply preserved. But the United States is also anxious to enter into a treaty of peace and lasting friendship with you, her red children, the Navajos. The same protection will be given to you that has been guaranteed the New Mexicans. I come with ample powers to negotiate a permanent peace between you, the New Mexicans, and us. If you refuse to treat on terms honorable to both parties, I am instructed to prosecute a war against you. The United States makes no second treaty with the same people; she offers the olive branch, and if that is rejected, then she offers powder, bullet, and steel.”

  Then a young Navajo headman rose to speak. His Spanish name was Zarcillos Largos, an eloquent man whom John Hughes describes as “very bold and intellectual.” Largos represented the younger members of the tribe who thought it dishonorable for the Navajos to relinquish their age-old fight with the New Mexicans. “Americans!” he exhorted. “We have waged war against the New Mexicans for years. We have plundered their villages and killed many of their people and made many prisoners. We had just cause for all this. You have lately commenced a war against the same people. You have great guns and many brave soldiers. You have therefore conquered them, the very thing we have been attempting to do for so many years. You now turn upon us for attempting to do what you have done yourselves. We cannot see why you have cause of quarrel with us for fighting the New Mexicans on the west, while you do the same thing on the east.”

  Colonel Doniphan rose again and tried to explain his country’s position. It was clear to him that the Navajos did not understand the American idea of surrender. “It is the custom of the Americans,” he said, “that when a people with whom we are at war gives up, we treat them as friends thenceforward. New Mexico has been attached to our government. Now, when you steal property from New Mexicans, you are stealing from us. When you kill them, you are killing our own people, for they have now become ours. This cannot be suffered any longer.”

  Largos did not like the sound of this, but eventually he relented. “If New Mexico really be in your possession,” he said, “and it be the intention of your government to hold it, we will cease our depredations. We will refrain from future wars upon the New Mexican people. For we have no cause of quarrel with you, and do not desire any war with so powerful a nation. Let there be peace between us.”

  And so the fourteen headmen present were assembled—Narbona, Largos, and the others. Doniphan had prepared a handwritten treaty, five paragraphs long, that proclaimed “permanent peace, mutual trust, and friendship.” The names of the fourteen Navajo leaders had been affixed to the bottom. Because none of the Navajos could read or write in any language, Doniphan devised another method for obtaining a signature: He had each man touch the index finger of his right hand to a pen that a soldier held, marking an X alongside each printed signature.

  It is doubtful the Navajos had much of an idea what they had signed. Yet it s
eemed a hopeful time nonetheless, a moment of optimism. The Americans and the Navajos had concluded their first treaty, and nothing terrible had happened. They said they were friends—and seemed to believe it.

  Confident that they had more or less solved the Navajo conflict, Colonel Doniphan and his eager Missourians prepared to head south, for Mexico. They were briskly moving on to their next assignment: To invade Chihuahua and take its capital city. Like nearly everything the Missourians had done since leaving Fort Leavenworth, there was a naïve quality to their busy actions in the Navajo country, and at the same time a kind of impudence. They would effortlessly conquer vast lands and fix ancient problems in short order. And, they thought, everyone would love them for it.

  Narbona and the other Diné, meanwhile, would go home to sit out the winter season. They would tell their ancient myths and hold their councils and sweat in their lodges. Their world still seemed rich and familiar, and they had plenty to eat.

  A treaty had been signed. But so far as the Navajos could tell, not a single thing had changed. Certainly the younger men of the tribe saw it that way. On November 26, less than a week after the treaty had been inked, a band of Navajos killed a New Mexican shepherd not far from Socorro, then ran off with 17 U.S. government mules and more than 800 sheep that had been purchased for American troop consumption. Two poorly armed Missourians, privates Robert Spears and James Stewart, rashly took off after the raiders. Six miles to the west their bodies were found, bristling with twenty-two arrows, their heads hideously smashed in by rocks.

  Spears and Stewart were the first American soldiers to be killed by Navajo Indians.

  Chapter 27: COLD STEEL

  The battle of San Pasqual—generally considered the most significant clash of the Mexican War that took place on what is now U.S. soil—began with an American blunder. About three-quarters of a mile away from the village, Kearny yelled out the command “Trot!” By this time the dragoons were spread out over a long distance, with the officers on fleeter, healthier animals taking the lead. Up in front, Capt. Abraham Johnston of the dragoons misheard Kearny’s order as “Charge!” And so Johnston repeated the wrong command, booming it over the valley for his comrades to hear and spurring his horse to a full gallop. All the men around him responded in kind and quickly vanished in the mist.

  Kearny instantly saw the peril in this development. “Heavens, I did not mean that!” he cried, but it was too late to correct. The leading third of the command, mostly young officers on the last few good horses, was now charging full-tilt, while the other two-thirds were merely limping along on decrepit mules—with the gap between the two groups growing dangerously large. Kearny lost his place in the vanguard and struggled to keep up, but Carson, because he was riding a horse in relatively good health, was able to push ahead and ride near Johnston at the head of the charge. The army’s two howitzers and the Marines’ four-pound gun, towed behind mules, were too far in the rear to be of any immediate use.

  Capt. Andres Pico and his Californians, all now mounted on their fine horses, had huddled in a ravine beside the town. Wrapped in their serapes, they were quietly conferring amongst themselves when Captain Johnston, Carson, and the other frontrunners suddenly descended on them. Pico’s men hastily formed a line and fired their weapons at point-blank range. A musket ball tore into Johnston’s forehead. Killed instantly, the captain tumbled off his horse.

