Christopher Houston Carson was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and news articles; exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. His understated nature belied confirmed reports of his fearlessness, combat skills, tenacity, as well as profound effect on the westward expansion of the United States. Although he was famous for much of his life, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the fame that he experienced during his life.
Mora County is a county in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,189. Its county seat is the census-designated place (CDP) Mora. The county has another CDP, Watrous, a village, Wagon Mound, and 12 smaller unincorporated settlements. Mora became a formal county in the US, in what was then the New Mexico Territory, on February 1, 1860. Ecclesiastically, the county is within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe. County population peaked at approximately 14,000 circa 1920, declining to about 4,000 to 5,000 since the 1970s; the 2018 estimate was 4,506.
The Battle of Palo Alto was the first major battle of the Mexican–American War and was fought on May 8, 1846, on disputed ground five miles (8 km) from the modern-day city of Brownsville, Texas. A force of some 3,700 Mexican troops – most of the Army of The North – led by General Mariano Arista engaged a force of approximately 2,300 United States troops – the Army of Occupation led by General Zachary Taylor.
Stephen Watts Kearny was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican–American War, especially the conquest of California. The Kearny code, proclaimed on September 22, 1846, in Santa Fe, established the law and government of the newly acquired territory of New Mexico and was named after him. His nephew was Major General Philip Kearny of American Civil War fame.
Charles Bent was an American businessman and politician who served as the first civilian United States governor of the New Mexico Territory, newly invaded and occupied by the United States during the Mexican-American War by the Military Governor, Stephen Watts Kearny, in September 1846.
The siege of Pueblo de Taos was the final battle during the main phase of the Taos Revolt, an insurrection against the United States during the Mexican–American War. It was also the final major engagement between American forces and insurgent forces in New Mexico during the war.
Ceran St. Vrain, born Ceran de Hault de Lassus de Saint-Vrain, was the son of a French aristocrat who emigrated to the Spanish Louisiana in the late 18th century; his mother was from St. Louis, where he was born. To gain the ability to trade, in 1831 he became a naturalized Mexican citizen in what is now the state of New Mexico. He formed a partnership with American traders William, George and Charles Bent; together they established the trading post of Bent's Fort. It was the only privately held fort in the West.
William Wells Bent was a frontier trader and rancher in the American West, with forts in Colorado. He also acted as a mediator among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado. Furs, horses and other goods were traded for food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American people. Bent negotiated a peace among the many Plains tribes north and south of the Arkansas River, as well as between the Native American and the United States government.
Mora or Santa Gertrudis de lo de Mora is a census-designated place in, and the county seat of, Mora County, New Mexico. It is located about halfway between Las Vegas and Taos on Highway 518, at an altitude of 7,180 feet. The Republic of Texas performed a semi-official raid on Mora in 1843. Two short battles of the Mexican–American War were fought in Mora in 1847, where U.S. troops eventually defeated the Hispano and Puebloan militia, effectively ending the Taos Revolt in the Mora Valley. The latter battle destroyed most of the community, necessitating its re-establishment.
The Battle of the Sacramento River was a battle that took place on February 28, 1847, during the Mexican–American War. About fifteen miles (24 km) north of Chihuahua, Mexico, at the crossing of the Sacramento River, American forces numbering less than 1,000 defeated a superior Mexican army, which led to the occupation of Chihuahua.
The Army of the West was the name of the United States force commanded by Stephen W. Kearny during the Mexican–American War, which played a prominent role in the conquest of New Mexico and California.
The Battle of Cañada was a popular insurrection against the American occupation of New Mexico by Mexicans and Pueblo Indians. It took place on January 24, 1847, during the Taos Revolt, a conflict of the Mexican–American War.
The Battle of Embudo Pass was part of the Taos Revolt, a popular insurrection against the American army's occupation of northern New Mexico. It took place on January 29, 1847, during the Mexican–American War, in what now is New Mexico.
The Taos Revolt was a populist insurrection in January 1847 by Hispano and Pueblo allies against the United States' occupation of present-day northern New Mexico during the Mexican–American War. Provisional governor Charles Bent and several other Americans were killed by the rebels. In two short campaigns, United States troops and militia crushed the rebellion of the Hispano and Pueblo people. The New Mexicans, seeking better representation, regrouped and fought three more engagements, but after being defeated, they abandoned open warfare. Hatred of New Mexicans for the occupying American army combined with the oft-exercised rebelliousness of Taos residents against authority imposed on them from elsewhere were causes of the revolt. In the aftermath of the revolt the Americans executed at least 28 rebels. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1850 guaranteed the property rights of New Mexico's Hispanic and American Indian residents.
Tom Tobin (1823–1904) was an American adventurer, tracker, trapper, mountain man, guide, US Army scout, and occasional bounty hunter. Tobin explored much of southern Colorado, including the Pueblo area. He associated with men such as Kit Carson, "Uncle Dick" Wootton, Ceran St. Vrain, Charley Bent, John C. Fremont, "Wild Bill" Hickok, William F. Cody, and the Shoup brothers. Tobin was one of only two men to escape alive from the siege of Turley's Mill and Distillery during the Taos Revolt. In later years he was sent by the Army to track down and kill the notorious Felipe Espinosa and his nephew; Tobin returned to Ft. Garland with their heads in a sack.
The Battle of El Brazito or Bracito took place on December 25, 1846 between the United States Army and the Mexican Army during the Mexican–American War.
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory. Mexico refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, because they were signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna while he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.
The Second Battle of Mora was a February 1, 1847, military engagement during the Taos Revolt of the Mexican–American War in and around the village of Mora in US-occupied northern New Mexico. Seeking revenge for United States Army's January 24 defeat at the hands of a Mexican-national militia of Hispanos and their Puebloan allies at First Battle of Mora, Capt. Jesse I. Morin and his men destroyed the village the next week, with the insurgents fleeing into the mountains.
Edward W. B. Newby (1804–1870) American soldier, a colonel of volunteers in the Mexican–American War, a captain of cavalry in the early campaigns of the American Indian Wars in the west and a major in the American Civil War.
Susan Shelby Magoffin was the wife of a trader from the United States who traveled on the Santa Fe Trail in the late 1840s. The diary in which she recorded her experiences has been used extensively as a source for histories of the time.
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