Archive for June, 2023

Hardy, Cascade and Wolf Creek, Montana

Posted by graywacke on June 26, 2023

First timer? In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog) I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48). I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near. I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location.

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above. To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2629; A Landing A Day blog post number 1074

Dan: Today’s lat/long (N47^o 11.740’, W111^o 54.193) puts me in west-central Montana:

I landed out in the boonies, as you can see (it’s 25 miles from Wolf Creek to Cascade):

My streams-only map isn’t clear about whether rain that falls on my landing ends up in the Dearborn River or goes directly to the Missouri:

I must go to Google Earth to find out:

The Paul Creek watershed it is; on to the Dearborn (1st hit ever!). And then, of course, on to the Missouri (463^rd hit); and on to the MM (1020^th hit).). Here’s an oblique GE shot looking up a tributary of Paul Creek towards my landing:

The Orange Dude couldn’t see any of Paul Creek, let alone my landing location. The best he could do was hop on I-15, and see where the Dearborn River discharges into the Missouri:

And here’s what he sees:

From Montana River Outfitters, this cool piece from Meriwether Lewis (written in 1805 at the very spot shown in the above photo):

“ . . . we passed the entrance of a considerable river on the starboard. side; about 80 yds. wide being nearly as wide as the Missouri at that place. Its current is rapid and water extremely transparent; the bed is formed of small smooth stones. Its bottomlands are narrow but possess as much timber as the Missouri. The country is mountainous and broken through which it passes. It appears as if it might be navigated but to what extent must be conjectural. This handsome bold and clear stream we named in honor of the Secretary of War, calling it Dearborn’s river.”

FYI, Henry Dearborn was Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson, and was the commanding general during the War of 1812.

I’ll start with the town of Hardy, which really isn’t a town at all. Right next to Hardy is Tower Rock, part of Tower Rock State Park. The Orange Dude excitedly let me know that he could get a great view of the rock:

And here ’tis:

The Wiki article about the rock includes another 1805 quote from Meriweather Lewis. (Note that the mouth of the Dearborn River is just 10 river miles upstream from Tower Rock):

“ . . . at this place there is a large rock of 400 feet high which stands immediately in the gap which the Missouri makes on its passage from the mountains; it is insulated from the neighbouring mountains by a handsome little plain which surrounds its base on 3 sides and the Missouri washes its base on the other . . . this rock I called the tower. It may be ascended with some difficulty nearly to its summit, and from it there is a most pleasing view of the country we are now about to leave. Rrom it I saw this evening immense herds of buffalo in the plains below.”

Lewis noted that the rock marked the boundary between the Great Plains (through which they had been traversing) and the Rocky Mountains (which they were about to enter).

On the opposite side of the rock from river lies the “handsome little plain which surrounds its base on 3 sides.” The OD took a quick trip there:

And he saw this:

A “handsome little plain,” indeed.

Cascade (pop 700) is far and away the largest town around. There’s not much to say about it, except that it was the home of one Mary Fields. From Wiki:

Mary Fields (c. 1832 – 1914), also known as Stagecoach Mary and Black Mary, was an American mail carrier.

Fields worked for the Post office, carrying mail from Cascade to Saint Peter’s Mission. She drove the route for two four-year contracts, from 1895 to 1899 and from 1899 to 1903.

Fields was born into slavery in Hickman County, Tennessee c. 1832. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, she was emancipated and found work as a chambermaid on board the Robert E. Lee, a Mississippi River steamboat. Through some people she met on the steamboat, she ended up working in Toledo, Ohio in the household of a Catholic nun, Mother Mary Amadeus.

In 1884, Mother Amadeus was sent to Montana Territory to establish a school for Native American girls at St. Peter’s Mission, west of Cascade. Learning that Amadeus was stricken with pneumonia, Fields hurried to Montana to nurse her back to health. Amadeus recovered, and Fields stayed at St. Peter’s.

