1878 Watercolor Paintings Of Trip Through So. Colorado & New Mexico By Margaret Price EL PALACIO...

8/14/2019 1878 Watercolor Paintings Of Trip Through So. Colorado & New Mexico By Margaret Price EL PALACIO MAGAZINE Vo

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In I B7 B,and creoted EnB]ish honelmooners visited theo Victorian version oJ the vacationBY CHARLES BENNETT

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'*ff-ff HISTORY MUSEUMS OF THE PAST MAY HAVE BEEN THE COUNTRY,S ATTICS, but today,S museumshave specific stories to tell. With limited storage space, and an obligation to preserve those artifacts in their posses-sion, museums must be more discriminating in what they accept. lt Pertinent objects and collections with documen-tation are-from the curator's perspective-the most preferable acquisitions. A recent gift to the Palace of theGovernors of a series of watercolor paintings and accompanying material is emblematic of the importance and desir-ability of good documentation in an acquisition for a permanent collection such as the collections of the Museum ofNew Mexico.In April, 1993, Mrs. Margaret Tatiana Rose of London, England, contacted the Palace of the Governors and of-fered to donate thirteen watercolors painted (and captioned) by her paternal grandmother, Margaret Price (1847'1g71),the wife of William Edwin Price (1841-1886), during her 1878 honeymoon trip to the United States.,lf ' Mrs. Rosesent color photocopies of the delightful watercolors, with a copy of a book written by her father, Morgan Philips Price:America Aftt, Sixty Years: The Traael Diaries of Two Generations of Englishmen, published in 1936 by George Allen andUnwin, Ltd., of London. ,.P fne book offers extracts from letters written by William and Margaret Price during theirhoneymoon, and impressions their son Morgan recorded during his trip here in 1934. When Palace curators expressedan interest in examining the original paintings, Mrs. Rose arranged for them to be delivered by two British couriersin September 1993. Thirteen watercolors were affixed to six pages, measuring about sixteen-by-twelve inches, in ahinged, cardboard folder that at one time was an oversized album or portfolio. &.An elaborate, gold-embossed de-sign of a cherubic infant holding a fife graces the front cover, the inside of which bears a bookplate, or advertisement,for "Marcus Adams, Photographer of Children, The Children's Studio, 43 Dover Street, Picadilly-London."AT ER THEIR WEDDING CEREMONY IN A LONDON UNITARIAN CHAPEL, the PTices sailed fTomLiverpool for North America on Augustl,1878.@; Upon landing in eastern Canada, they boarded a train to Quebec-where they joined several riverboat excursions-later returning to their ship for the final sail to Montreal. ff'Fromthat city, the newlyweds rode the train to Chicago , a trip of two days and nights. After a few days there, they contin-ued by train to Denver. On Monday, August 16, as the train lingered on a siding in Boulder, Colorado, Margaret wassketching the scene before her when Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.Army, (who had boarded in Omaha), asked to see her work, thus beginning an association that shaped the Prices'travels in the coming weeks. William Price wrote of his wish to visit New Mexico in a letter from Denver on August20. The Prices' subsequent letters frequently reflected the attitudes and misconceptions regarding Hispanics andNative Americans typical of Euroamericans of the duy.lH- This extract and those that follow, with exceptions as not-ed, may be found in Morgan Price's book.Charles Bennett is Curator of Historv and Assistant Director at the Museum of Nern Mexico's Palace of the Goaernors in Santa Fe.

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ATT,, ,, .;{"'Conejos. Southern Colorado-Roman Catholic adobe church. Arg. 24- I87 8.

ffi "fn, Indian Pueblo oJ San Juan. New Mexico Aug 27."

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General Sherman is now on his way to Santa F6, thechief town of New Mexico, and I have the most in-ordinate longing to go there. It is an early Mexicansettlement, and most of the scenes of Mayne Reid'snovels-the Scalp Hunters and others-were laid inthat district. It is subtropical in temperature andflora, and inhabitedchiefly by Mexicansand Indians. Thefiercest Indians inhab-ited this district, andnone but the hardiesttrapper ever venturedthere. During the lasttwenty years repeatedexpeditions of U.S.troops have broughtthe Indians to theirsenses by killing anddeporting them, andthe space is safe enough now. One may get robbed,but if one carries very little with one it doesn't mat-ter. They don't kill people, or take them off and putthem to ransom as they do in Greece and Sicily.

