Beschreibung:

TAOS REVOLT – Autograph letter signed ("Moses B. Gash[?]"), "Bagus" [Las Vegas], New Mexico, 14 February 1847. Four pages, 315 x 194mm, bifolium, (uneven toning, marginal tear affects a letter in text, loss at one fold intersection). An extremely rare soldier's letter describing the Anglo-American campaign to suppress the native revolt New Mexico Territory during the Mexican-American War. Reacting to depredations by occupying U.S. forces following the surrender of the Mexican governor, Manuel Armijo, local Hispano-Americans and their Pueblo allies rose up in revolt in Don Fernando de Taos, killing the newly-installed territorial governor, Charles Bent together with other territorial officials in October 1846. The following day, a force of 500 attacked a mill outside Taos, killing more Anglo-Americans. In response, the U.S. Army organized an expedition from Santa Fe to quash the revolt. Although the U.S. Army, under the command of Colonel Sterling Price, quickly suppressed the rebellion in Taos in January 1847, armed violence continued in other parts of the territory including Mora, where the Moses Gash marched under the command of Capt. Israel R. Hendley and Jesse I. Morin. The force had been on a grazing expedition when they heard the news of the events in Taos. Approximately eighty men marched toward Mora, where they fought a pitched battle against the local rebels, resulting in a Mexican victory, and the death of Captain Hendley. Gash calls Hendley "the most popular Cap[tain] in new Mexico," and offers a lengthy eyewitness account of his demise. As the Americans used the surrounding houses in Mora for cover as they attempted to take the fort: "Shannon and myself were in the Room an arrow was shot through at us a few minutes after Capt H came in to se[e] how the fire come own burning he stop[p]ed in front of the door I observed to him he was in danger of being shot through the door he turned around to look at that moment he was shot through he fell and asked me to help him out I cough[t] him by the left hand some other man a caught him by the other hand ... he died in a few seconds."