Field Notes

Our mayor, courageously defying the Texas tourists who keep Old Town’s shops afloat, has ordered the removal of the Confederate Flag from the Plaza. I have no particular affection for what we used to call the “Rebel Flag” when I was in college back in Illinois, but I believe rewriting (or even worse, simply  erasing) inconvenient bits of history is a dangerously slippery slope, especially in a land where we have so much history to regret. Several weeks ago, I was dismayed to meet a young woman born and raised in NM who had never heard of the Texican invasion during the Civil War. She explained that in her school New Mexico history was generally the last topic at the end of the term, and the teachers  skimmed over it as “not important.”  She had never heard of the Warm Springs Apaches, either.

I’ve revised Chapter 12, based on some new information I’ve turned up regarding the aftermath of the fight in Gavilan Canyon. I’ve also added a new section to the site, Sources, beginning with the bibliography I’ve had several requests for. I’ll be adding links and some other original documents to that, as soon as I finish the Epilogue. Until that’s done (and likely for some time after), Tracking Nana is still very much a work in progress.

Latest edition of True West has an excellent piece by Doug Hocking with a new look at the infamous 1861 encounter between Cochise and Army Lt. George Bascom at Apache Pass. In the popular histories, Bascom generally comes across as an arrogant and inexperienced fool. Hocking somewhat mitigates that judgment, although he doesn’t challenge the accepted version of the key event: Bascom violated the rules of parley (as recognized by both the whites and the Indians) by attempting to seize Cochise and his companions after inviting them to attend a conference under a flag of truce. What’s worse, his treachery was so inept that he allowed Cochise to escape the trap.

not exactly on point re Nana, but this is my latest contribution to NM News Svc

Also at Carlsbad Current-Argus

 

Forest Service reports a lightning caused fire in the San Mateo Mountains. As of July 7, the Red Canyon fire on the Magdalena Ranger District remains at 17,843 acres. Burning since July 3, the fire is 2 miles southeast of Grassy Lookout and 27 miles southwest of Magdalena,  With luck the monsoon rains will keep it under control, reducing dead wood and underbrush.

Still struggling with the final chapter/epilog. Too many ends to tie up. So instead I went for a walk yesterday to a petroglyph site out west of Albuquerque. Nothing to do with Nana, but another of my favorite places.

Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842-1914?) was never my favorite writer. I grew up myself on Mike Royko at the old Chicago Daily News, and what I’ve read of Bierce’s newspaper work doesn’t impress me much. For short stories, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has a memorable Twilight Zone twist (and I believe it was made into an episode) but I don’t class him with Bret Harte or Mark Twain for sheer entertainment. And although you can’t spend a career in newspapers and later PR without becoming either a cynic or an alcoholic – or both – I found the Devil’s Dictionary a little too relentless for my taste.
What makes Bierce memorable is his end. While it’s not uncommon for historical figures to sport a question mark beside their birth date (Nana is one of those) it’s comparatively rare to see a “?” marking a man’s demise. But Bierce just vanished like Amelia Earhart or Judge Crater, leaving behind an enduring mystery. Not a bad way to go.
“Good bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease and falling down the stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico – ah, that is euthanasia!”
Gregory Peck did an interesting movie with Jane Fonda and Jimmy Smits based on Gringo Viejo, a novel by Carlos Fuentes, I haven’t read the book yet, but the movie is an excellent treatment both of the Mexican Revolution and Bierce.

There’s a little campo santo about 60 miles west of Albuquerque, untended if not abandoned. The fence is down, and the ground is overgrown with weeds; I couldn’t find a stone dated later than 1910. But at one end there’s a little area surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, marking the graves of three men of the 7th Texas Mounted Volunteers, dated 21 March, 26 March and 5 April 1862. Sibley’s men obviously. There may be Confederate war graves farther west in southern Arizona, but as far as I know these three lonely rebels mark the high water mark of the Confederacy’s march to the western sea.

I’ve been neglecting the chase after Nana for weeks now, for several reasons:
(a) I allowed myself to be enticed into briefly resurrecting an earlier incarnation as a journalist. My latest and what’s most likely my final effort in the genre is now available at the Carlsbad Current Argus.
(b) The 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, coincidental with the triumph of the new caliphate in the Mideast and followed closely by Memorial Day (a sadder occasion than Dia de los Muertos) left me too depressed to write. It occurs to me that in my lifetime this country has never won a war. I blame my own feckless and self-indulgent generation.
(c) Most important, I’m still struggling with Chapter 13, the final chapter in Nana’s epic. Too many loose ends to tie up, and more important, some larger sense to be made of the whole story.

Now posted together with Lake Valley warpath