  Carson was charging right behind when his horse lost its footing and threw him to the ground. Although he was not seriously injured, Carson’s rifle was broken clean in half. Somehow he was able to pick himself up and scurry crabwise from the path of the oncoming animals. “I came very near being trodden to death,” he later said, “and finally saved myself by crawling from under them.”

  The dragoons kept on coming. As they galloped into range of the Mexicans, they snapped off their carbines, but most of the weapons were so damp and corroded, the ammunition so soggy, that their shots had no effect. As Kearny had predicted, they would have to fight “close-in”; they unsheathed their swords and brandished them menacingly as they drove toward the enemy.

  In the face of this furious charge, the Californians scuttled their line and executed what at first looked like a retreat. They turned and took off toward the west, following the meandering course of a shallow stream. With Captain Johnston dead, Capt. Ben Moore took charge and ordered the dragoons to follow Pico’s fleeing horsemen, and for some distance gave chase. The pursuit was ill advised, however, for it thinned the dragoons out even more, leaving just a few of the men with the strongest animals far out in the lead, left to fight on their own, hopelessly separated from their comrades. (General Kearny and Lieutenant Emory were lagging even farther behind.)

  When Pico’s caballeros got a glimpse of this vulnerable vanguard and saw how diffuse their formations were and how miserable their mounts looked, they made an immediate halt. Smelling weakness, their confidence swelled. With the dexterity of lifelong equestrians, the Californians wheeled their horses and galloped straight at Moore. This time, however, they rode with lances—hefty spears nine feet long and set with sharp metal points.

  What is this? the dragoons wondered. It looked like some medieval exercise, with anachronistic weaponry from the days of Cervantes. At first the well-trained cavalrymen scoffed at these oncoming jousters.

  But in seconds the Californians expertly surrounded Moore and several of his comrades—“much as they might encircle a herd of cattle,” as one historian put it. Recognizing that he was dangerously exposed, Captain Moore charged at Captain Pico himself, ineffectually popping off his pistol and then reaching for his saber. Pico, an excellent swordsman, managed to fend off the attack and slash Moore with his blade. As this was happening, a pair of lancers rushed to the aid of their leader; they made separate charges at Moore and ran him through with their long spears. The captain was knocked from his horse, still alive, blood gouting from numerous gashes and punctures. Moore still clutched his sword in his hand, but in the fall it had broken close to the hilt. He had nothing left to fight with. As Moore lay helpless on the ground near a willow tree, another Californian hurried over with a pistol and finished him off.

  Other dragoons arrived and joined the fight. Realizing that their sodden guns were useless, they instead wielded them like clubs, but they found these brutish instruments were no match for the supple Mexican horsemen and their supposedly antiquated fighting technology. The Californians were wickedly precise with their lances, and they deftly stabbed and slashed the dragoons while the absurdly long reach of their weapons kept them unscathed. The sharp staves left deep “slots” in the flesh, as the American doctor later described the wounds. Nearly every dragoon received multiple punctures.

  Pico’s men were similarly adroit with reatas—leather lassos—which they used to yank an unsuspecting dragoon from his saddle while a comrade surged forward to lance the dismounted American as he lay entangled in the twined leather thongs. Wielding the reata was said to be a uniquely Californian skill. Throughout Mexico there was an old expression: “A Californian can throw the lasso as well with his foot as any other Mexican can with his hand.” A Western historian would write that, to Californians, “the saddle was home, the horse a second self, and the lance and reata their manly exercise.” On this gray morning, the Americans were discovering the mean truth of such aphorisms.

  One of the dragoons who entered the fray was Lt. Tom Hammond, who happened to be the brother-in-law of the fallen Captain Moore. Wondering what had happened to the other dragoons, he screamed, “For God’s sake, men, come up!” He spotted Moore’s prone body and darted over to it. Just then a lancer came at him from an unseen angle and thrust a spear into the lieutenant’s side. Hammond tumbled off his mount and lay gravely wounded next to his brother-in-law. He would join Moore in death within a few hours.

  By this point Kit Carson had managed to sprint ahead from the place where he’d tumbled off his horse. He took a carbine and ammunition from a dead dragoon—probabl
y Johnston—and then he caught a loose horse and took off in the direction of the fight. When he came to the bend in the valley where the dragoons were clashing in full fury and confusion, he instantly assessed the situation and realized it was pointless to try to fight the Californians from the saddle—they were tearing the dragoons to shreds. Every American who’d joined the fight was either dead or seriously wounded. Their swords were no match for the long lances, and their mules and tired horses could not keep pace with the agile Mexican mounts.

  And so, perceiving the futility of close-in fighting, Carson did something quite characteristic of him. Quietly, calmly, he dismounted at the edge of the fray and camouflaged himself behind some boulders. From this hiding place, he checked his rifle and cartridges and found that they were not too wet. Then he took careful aim and, one by one, began picking off the Californians as they rode within his range. It was vintage Carson—to sidestep the tumult and romance of a conventional clash and find the cleanest path to efficient fighting.

  Now General Kearny and Lieutenant Emory arrived on the scene astride their huffing mules. Kearny immediately joined the action. He was amazed by the skill of the Californian horsemen. “They are the very best riders in the world,” he later said. “There is hardly one not fit for the circus.” Kearny fought his way through the confusion, parrying with the lancers, yelling commands, displaying admirable swordsmanship. One of the Marines who watched him fight said, “The old general defended himself valiantly, and was as calm as a clock.”