Fields took on multiple roles regarded as “men’s work” at the time such as maintenance, repairs, fetching supplies, laundry, gardening, hauling freight, growing vegetables, tending chickens, and repairing buildings, and eventually became the forewoman.

Native Americans called Fields “White Crow”, because “she acts like a white person but has black skin”.

[“White Crow” – great name!]

Life in a convent was placid, but Fields’ hearty temperament and habitual profanity made the religious community uncomfortable. In 1894, after several complaints and an incident with a disgruntled male subordinate that involved gunplay, the bishop barred her from the convent. Fields moved to Cascade where she opened a tavern, but profits waned due to her charitable ways: she allowed the cash-poor to dine free. It closed due to bankruptcy about 10 months later.

By 1895, at sixty years old, Fields secured a job as a Star Route Carrier [Contractors for the U.S. Post Office who were hired to transport mail from one location to another] which involved the use of a stagecoach to deliver mail in the unforgiving weather and rocky terrain of Montana. She was the first African-American woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service.

True to her fearless demeanor, she carried multiple firearms, most notably a .38 Smith & Wesson under her apron to protect herself and the mail from wolves, thieves and bandits, driving the route with horses and a mule named Moses.

If the snow was too deep for her horses and stagecoach, Fields delivered the mail on snowshoes, carrying the sacks on her shoulders.

She was a respected public figure in Cascade, and the town closed its schools to celebrate her birthday each year. When Montana passed a law forbidding women to enter saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted her an exemption. In 1903, at age 71, Fields retired from Star route mail carrier service.

The townspeople’s adoration for Fields was evident when her home was rebuilt by volunteers after it caught fire in 1912. She continued to babysit many Cascade children and owned and operated a laundry service from her home.

Fields died in 1914 at Columbus Hospital in Great Falls. Her funeral was one of the largest the town had ever seen. She was buried outside of Cascade.

Moving south to Wolf Creek. While Wolf Creek is the name of a town, it is (surprise, surprise) also the name of creek. According to WolfCreekAngler.com, here’s how the creek got its name:

Wolf Creek may have gotten its name from a local Indian legend that stated when the buffalo were being driven over a nearby cliff to their death, a wolf got caught up in the stampeded and also went over the cliff. They named the creek that flowed by the cliff “the creek that the wolf jumped in.”

The town has two minor claims to fame. For one, it is the hometown of Jessie Burns, the love interest of the hero in the autobiographical book and movie “A River Runs Through It.” Evidently, the town figures prominently in the book; not so much the movie.

And also, Wiki tells us that in the 1970s, Marlboro cigarettes selected Wolf Creek resident Herf Ingersoll as their “Marlboro Man.” As it turns out, Herf was one of dozens of Marlboro men. From Wiki:

The Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. The images initially featured rugged men portrayed in a variety of roles but later primarily featured a rugged cowboy or cowboys in picturesque wild terrain. The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine.

The campaign is said to be one of the most brilliant advertisement campaigns of all time. It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan “Mild as May”, into one that was masculine, in a matter of months.

The use of the Marlboro Man campaign had very significant and immediate effects on sales. In 1955, when the Marlboro Man campaign was started, sales were at $5 billion. By 1957, sales were at $20 billion, representing a 300% increase within two years.

I found a 2002 Missoulian article by Vince Devlin that features Wolf Creek’s Herf Ingersoll. Here are some excerpts from that article:

An older Herf in front of one of his posed pictures.

. . . it was in Augusta, in 1974, where Herf was “discovered.”

Ingersoll was taking tickets at the town’s annual rodeo. A photographer named Jim Braddy, who worked for the Leo Burnett Agency, didn’t have a ticket and was trying to get in. Ingersoll pointed Braddy – who was in town to scout for fresh Marlboro Men – in the direction of someone who could help.

Later that night, cutting into a steak at Bowman’s Corner, Ingersoll says “I got that feeling you get, you know, where people are staring at you? I didn’t know if I’d done something wrong, or what.”

