Site Audio Tour
Site Audio Tour: Stop 7
The War Years in New Mexico
New Mexico was named a territory of the United States in 1848. The territory was divided into two large districts along the current state lines of New Mexico and Arizona, with Santa Fe as the territorial capitol.
By 1862, the Territory of New Mexico saw change and growth in its population. Anglo settlers from the East passed through or came to homestead in this land of the Navajo, Pueblos, Kiowa, Comanche and the Mescalero, Gila and Jicarilla Apache. The settlers were subject to attack as they traversed the homelands and hunting grounds ofNative Americans, especially in central New Mexico, home to the Mescalero Apache.
At the onset of the Civil War in 1861, many troops in the Territory of New Mexico were sent east to war. New Mexico became vulnerable to both the Native peoples resisting settlement in their homelands and to the Confederates in Texas who saw a western frontier at their fingertips. Union leaders in Washington, D.C. sent Colonel James H. Carleton from California. He arrived leading the California Column, a force of 2,350 rank-and-file soldiers.
Colonel Carleton was a man of his time, bent on the 19th century appetite for expansion. He set forth under the prevailing military policy of Manifest Destiny. In 1862, Colonel Carleton was breveted Brigadier General and took charge of 4,000 soldiers.
