SAPELLO: A CASE STUDY OF NEW MEXICAN CHANGES

By Salena B. Ashton

Introduction

            They rode their horses at night burning crops, tearing railroad ties, and harassing people.  Behind masks, they threatened death to anyone who associated with their target, the railroad. [1] They made their trademark fence cutting, and accumulated up to $27,000 worth of fence damage in 1880 alone.[2]  This was obviously not the Ku Klux Klan, but instead, Las Gorras Blancas, the White Caps.  These vigilantes of San Miguel County, New Mexico fought fiercely against changes that came upon their land.  Comprised mainly of native shepherds and farmers, the White Caps foresaw the railroad not as a symbol of prosperity but instead as the enemy of their native lands.

 When communities, regions, or nations change after the influx of a new people, scholars tend to focus on cultural or political entities.[3] Lynn Perrigo’s Gateway to Glorieta and Sarah Deutsch’s No Separate Refuge do a good job at painting the bigger picture of northern New Mexico. Alfonso Griego’s Good- Bye My Land of Enchantment, and Voices of the Territory of New Mexico are also good books about cultural and technological changes of San Miguel County, though they are directed toward the lay audience.  No one has written specifically about smaller towns, such as Sapello, San Ignacio, or Villanueva, except for Francis Stanley, who wrote colloquial pamphlets.

Scholars rarely look at the most obvious of variables—land.  Land and its use, abuse, abundance, and lack thereof have helped to shape history.  Land is so basic; it affects how we live, have lived, and will live.  It is like time and space—a constant which without, there is no civilization.  By not understanding how land played a key role in territorial New Mexico, as well as other areas of the world, we miss the discovery of history from different paradigms.

The influx of Anglo culture, speeded by the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in 1879, intensified the different methods of land usage within the community of Sapello, one of many small towns in San Miguel County. The railroad forced career and life style changes upon the Sapello people due to the rapid loss of land, which in turn forced the people to resort to wage labor.  Besides the obvious decrease in land, income, assets, etc. there was a decrease in population and households.[4] 

Land ownership, the kind of land ownership, determined how the people lived.  Land was meant to be used, and it was used for grazing, colonization, and crops.  The people of San Miguel believed in communal land ownership.  Land was owned by the village itself or by a person who allowed the village to utilize it.  Not only was land owned communally, but was even labored communally.[5] Communal property ensured the best for all involved.  Villages depended on access to land for animals to graze, the ease of irrigation, and the proximity to trade routes.[6]  That is why Sapello and other small villages can be found along the Santa Fe Trail. 

It was hard for a family to gain money and/or prominence because of land differentiation, unpredictable rains that could ruin a crop.  Because land was hard to monopolize before the railroad, it was difficult to become rich.  Therefore, sons from both well-to-do and not-so-well-to-do families hired out as laborers, shepherds, goatherds, or farm laborers.  With hard work, men could easily expect to own their own farm, sheep, or goats-- and they usually did.  Status differences were more between generations than by class.[7]  People’s standard of living was determined by the land more so than determined by power and wealth.

As far back as the 1600s sheep have been in New Mexico.[8]  Wool was the principle object of sheep raising.  A small secondary reason, mostly prevalent in northeast New Mexico, is for meat, called mutton, used to feed herdsmen and the small local demand.  Sheep helped to produce much of what Hispanics depended on for survival.

Because of the dependence on sheep there was a great need for land—good land for grazing.  Shepherding was important to pre-railroad Sapello because it was also the most common medium of trade for rural Spanish America.  Barter was the currency of the day, not money.  People traded beans for corn, wool for linen, labor for food, and dishes for wood.  Money was sometimes used when people took their crops or wool on the Santa Fe Trail to be sold in bulk in Santa Fe.  This was because other traders used money.  But even then, most Anglos[9], Native Americans, and Hispanics traded goods for other goods.

Out of necessity they bartered with each other, economic status came from age and experience, not from money since money was not used in Sapello.  Sapello customs were village- centered to ensure security for all.

 Sapello and the Santa Fe Trail

In order to gain a fuller understanding of how the economy of Sapello, and other small towns of San Miguel County, changed through the changes in land, it is vital to look at the key role the railroad played in the land.  Before the railroad, Sapello’s lifeline was the Santa Fe Trail.  It fed the town in terms of population and growth, convenience in travel and in trade.  People traveled through Sapello on their way to Mora County, Las Vegas, and Santa Fe, thus bringing in more business and residence for Sapello.  It was an important trading spot because of its key location. 

The Santa Fe Trail was an important trade route for Easterners and Hispanics alike.  The Hispanics who have lived there for generations, and the Anglos who came from the east, depended on using the trail to take their goods to the main trading posts.  Because tensions between whites and Hispanics had not erupted until the beginnings of the Mexican- American War, they treated each other relatively well; Anglos assimilated into the Hispanic culture without any difficulties or agendas.  The Hispanics likewise helped them to assimilate without any cause for fear of change.  The popular times of the Santa Fe Trail enriched each local culture.