It was Braddy’s table. The photographer was studying what he saw under Ingersoll’s cowboy hat. He approached the table, explained who he was and what he wanted. The next day Ingersoll led Braddy to a barn, Braddy snapped several frames of Ingersoll and left.

Two weeks later Herf Ingersoll got a phone call, and the cattle rancher had a new career: modeling.

“It was the experience of a lifetime, for me,” Ingersoll says. He was whisked off to Colorado for a weeklong shoot outside a small town called Fairplay, south of Denver toward the Rocky Mountains.

The hours were long. Photo shoots began at daybreak, which meant getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning, getting breakfast, and getting to the often remote site while it was still dark. The photographers and models would go to work at sunup. They’d knock off about noon, then resume later in the afternoon when the light got better, and work until dusk.

“A lot of times we never even had time for supper,” Ingersoll says.

The typical shoot lasted seven to 10 days, with no days off. All of Ingersoll’s expenses were covered. The pay was $150 a day when he started, and was up to $300 a day when he quit doing it seven years later.

And, of course, Marlboros were provided.

“We always had a coffee can with some water in it,” Ingersoll says. “They didn’t wait long after you lit one before they’d stop. They only wanted a little ash in the picture. Then you’d drop it in the coffee can and light another one. A lot of the pictures were just of you lighting a cigarette. You’d toss it, light another, then another, then another …”

He says he’d typically use up half a carton of Marlboros – five packs – on a day’s shoot.

During the first few years, Philip Morris sent all the cigarettes he wanted to his home, too.

“But then they quit,” Ingersoll says. “They said it was unlawful to send ’em through the mail. I don’t think that’s true, but anyway, after that, I had to buy my own.”

What did Jim Braddy see that day at the Augusta Rodeo?

“Well, you had to be a smoker – if you’re not, you just don’t hold the cigarette right,” Ingersoll says. “They wanted crow’s feet around your eyes, a Dick Tracy chin. And you had to know how to ride a horse.”

Marlboro Men – they eventually weeded out the pilots and sailors and settled exclusively on cowboys – weren’t Hollywood handsome. They were good-looking guys whose faces appeared to have been further sculpted by a lot of years on the range, in bitter winter winds as well as hot summer suns. Ingersoll was 44 when he started modeling and 51 when he quit.

Modeling was strictly a moonlighting job. Typically, there were only a couple of week-to-10-day shoots per year, “a nice break from ranching,” Ingersoll says. “And that was good money back in those days.”

One of Ingersoll’s favorite shots is this two-page magazine ad:

Where’s the name “Herf” come from? Is that Ingersoll’s given name?

“I’m not tellin’,” he says.

“His mother really scraped the bottom of the barrel when she come up with his name,” says Herf’s wife Colleen.

Eventually, it comes out. This Marlboro Man is a bald guy named Wilmer.

“My brother teased me all the time about my name,” Ingersoll says. “He’d get me all riled up, then he’d call me a girl, a she, a her. Well, the “her” turned into “Hereford,” which finally got cut down to “Herf.”

He stands 6-foot-4, and when he slaps that cowboy hat on his head, even in his 70s, he still looks the part of a Marlboro Man.

“I never wanted to bad-mouth smoking,” he says. “I know cigarettes are not good for you. I got away with it for 60 years, and I’m still alive, but it’ll get to you if you smoke long enough.”

He continued smoking until, four years ago [1998], when the Marlboro Man quit smoking.

“I haven’t,” says Ingersoll, “taken a puff off one of the stupid things since.”

Here’s a classic Marlboro Man shot, featuring Herf:

Wow. It almost makes me want to light up. LOL

Over 90 now, Herf’s still alive — or at least was in 2022 . . .