The Prices seem to have traveled with GeneralSherman and his party from the time they first met on thetrain to Denver. On arrival in Denver on August 19, theyremained there for the same period, proceeding toColorado Springs and Manitou a few days later. InManitou, Sherman had a conference with General JohnPope, commanding the Military Department of theMissouri, and the Prices rode horses up Pikes Peak. ThePrices and the Sherman party then took the train southover La Veta Pass to Alamosa, at that time the most south-ern extension of the railroad in Colorado. William de-scribed Alamosa as "a new'city'...of about twenty houses,a few tents, and a hotel..." General Sherman arranged foraccommodations for all in the hotel.

During supper, Ceneral Sherman invited the Prices toaccompany him and his entourage to Santa Fe, informingthem that there was an empty ambulance wagon in whichthey and a bag or two could travel. (Although an ambu-lance wagon generally conveyed the sick or wounded,throughout the nineteenth century the term was appliedto certain wagons used extensively in the American Westas traveling carriages. Ambulance wagons such as the twodispatched from Santa Fe for use by General Sherman'sparty were equipped with seats which could be arrangedto form beds.) The Prices accepted the offer, and the next

day, Saturday, August 24, the party started out on thefive-day, 140-mile journey. Wiiliam recorded his impres-sions of the first leg of the trip.#ur lourney the first day was about thirty milesover a perfectly flat sandy plain, very dust1r, and

ered with nothingbut the sage-bush, asort of wormwoodgrowing in bushes.The two Generalswent on first in anambulance with fourmules and a driver,Maggie and I in ditto,and a covered wagonwith six mules carry-irg provisions andtents, hay, &c. A11 themorning we walkedor trotted gently alonga track over a very wide plain. At 72 o'clock we

reached a river, and drank, out of tin canteens, wa-ter yellow with mud. We ate biscuits and meat outof tins. Off again in a quarter of an hour, and now itwas very hot, and the two Generals in front stirredup clouds of dust, so we were obliged to keep at arespectful distance. Sometimes the front ambulancewas quite obscured from view. We saw sandwhirling up in long columns like waterspouts, andskeletons of horses and cattle lying about.

We halted at Conejos, a Mexican village built en-tirely of adobe or sunburnt bricks, and inhabited byhalf-breed Mexicans, the descendants of the oldSpanish colonists and Indians. The houses are veryquaint, one storey high, with very thick walls andflat roofs, made of laying poles crosswise over thewalls and covering them two feet thick with mud. Averanda projects from the house, built of poles, androofed in the same manner...

The pueblo or village of Conejos was very inter-esting, as the first Mexican viilage we were able toinspect. Of course, the inhabitants were all RomanCatholics, and at Conejos there was a Jesuit estab-lishment or a nunnery. The chapel consists of an or-dinary adobe house, one storey high, rectangular inshape, and two poles struck up crosswise, with abell hanging from the angle, formed the belfry. Thefaithful were invited to prayers by a man strikingthe clapper against the bell.

The second day of the trip-from Conejos, Colorado,to Tres Piedras, New Mexico Territory-was recorded by

::. -. -,-..,-.- ,. ,Tres Piedras-New Mexicoherman. Sundov 2 5 Au11 .

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til^ "r.;,mnn1rn,,.'*\narch r,,ith Genera

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ii$*-,both Margaret and William, whose narratives follow.

{Margaret) As we were travelling on Sunday the25th there was the most alarming thunderstorm Iever was in. I never moved out of the ambulance allduy, as I shouldhave been rn'ettedthrough by thedownpour, and Iwas so restrictedas to luggage that Ihad only the dressI was wearing withme. Our two hand-bags and somewraps were all wehad. The lightningand thunder cameat the same mo-ment, and struck atree close by. Howwe escaped I don'tknow. It was mostunpleasant. No onewas comfortableexcept the stolidmules. Willie gotout at an encamp-ment during the storm. There were only a few tents;no houses. In the evening we encamped at LasPiedras among pine-trees. The storm had ended.The men made a camp fire, pitched the General'stent, and picketed the mules. We had tea in a loghut, served by an Indian woman. She was the pret-tiest woman, except Lady Granville, that I have everseen, and had the most refined manners. The breadshe made was capital. She offered me her bed for thenight, but I preferred to sleep in the ambulance, as Ithought it would be cleaner. General Sherman in-sisted on my taking one of his pillows. I slept mostcomfortably in the ambulance. Willie slept in theother, and the two Cenerals in a tent. The muleswere picketed nearby, and at night a wolf came andhowled, but I did not hear it.(William) ...Our route lay over a sandy plain tillwe descended through a forest of cedar bushes anddwarf pines to a lower plain or steppe, much brokenup by granitic outcrop and covered by very cred-itable specimens or red pine. Here we came into thevery centre of another thunderstorm which scaredboth us and our mules, as three or four flashes oflightning fell close to us. We closed up our ambu-

lance wagons and ate our lunch of biscuit and water,and when the storm had passed we went on to ourbivouac for the night at Las Piedras. Here wepitched our tent,lit a fire in spite of the rain, and hada very pleasant evening round the camp fire, with