By 1878 the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF) Railroad Company began to lay tracks in Northern New Mexico.  Anglos who worked on the railroad still had to find means of survival and so they began to interact with the natives.  Native shepherds now had a new customer to whom they could sell sheep and wool.  Both they and their Anglo counterparts benefitted from this stimulation of trade.[10]  Anglos were able to trade or buy Hispanic goods.  They assimilated into the culture of the land and the natives did not have a problem with them; they learned to adapt to the Hispanic way of life. When Anglos chose to assimilate they did not present themselves as a threat to the land or to the community because the land was colonized and grazed, and it was not fenced.[11]  Hispanics allowed their fellow villagers to graze their animals upon their land.

Soon, however, as more Anglos settled they began to ship their own sheep to the area, which were of better breeds.  These events combined to form an ever-growing obstacle for Sapello natives to own and maintain land and sheep.  As the railroad neared completion the competition increased.

 After the Railroad

The (AT&SF) began construction on the sixth of February in 1878 and opened for operation Independence Day, 1879.  This new feat of technology was the catalyst for change.  It brought more people, and took up the land.  Anglos were no longer arriving by wagon in small numbers as they had done previously.  By the 1880s they came in by the thousands and settled in the predominantly Hispanic areas.  As more Anglos came upon the rails, they no longer desired to adapt, but rather chose to bring their own culture with them. 

More Anglos meant more Anglo culture—and Anglos did not use the barter system like they used money.  They would bring goods that Hispanics found appealing, such as linen, flour, sugar, beds, sewing machines, and other goods.  Anglos expected their customers to pay cash for these goods.  Because Anglos would only accept cash instead of trade, they started a line of credit.  Cash-poor Hispanics could not pay debt in time, nor could they pay with wool.  Eventually credit grew to such a size that debtors could only pay their bills in sheep or land.  Creditors and debtors entered into a partidario system by the 1880s. [12]  They also modified the traditional rules.  Now, when there was a profit in the sheep business, both would partake of it.  But when there was a loss, only the debtor took the losses.[13] 

Without communal labor and with the new monetary system in place, Sapello natives could no longer depend on the help of their fellow villagers, who had to now worry about themselves.  They had to hire out help, that is, if they weren’t already the hired help themselves.  Some started to use money in the 1880s for their sheep.  By 1900, one quarter to one half of all New Mexican sheep were under the new partido contracts.

Anglo society worked with private land ownership.  Land was to be owned and fenced, whether or not someone used it for crops, grazing, or colonization.  Anglos began to buy land and build fences around their property to establish the fact that the land was private property.  Neighbors were no longer allowed to graze their animals in these communal pastors.  Hispanics saw more land being purchased, sealed off, and wasted by its lack of use and began to wonder about the ethics of the Anglo. It was at this time when Las Gorras Blancas attempted to restore the old ways buy cutting down fences so their animals could graze.

Anglos began to acquire large amounts of land in many ways.  Sometimes they just bought the land.  But most often they had friends who were judges or were partners with the judges.  There was also the accumulation of title for communal lands.  Some trusted with deeds of others destroyed them and then reclaimed the land as their own.[14]  Hispanic heirs of communal land, who once let people use it, would adopt the Anglo legal system, claim the entire land as their own, and then would fence it.  As more land was claimed, there was obviously less land to graze animals. Then came the land grants in 1898, which discredited Spanish land grants older than one hundred years. [15]  This hurt many families in New Mexico and especially Sapello because generations of families most often lived on the same piece of land granted from Spanish courts.  These grants were still honored when Mexico gained independence in 1821.  To suddenly take the land away through the sweep of a pen displaced thousands of Hispanics.  Even then, Hispanics who were granted land in less than a hundred years ago still had to deal with the legal fees of fighting to save their land.  Lawyers took payment of fees in land because Hispanics did not have money.  Hispanics paid away land in attempt to save it.

Hispanicslost land through the Anglo culture and legal systems, but also because the railroad brought technology.  The ecologically hazardous material used for smelting and mining was dumped into the waters or on pieces of land.  This limited grazing options even further.  From 1880- 1913, less than 6 percent of land remained in Hispanic hands.

Taking a comparative look at farm acreage in San Miguel County, as shown in Table 2, we can clearly see how land accumulation resulted in monopoly, which was no surprise.  But it is interesting to note that generally small farms, whose acreage ranges from three to one hundred acres, (what the average Hispanic family had, but probably used more for grazing especially since there were no fences), decreased by 26 percent.  There were a smaller percentage of people who owned the traditionally small farms.  But farms over one hundred acres increased by 23 percent.  This increase is partially due to the spreading colonization, not just the accumulation of already improved land.  By converting the numbers into percentages it shows how much land went to whom. 

The displacement of natives as a result of land ownership practices was not a matter of race or ethnicity, but of class.  Natives and foreigners alike began to differentiate into classes according to their economic opportunity and assets.  The Hispanic elite influenced the shift in land grants and distribution, education, and political situations, which disadvantaged a great many people.[16]  Other Hispanics were “capitalists abroad, but villagers at home”.[17]  They entered the Anglo economy by trading or selling, but not to the excess of becoming rich or monopolizing land.  They were still Hispanic in custom and were not of any harm to their communal village counterparts. 