Anyway, I’ll close with a few pretty pictures of the Missouri River posted on GE. I’ll start with one by Karen Granoski:

Also by Karen, this of the town of Hardy (I think)

And also this:

Here’s one by Harwinder Bassi (great name!):

And one by I.S. Batchmann:

I’ll close with this by David Hryciuk:

That’ll do it . . .

Greg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Black Mary, Cascade Montana, Hardy Montana, Herf Ingersoll, Marlboro Man, Mary Fields, Stagecoach Mary, Tower Rock, Tower Rock State Park, Wolf Creek Montana | Leave a Comment »

Casper, Evansville and Glenrock, Wyoming

Posted by graywacke on June 17, 2023

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near. I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location.

Landing number 2628; A Landing A Day blog post number 1073

Dan: Today’s lat/long (N42^o 44.440’, W106^o 1.107) puts me in central-southeast Wyoming:

And my local landing map:

As you can see, I landed in the watershed of Deer Creek; on to the North Platte River (35^th hit). I won’t bother with any more watershed maps; the North Platte heads to the Platte (77^th hit); to the Missouri (462^nd hit); on to the MM (1019^th hit).

The Googlemobile got close to a bridge over Deer Creek a few miles downstream from my landing, but the driver mysteriously stopped just short of the bridge:

And here’s what the Orange Dude sees:

The Googlemobile turned around just as the road went from paved to gravel — which I’ve seen happen before.

But the Orange Dude let me know that he noticed a photo icon on the bridge, posted by old ALAD friend Elifino 57, whose pictures I’ve posted on numerous occasions. Here’s their* picture of Deer Creek:

* I’ve checked out Elifino 57 for a previous post, and discovered that Elifino 57 is actually a married couple:

The OD found a bridge over the North Platte just north of Glenrock:

And here’s his lovely view of the river:

So, staying with Glenrock: the town was originally known as Deer Creek Station, and started out as a re-supply center for thousands of travelers (as many as 300,000) along the Oregon Trail. Many of the travelers took the time to carve their names and initials into a rock just west of Deer Creek.

The lowlands where Deer Creek flows into the North Platte could be termed a “glen,” and thus the name Rock of the Glen, or Glenrock. Elifino 57 paid the Rock in the Glen a visit:

Not to be outdone, the Orange Dude got this view of the rock, from a little further west:

Wyoming Public Broadcasting posted a You Tube video featuring the history of Glenrock. It’s nothing spectacular, but watch it if you’d like:

Of course, I Googled Casper, but didn’t find much of interest to me. It is the hometown of the Cheneys – Liz and Dick. But it’s nigh on impossible to talk about either one without getting political, which is verboten on this blog . . .

I looked for some “fun facts” about the Cheneys. Yea, right . . .

Just east of Casper is Evansville. Wiki had little to say, but did mention that there’s a Superfund environmental clean-up site near Evansville that is known as the Mystery Bridge Road / Route 20 Superfund site. The contamination has been addressed, and the site removed from the Superfund list, but the name “Mystery Bridge” caught my eye.

On Street Atlas, I found where Mystery Bridge Road looks like it used to cross the river:

Going over to GE, it looks different; here’s the bridge’s more likely former location (my white lines):

I went to HistoricAerials.com; they actually have a 1971 photo that shows the old bridge:

Of course, I Googled it, and found a Casper Star Tribune article entitled: “Answer Girl: Solving the Mystery of Mystery Bridge,” by the Answer Girl herself, Carol Seavey.

I was briefly deterred by the fact that I needed to subscribe to the Casper Star Tribune to read the article. Subscribing to local newspapers is something I NEVER do. Well, maybe I should say almost never do, because I shelled out $1 for a six-month subscription.

It would be just like me to forget all about the subscription, and start paying more (likely way more) after six months. And I don’t really care about local Casper news. Therefore: I’ll cancel my subscription as soon as I’m done here.