W "Grnrrol Shermans Tent. Our camp Jire and .Megs cltair "

the two Generalsrecounting theirvarious militaryadvenfures.I leamta good deal fromGeneral Sherman,who is the one re-ally good and sci-entific general inthe U.S. Army.

Continuing south,Margaret wrote of theirthird and fourth days onthe trail to Santa Fe.

Next day we reach-ed Ojo Caliente or"Burning Eye" or"Spring." This is ahot sulphur spring.Here we spent abad night, as theplace simply swarmed with creatures. We ought tohave slept in our clothes, as the Generals did. Onagain next morning. The scenery was now differentfrom anything we had seen before-soil red andsandy, rivers muddy, and air so clear that distantbushes and objects appeared quite near. Thatevening we reached San Juan, a most curious place,consisting of one store, kept by a German, a RomanCatholic church with a Frenchman as Cur6, and therest of the population Pueblo Indians, the descen-dants of the old Mexicans or Aztecs. The entrance tothe houses is from the roof, which is reached by aladder and from the roof another ladder leads downinto the house. I could hardly climb the ladders, therungs were so far apart. We went to the house of theChief, and were invited to sit on low seats close tothe wall. The Chief talked bad Spanish and was verypolite. His squaw brought a plate of apples and of-fered us one each, while two grinning Indian girlslooked at us from the corner. They are most pic-turesque people, especially the women, in theirlong, dull green and red shawls, carrying large biackjars on their heads. The style of architecture in thesevillages dates back to the old days when they were lEr Paracro 3'r,


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at war with the whiteman and their Northern fel-low-Indians, the Comanches, Apaches and Utes.These Pueblo Indians are the "tame Indians," culti-vating the soil and managing their own affairs witha certain amount of success.

The Prices' arrival in SantaFe on August 28 was describedby Margaret.

6,Jn approaching SantaF6, the capital of NewMexico, an escort oftwelve officers came outto meet the Generals.They were dressed invarious uniforms, andlooked very differentfrom our English sol-diers. Though it wasraining hard the peopleall seemed to be lookingout for General Sherman,and salutes were fired as

;'P3 ltoo"oREr PRrcE'she passed. We are now staying here as guests ofMajor and Mrs. \Alhitehead, and are very comfort-able after our rather rough travelling. The wife anddaughter and little girl are the ladies of the party.With one servant-girl they do all the cooking andhousehold work. Mrs. W. is now making herself adress for a ball which is to be given to-night in hon-our of General Sherman. The latter has just given mea very good photograph of himself. We were veryhungry on arriving here, and a meal chiefly of mel-on, which I don't like, we found barely satisfying.But they are most kind to us, and have given us theirown room. At the head of the bed I found a loadedpistol, necessary in these parts. I am rather dreadingthe stage journey back in a "buckboard;" they say [it]is very rough. At one hill we are advised to get outand wa1k. It is a two days' and one night's joumey.

After spending three days in Santa Fe, the Prices trav-eled by buckboard wagon on the Mountain Branch of theSanta Fe Trail, over Raton Pass, to the railhead in southernColorado. They then took the train back to Manitou.Evidently the return trip to Colorado was not so comfort-able as their trip in General Sherman's company. Williamdescribed the ordeal of the return trip.

FVe got back to Manitou last night, after sixtyhours' incessant travelling, forty-eight hours of it ona "buckboard," over mountains and through rivers,

and the rest by railway, and I was so done up that Iwas quite unable to write. I am all right this morn-ing, and so is Maggie, but the expedition to Santa F6was a strenuous one.In the first place, it took ten days, and as I mustleave San Francisco for

Portland on SeptemberLOth, I was pressed fortime. Then only fourpeople can leave SantaF6 daily, the "buck-board" accommodatingonly that number, so itwas three days beforewe could get ourplaces. I cannot ade-quately describe thehorrors of travelling by"buckboard." It is a ve-hicle constructed forthe roughest usage; it"^.'""::il.^;il:^'JT i:)n:\: H,"T ;Tffi'-:li :?open boards resting on four wheels, sometimeswith an awning stretched over the top. It can go

over mountains, almost down precipices, and cet-tainly down and up deep gulleys at an angle of80', and the jolting, shaking, twisting and wrig-gling is indescribable. We spent two days and twonights in this conveyance, halting oniy twice a dayfor half an hour, for food.