Hispanics were also displaced by their own people.  Some, called los ricos, obtained their riches by adopting the Anglo legal and economic systems.  As mentioned

before, they obtained private property status for their communal lands, and others began to deal in cash or credit.  By 1880 over 80 percent of New Mexican sheep belonged to the old, traditional Hispanic families who had the means to keep their land.  But keep in mind that the average farm had 50- 200 sheep back then; by 1900 the average farm had almost 400 sheep.[18]   Land and profit from production had fallen into the hands of the few.  Hispanics had a more difficult time supporting themselves and their families.

Wage Labor

Without traditional means of support Hispanics had to find new jobs, which were ironically provided by the very system that displaced them.  Outwitted in land and through the law, Hispanics were, in essence, forced into wage labor to make ends meet.[19]  Without land the Hispanics had to find new means of financial support.  Wage labor became the easiest solution to landlessness and low values of harvest that could not pay for credit. 

The railroad provided early and convenient opportunity for the Hispanic wage labor, both for the Hispanic and the Anglo.  The Hispanic needed the job and the Anglo needed the labor.  Most Hispanics were placed in non-skill work because they could not speak English, or were illiterate.  In most cases, they were both. 

The railroad not only provided jobs directly, but indirectly as well.  With the railroad came the train, and trains need coal to run.  Therefore, as the railroad grew, so did the need for coal.  The winters also demanded more coal to keep people warm.  This seasonal job was good for the Hispanic’s agricultural schedule. 

Because of all the growing economies within the framework of wage labor, capitalism, and the railroad, trade began to move from small Hispanic towns to the larger railroad towns.  This meant that money, jobs, and people moved from Sapello to Las Vegas and Santa Fe.  In 1880 Sapello, there were 822 people; twenty years later there were only 375 people.  The persistence rate for these twenty years was only 3 percent, meaning that only 3 percent of the people who lived in Sapello in 1880 could be found there in 1900.[20]  The rest had to move elsewhere.

The number of men decreased drastically in Sapello, as can be seen by simply counting households in the population census records.  This makes for greater dramatic contrast within the occupational structure.  Table 3 shows occupation by percentage.  Immediately we see that from 1880-1900 there is a dramatic increase of laborers both in quantity and percentage, though there are less people in Sapello.  There were more men without jobs in 1900, but the percentage of men without does not change much.  At the same time, both in numbers and percentage, there is a decrease of farmers.  Again, it goes to show that after the railroad, farms fell into fewer hands and Sapello residents became low-class wage workers.

Economic structure often determined the quality of life for workers, families and communities.  The land and economic changes brought on by the railroad helped to shape family structure, migration patterns and educational trends.  Table 4 shows the trend in households for Sapello in 1880 and 1900.  The size of the average family increased with time.  This could be easily attributed to families having more children but as can be seen, people were having fewer children at the turn of the century.  Not only were families having fewer children, but also fewer people were starting families.  Plus, most of the people who stayed in Sapello had grown children who moved away, as indicated by the changing average of ages.  When the average ages of heads increase over time this usually means that younger men are not around—and they weren’t.  The young men of Sapello were looking for jobs in Denver, Las Vegas, and Santa Fe. 

Why was the size in household increasing?  This points to two directions: land and occupation.  Because there was less land at a higher price, people had to find other means of supporting their families.  Many chose to move in with relatives.   Only one eighth of these households had one extended member, the rest had multiple extended members.  Instead, most of the Sapello population moved to larger cities, ranging from Santa Fe to Denver, in hopes of finding decent wage labor.  Within twenty years Sapello had changed from a community centered shepherd town into another frontier conquest of the United States.

  Conclusion

Changes in land helped to shape family structure, migration patterns, and educational trends, as well as occupation and industry.  The influx of Anglo culture, speeded by the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, increased the different uses of land in Sapello and many other towns in Northern New Mexico.  Once there were more Anglos involved in the sheep industry, prices of land rose.  The new ownership customs of land, private ownership, in fact denied others to use land for grazing.  After loss of land, changes in land grants, and the new monetary system, only the wealthiest of Hispanics could keep their land.  The rest resorted to wage labor.  By not understanding how land played a key role in communities, both present and previous, we cut ourselves short of understanding the concept of change.

New Mexican history often focuses on culture, politics, US-Mexican relations and the wars of two centuries ago.  Because the natives did not keep local histories like today’s historians would have liked them to keep, we tend to focus and refocus on what has been kept.  There is more to New Mexico and its history than the culture, food, and politics.  Local histories of San Miguel County are almost non-existent; as more historians discover small towns such as Sapello, San Ignacio, and Villa Nueva through the understanding of land, economics, and other new avenues of study, the many truths of New Mexico reality will blossom.  Today Sapello remains a small town occupied by approximately 100 people who work in the larger city of Las Vegas, New Mexico.  We still wonder about its history.