So here are some excerpts from Carol’s article:

Hey, Answer Girl,

Can you tell me why they call the Mystery Bridge by that name? Where did it go? I’ve lived in Casper nearly 77 years and never heard anything about it. — Thanks, Lynne

Dear Lynne,

The Mystery Bridge — which crossed the North Platte River east of Evansville — was damaged by ice jams in December of 1971. You can still see where Natrona County Road 602/Mystery Bridge Road lead to the bridge. Here’s a picture of the old wooden bridge:

Vince Crolla, archivist for the Western History Center in Casper, provided a Dec. 23, 1971 Casper Star-Tribune article detailing the closure. Floating ice had knocked out two of the wooden pilings and the bridge was closed. Some of the ice chunks were eight to nine feet in diameter and 10 to 12 inches thick.

The article indicated that a new bridge was already being built one-half mile downstream, but wouldn’t be finished until spring.

I checked with Rick Young, director of Fort Caspar Museum in Casper, and while he didn’t turn up any information [about the name Mystery Bridge], he led me to Casper siblings Jay DeWitt and Kathy Baker, ages 66 and 65, respectively.

They recalled what their father told them about the bridge many years ago. He told them that the original bridge was built during prohibition to smuggle alcohol across the North Platte River. The locals found it mysterious because it was set too high off the ground to drive on and no roads led to it, but it was well-constructed.

“It was wagon-height,” DeWitt said.

As the story goes, bootleggers rolled barrels of beer or liquor across the bridge and loaded them into wagons, possibly for delivery to the Salt Creek oil field in Midwest, about 35 miles north of Evansville.

The original Mystery Bridge was in a slightly different location, Baker said. It would have been north of its most current location, where it was better hidden from the authorities.

Sorry, Carol, but I find your article annoyingly confusing. In your first sentence, you state that the Mystery Bridge is the wooden bridge pictured that was destroyed in 1971. But really? If so, it certainly doesn’t appear to be elevated. And in your last sentence, it says “north of its most current location.” What most current location are you talking about? Does that mean north of the location of the 1971 bridge?

If there was an elevated bridge, the only thing that might make sense is that it would be narrow, constructed only to roll barrels across. If it was wide enough for a wagon, there would be no reason to make it elevated; then one could just drive the damn wagon across the river. The only reason I can imagine to make it narrow is because it would be easier and cheaper to build.

Phew. Since the father who related the Mystery Bridge story to his kids was pretty clear about the bridge being elevated and barrels rolled across the bridge, I conclude that there was such a bridge, built solely for that purpose.

Carol: You get a C- on your essay . . .

I’ll finish up with this shot of the North Platte just east of Glenrock, posted on GE by Sr. Fox:

That’ll do it . . .

Greg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Casper WY, Elifino 57, Evansville WY, Glenrock WY, Mystery Bridge | 1 Comment »

Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico

Posted by graywacke on June 9, 2023

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near. I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location.

Landing number 2627; A Landing A Day blog post number 1072

Dan: Today’s lat/long (N34^o 9.807’, W106^o 39.734) puts me in central New Mexico:

Here’s my local landing map, which (because I’m featuring a valley, not a town) is presented for no particular reason, other than I always have a local landing map:

You can tell by the title of this post (and by the above map) that I landed in the watershed of the Rio Grande (57^th hit). Unsurprisingly, I had to go to Google Earth to learn more about my local watershed:

The path is rather circuitous from my landing to the Rio Grande, but trust me: I painstakingly traced my drainage path (down hill all the way), which is part of the Arroyo de la Parida watershed.

There is no Google Earth Street View coverage for the Arroyo, but I did fid a You Tube video of some guys four wheeling up the Arroyo. It’s a little long, but stay with it long enough to get a good feel for my watershed. They have a You Tube Channel, Mud Bug Adventures:

The Orange Dude was able to get a look at the Rio Grande near where the Arroyo de la Perida discharges (at least occasionally):

And here’s what he sees:

As you might suspect, he couldn’t get anywhere close to my landing . . .