The discomfort and perils of frontier travel as experl-enced by the Prices on their return trip to Colorado werealso described by Margaret Price ten years later, afterWilliam's death, in a small leatherbound notebook intowhich she copied most of the letters she had written to rel-atives and friends in England during her American trav-els. She borrowed back the letters in order to make copiesof them for the benefit of her two young sons. Throughouther American journey, and on every other trip with herhusband, Margaret Price painted as she went.Unfortunately, an unknown number of her sketches felloff their wagon as it bounced over the rugged terrain ontheir return trip, leaving only speculation as to what otherscenes of the Prices'visit to Santa Fe were lost.

(The foilowing two excerpts come from a letter writ-ten by Margaret that Mrs. Rose gave to the author.)

lVe travelled in a machine with broken springscalled a 'buck board' and as there was no stopping

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-n|i'v;;:1-tplace we were 2 days and 1 night in it. My sketcheswere thrown out by the jerk[ing] and lost. A manand woman were our travelling companions. Wewere followed by 'road agents' (masked robbers)but were not attacked. Willie was not armed. as thevare more likely to at-tack those who arearmed than thosewho are defenseless.There was no sort ofroad all the way andwe were nearlyknocked to pieces.Arrived at a crowd-ed house. Willie laydown for the nightwith some men inthe common roomand I had to sleep inthe same bed withthe woman-ourtravelling compan-ion. She seemed a tidy sort of woman and remindedme of an old servant we once had. It was not a pleas-ant experience and we felt our shaking for sometime afterwards.

Margaret also provided additional detail of the ballthe Prices attended in Santa Fe.

ffiefore leaving Santa F6 we went to the Ball beforementioned. I in my only dress (cotton) and Willie ingrey suit and thick boots. The officers were all inuniform and the ladies smart (in their way). It wascurious and amusing. I danced with CeneralSherman and others. The quadrils etc. were differentto the English and more amusing.

A dance card for "A Complimentary Ball to WilliamT. Sherman, Generai of the Army, by the Santa FeGermania CIub," included with the watercolors given tothe Palace of the Governors by Mrs. Rose, indicates thatMargaret danced the eighth dance, a Quadrille, withGeneral Sherman; the twelfth dance, a Galop, with MajorWhitehead; and spent the intermission with GeneralMcCook.

After the Prices had returned to Denver, William de-scribed his impressions of Santa Fe (compiete with inaccu-rate history) in the last letter pertaining to their visit that isexcerpted in the book America After Sixty Years.{'\... {-Pur journey to Santa F6 is a memory of the past.

"Colorado River antl thc Cttstle Dome-J'ront Fort Yuno-Ariz,oncr. Oct 1."

In a year or two the railway will be open, and thenthe romance of the visit will be destroyed.The town itself is a very old one, establishedabout 1650 by the Mexicans, who were attracted byreports of gold in the district. They suffered severe-ly at the hands of the

Indians, but eventu-ally incorporated thecountry with Mexico,and it was takenfrom them, togetherwith Texas, Colorado,Arizona and Califomia,only after theMexican War. It isnow a United StatesTerritory, and itmight be a State, butfor the dislike of theAmericans to admitthe Mexican-Indianpopulation to Stateprivileges. Spanish is the universal language of the

country and the law-courts, and very few of the peoplespeak English.I have been talking Spanish freely during thetrip, and indeed German and French too, for thestorekeepers are mostly Germans, and the RomanCatholic priests French.The town consists of an aggregation of adobehouses, surrounding a rank, weed-grown Plaza; theold Spanish Government House, built of adobe, onestorey high, is now the residence and offices of theUnited States Governor and the State officials. Thereare some infantry and cavalry here, under the com-mand of a General, but the men are nearly all out onescort duty, or on service in the different forts scat-tered over Arizona and New Mexico.

When General Sherman left with his escort of tenmen, there remained nine officers, three sergeants,and one negro trooper.

Major Whitehead, who put us up, was very hos-pitable, but we were very uncomfortable notwith-standing. The habits of certain Americans are verydifferent from ours.They breakfast at 8.0, have no lunch, dine at 3.0to 5.0, and spend long evenings in helping each oth-er to do nothing.

