By Keli Holt On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa led 500 mounted fighters into Columbus, New Mexico, before dawn and set fire to the border town and outpost for the 13th U.S. Cavalry. Villa was angry that his former backers, the Americans, had chosen...
By Keli Holt, In the summer of 1898, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry followed Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt into battle on the heights overlooking Santiago de Cuba. Known as the “Rough Riders,” the regiment drew recruits from across the country, including cowboys,...
By Keli Holt The great civilization of the Ancestral Puebloans collapsed around 1100 as changes in the climate led to drought, social upheavals, and violence. Once heavily-populated cities, like Pueblo Bonita in Chaco Canyon, had become deserted, their people...
By Keli Holt This column continues where last month left off, exploring the Native Nations inhabiting New Mexico by focusing on the Ancestral Puebloans, formerly called the Anasazi. (Anasazi is a Navajo word for “ancestors of our enemies” and is rejected by modern...
By Keli Holt Last month we explored how the Apache, or the Nde (“the people”), arrived in the Southwest around 1500, migrating from the north alongside their related Navajo and Ute cousins. Upon settling in southern Arizona and New Mexico, the Apache maintained their...
By Keli Holt, When most Americans think of the Apache, the image of their famous leader Geronimo often comes to mind. It is his surrender in 1886 that is used by historians to mark the end of the so-called Indian Wars. Although Geronimo is one of the few Apache known...
By Keli Holt, This month’s history column veers from its usual chronological narrative of America’s past and its impact on our state to examine the Native Nations of New Mexico, beginning with the Navajo. The modern Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in America,...
By Keli Holt When the Civil War ended in 1865, the federal government emerged stronger than ever. Gone were the arguments of Henry Clay’s day when politicians debated whether it was constitutional for the government to fund things like interstate canals and roads. At...
By Keli Holt While Rebels and Yankees battled at Chancellorsville, Vicksburg and Gettysburg east of the Mississippi River, violence also raged in the new territories and states west of what Lincoln called, “The Father of Waters.” In fact, the American Southwest, so...
By Keli Holt, Days before the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg and its failed Confederate infantry assault known as Pickett’s Charge, President Abe Lincoln made time to meet with the men who shared his dream of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by a...