I have a two-pronged approach to this post. I’ll start with some geology, which presents the physical reason that the Rio Grande Valley exists and then move on to some 16^th and 17^th century Native American / Spanish history.

The most important regional geology feature in central New Mexico is the Rio Grande Rift. Generally speaking, a geologic rift is an area of the earth’s crust where tectonic forces are pulling the crust apart. I have spoken before of the rift zone that created the Atlantic Ocean. Some rifts (like the Rio Grande Rift) lock up before creating a sea or ocean. Another well-known rift is the one that created (and is widening) the Red Sea. Another one is the East African Rift, which is active, but has not yet resulted in a sea.

Anyway, here’s a cross-section of the Albuquerque Basin, which is part of the Rio Grande rift:

As the crust tends to pull apart, blocks of crust drop along fault zones. These down-dropped fault blocks are called basins. Notice that the blue and green beds used to be horizontal at or near the surface. These beds dropped as much as three miles due to the rifting. Unsurprisingly, a river (specifically the Rio Grande) ended up following the lower elevations along the rift. Here’s a map showing the basins associated with the Rift:

Moving to Native American History, I’m going to feature the Pueblo Revolt. The Pueblo Indians were centered on the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico, and certainly inhabited all of the area around my landing. The following is from Wiki (rather long, but quite the compelling story; I did some editing to make it as palatable as possible):

For more than 100 years beginning in 1540, the Pueblo people of present-day New Mexico were subjected to successive waves of soldiers, missionaries, and settlers. These encounters, referred to as entradas (incursions), were characterized by violent confrontations between Spanish colonists and Pueblo peoples. The Tiguex War, fought in the winter of 1540–41 by the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen pueblos of Tiwa Native Americans, was particularly destructive to Pueblo and Spanish relations.

In 1598 Juan de Oñate led 129 soldiers and 10 Franciscan priests, plus a large number of women, children, servants, slaves, and livestock, into the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico.

[Where’s the eleventh commandment about not owning slaves when you need it?]

There were at the time approximately 40,000 Pueblo Native Americans inhabiting the region. Oñate put down a revolt at Acoma Pueblo by killing and enslaving hundreds of the Native Americans and sentencing all men 25 or older to have their foot cut off. The Acoma Massacre would instill fear of and anger at the Spanish in the region for years to come. Franciscan missionaries were assigned to several of the Pueblo towns to Christianize the natives.

[Wow. If you can’t make them behave (and make them Christians), cut off their feet, enslave them or kill them.]

Especially egregious to the Pueblo was the assault on their traditional religion. In 1608, when it looked as though Spain might abandon the province, the Franciscans baptized seven thousand Pueblos to try to convince the Crown otherwise. Although the Franciscans initially tolerated manifestations of the old religion as long as the Puebloans attended mass and maintained a public veneer of Catholicism, Fray Alonso de Posada (in New Mexico 1656–1665) outlawed Kachina dances by the Pueblo people and ordered the missionaries to seize and burn their masks, prayer sticks, and effigies.

The unrest among the Pueblos came to a head in 1675. Governor Juan Francisco Treviño ordered the arrest of forty-seven Pueblo medicine men and accused them of practicing “sorcery”. Four medicine men were sentenced to death by hanging; three of those sentences were carried out, while the fourth prisoner committed suicide. The remaining men were publicly whipped and sentenced to prison. When this news reached the Pueblo leaders, they moved in force to Santa Fe, where the prisoners were held. Because a large number of Spanish soldiers were away fighting the Apache, Governor Treviño was forced to accede to the Pueblo demand for the release of the prisoners. Among those released was a prisoner named “Popé” (or Popay).

Following his release, Popé, along with a number of other Pueblo leaders planned and orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt. Popé took up residence in Taos Pueblo, about 70 miles north of the capital of Santa Fe, and spent the next five years seeking support for a revolt among the 46 Pueblo towns.

[Here’s a shot of the Taos Pueblo, which served as a base for Popé during the revolt. Some, maybe most, of what you see here was there in 1675 when Popé was there.]