Then we could not get a drop of wine or beer orwhisky. On the second day, however, I was offeredcontinued on page 58

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58 Er PeracroHn Wnorn, Sun WnorE continued from page 33

one glass of beer. The irregularity of our meals rather up-set my liver, living as we were not in the desert, but in awell-built, well-appointed house.We had no change of clothes, andMaggie had linen only for two days, yet wehad to receive endless visits from the offi-cials and officers of the district, and to re-turn them, and we actually went to a ballgiven in honour of General Sherman, I in ashooting-jacket and thick shoes, andMaggie in her one verv dirty dress, and wewere obliged to dance several dances. Itwas the oddest bail I ever attended, butthere were about a hundred people present,including lots of ladies, officers' wives anddaughters, all very oddly dressed.New Mexico, I think, may have a greatfuture. Where water is attainable the soii ismost fertile. The climate is sub-tropical, andproduces every variety of magnificent fruit.It has coal, iron, gold and silver, but the

mountains, with tropical downpours of rain, which cutup and erode some parts of the country in an extraordi-nary manner.We had an example of this on ap-

proaching Santa F6. Our route lay alongan arroya or dry river-bed, and a severestorm was raging not far away. Suddenlywe heard a noise of rushing water, and agreat torrent with a head like a Severnbore came down, cutting up the channeland carrying away the willows on thebanks, and had it lasted long enough itwould have spread over the plains anddestroyed the crops.

After several days rest, the newlywedsboarded the train for the four-day trip fromDenver to San Francisco, reaching that western

p ately as many honeymoonerc do at Niagara Falls. The Prices recorded their travels in her sketches and watercolors. Soon af-then went on to visit Boston, New York City, West Point, and ter their return to England, William was diagnosed with a de-Washington, where they were shown around by General generative kidney condition known as Brighfs disease.Mccook. General Sherman, in New York at the time, had left In 1885, their son Morgan Philips was born. \{hen doctors

alh "A:qrivers are mostly dry in summer, and lack of water is thegreat difficulty to be overcome. Still, strange to say, wa-ter can always be got at a short distance below the sur-face, and at this season of the year-in July, August andSeptember-there are incessant thunderstorms in the

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them a message on his calling card. The Pricesfinally sailed from New York on November 6

watercolors were delivered to the Palace of theGovernors, thirteen additional paper objects re-

support for an already well-documented collec-tion, contributing to a broader and uneditedcomprehension of the region's history. Fulfilling

stttJ; tn h,tirJre ssing. port on September 7. On September 12 theyThis it a man " boarded ship for the trip from San Francisco toVictoria, British Columbia, bypassing a previ-ously planned visit to Portland. Returning to California later,the Prices visited Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona Territory,taking the train to both places. On October 8, they began thesix-day journey back to the eastern seaboard, stopping appro-

suggested that Wiiliam would benefit from avoyage to a warmer climate, the couple traveled

have no lunch. able to leave the boat in India. He died a fewdays after they arrived home; he was forty-fiveyears old. Their second son, William Robert,was born several months later.

rc do nothin7." throughout Europe and Canada. (Perhaps in-spired by his parents' writings, Morgan wroteAmerica After Sixty Years: The Traael Diaries o

The Museum is indebted to Morgan's daughter, MargaretTatiana Rose, of London, for the gift of these early records o

and arrived in Liverpool eight days later. to India; unfortunately the doctors were wrong\{4ren Margaret Price's delicate and pre cis. "They brealfast at 8.0, WiUiu- became so ill on the t P that he was un-

lated to the Prices' trip were enclosed, including dine at 3 .0 to 5 .0 .the personal calling cards of Generals Shermanand McCook, and the dance card for the ball in Ond Spend lOng eVenings After her husband's death, Margaret devot-honor of General Sherman's visit. This accom- 1 .1 ed herself to her sons, to travel, and to localpanying material provides additional histodcal ln helPln$ eacn otner Liberal Party politics. She took her boys on triPs

every curator's goal, the collection of Margaret Price's water- TTtv Genefations of Englishmen in'1936.) Margaret died at the agecolors and related memorabilia may now be preserved under of sixty-four in 1911.optimum conditions, enabling us better to sense and under-stand our past.

Three years after their trip to Canada and the United life in the Southwest. IStates, the Prices traveled to Iceland, where Margaret again

1878 Watercolor Paintings Of Trip Through So. Colorado & New Mexico By Margaret Price EL PALACIO...

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