He gained the support of the Northern Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Tano, and Keres-speaking Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley. The Spanish population of about 2,400, including mixed-blood mestizos, and native servants and retainers, was scattered thinly throughout the region. Santa Fe was the only place that approximated being a town.

The Spanish could only muster 170 men with arms. The Pueblos joining the revolt probably had 2,000 or more adult men capable of using native weapons such as the bow and arrow.

Popé promised that, once the Spanish were killed or expelled, the ancient Pueblo gods would reward them with health and prosperity. Popé’s plan was that the inhabitants of each Pueblo would rise up and kill the Spanish in their area and then all would advance on Santa Fe to kill or expel all the remaining Spanish. The date set for the uprising was August 11, 1680. Popé dispatched runners to all the Pueblos carrying knotted cords.

Each morning the Pueblo leadership was to untie one knot from the cord, and when the last knot was untied, that would be the signal for them to rise against the Spaniards in unison.

On August 10^th (a day early because the Spaniards had learned of the date of the revolt), he Puebloans rose up, stole the Spaniards’ horses to prevent them from fleeing, sealed off roads leading to Santa Fe, and pillaged Spanish settlements. A total of 400 people were killed, including men, women, children, and 21 of the 33 Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico.

By August 13, all the Spanish settlements in New Mexico had been destroyed and Santa Fe was besieged. The Puebloans surrounded the city and cut off its water supply. In desperation, on August 21, New Mexico Governor Antonio de Otermín, led the Spaniards out of the city and retreated southward along the Rio Grande, headed for El Paso del Norte. The Puebloans shadowed the Spaniards but did not attack. About 500 of the survivors were Native American slaves. They were escorted to El Paso by a Spanish supply train. The Puebloans did not block their passage out of New Mexico.

The retreat of the Spaniards left New Mexico in the power of the Puebloans. Apparently, Popé traveled from town to town ordering a return “to the state of their antiquity.” All crosses, churches, and Christian images were to be destroyed. The people were ordered to cleanse themselves in ritual baths, to use their Puebloan names, and to destroy all vestiges of the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture. Popé, it was said commanded those natives who had been married according to the rites of the Catholic Church to dismiss their wives and to take others after the old native tradition.

However, the Puebloans had no tradition of political unity. Each pueblo was self-governing, and some, or all, apparently resisted Popé’s demands for a return to a pre-Spanish existence. The paradise Popé had promised when the Spanish were expelled did not materialize. A drought continued, destroying Puebloan crops, and the raids by Apache and Navajo increased.

Popé was deposed as the leader of the Puebloans about a year after the revolt and disappears from history.

The Spanish were never able to re-convince some Puebloans to join Santa Fe de Nuevo México, and the Spanish often returned seeking peace instead of reconquest. For some Puebloans, the Revolt was a success in its objective to drive away Spanish influence.

In August 1692, Diego de Vargas marched to Santa Fe unopposed with only sixty soldiers, one hundred Indian auxiliaries or native soldiers, seven cannons (which he used as leverage against the Pueblo inside Santa Fe), and one Franciscan priest. He arrived at Santa Fe on September 13 and promised the 1,000 Pueblo people assembled there clemency and protection if they would swear allegiance to the King of Spain and return to the Christian faith.

The Pueblo initially rejected the Spaniards. After much persuading, the Spanish finally made the Pueblo agree to peace. On September 14, 1692, de Vargas proclaimed a formal act of repossession.

Though the 1692 agreement to peace was bloodless, in the years that followed de Vargas maintained increasingly severe control over the increasingly defiant Pueblo. De Vargas returned to Mexico and gathered together about 800 people, including 100 soldiers, and returned to Santa Fe on December 16, 1693. This time, however, 70 Pueblo warriors and 400 family members within the town opposed his entry. De Vargas and his forces staged a quick and bloody recapture that concluded with the surrender and execution of the 70 Pueblo warriors on December 30. Their surviving families (about 400 women and children) were sentenced to ten years’ servitude and distributed to the Spanish colonists as slaves.

[Looking for that eleventh commandment again . . . ]

In 1696 the residents of fourteen pueblos attempted a second organized revolt, launched with the murders of five missionaries and thirty-four settlers and using weapons the Spanish themselves had traded to the natives over the years; de Vargas’s retribution was unmerciful, thorough and prolonged.

By the end of the century the last resisting Pueblo town had surrendered and the Spanish reconquest was essentially complete.

In the US Capital building, each state is entitled to provide two statues to be displayed. Thirty-five of the statues are in Statuary Hall; the rest are spread around the capital building. Anyway, one of the two statues for New Mexico is Popé:

This says volumes about today’s society looking back at the sins of our past.

Zane Adams was headed south on I-25 west of my landing. He took this picture and posted it on GE:

That’ll do it . . .

Greg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Pop-pay, Popé, Rio Grande Rift, Rio Grande River, Rio Grande Valley | Leave a Comment »

Potsdam and Hannawa Falls, New York

Posted by graywacke on June 3, 2023

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near. I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location.

Landing number 2626; A Landing A Day blog post number 1071

Dan: Today’s lat/long (N44^o 40.986’, W74^o 58.322) puts me in far northern New York:

Here’s my local landing map:

You can see that I landed in the watershed of the Raquette River (just my 2nd hit). My streams only map shows that the Raquette heads due north and ends up in the St. Lawrence (116^th hit):

It is worth noting (to me, at least) that of the 116 landings in the St. Lawrence watershed, all but 12 made it to the St. Lawrence via one of the Great Lakes. If you count Lake Champlain as a Great Lake (some people do), my non-Great Lakes St. Lawrence landings are down to four: two for the Raquette and two for the Oswegatchie, which, like the Raquette, originates in the Adirondack Mountains and flows north to the St. Lawrence.

Incidentally, a river name like Oswegatchie seems much more suited to the deep south, eh? Consider these deep south river names: Chatahootchee, Choctawhatchee, Coosawattee, Buttahatchee, Steinhatchee, Alapohoochee, and Withlacoochee, Change the “i” to an “e” in Oswegachie, and it would fit right in.

Moving over to Google Earth (GE), you can see that I landed behind an apartment complex:

More specifically, the Lawrence Avenue Apartments:

The Orange Dude moved down the road a little in an attempt to get a look at my landing:

And here’s what he sees:

The bridges over the Raquette in and around Potsdam and Hannawa Falls actually go over dammed-up lakes. I had to go about 8 miles downstream (north) to get a shot of the river being a river:

Neither Potsdam nor Hannawa Falls are really hook-worthy, but they’re all I have. Potsdam (pop 15,000) is quite the college town, especially considering how small it is:

I actually have a familial connection with Potsdam and Clarkson University. My father’s sister Louise lived in Potsdam for nearly all of her adult life. She was a long time elementary school teacher in Potsdam. Her husband Art was a professor of Civil Engineering at Clarkson. He died in 1976 (while still teaching at Clarkson), and the Civil Engineering Department continues to present an annual award in his name to a deserving Civil Engineering student.

Growing up, I rarely saw my Aunt and Uncle & fam, and then I lost track of the clan mainly because my dad died when I was a teenager.

The Landing God pulled a quick one on me. Before this landing, JP – a guy I’ve worked with for years at our company (and a friend of mine) – told me that he was spending a weekend in Potsdam, attending the graduation of his nephew from Clarkson. I told him that I was born in nearby Watertown (about 65 miles to the SW), and then told him about my Potsdam/Clarkson relatives. JP thought it was cool that he knew someone with these connections to his weekend destination. Because of his trip, I conjured up the few memories I had of Aunt Louise, Uncle Art, and my cousins.

The weekend JP was there, I finished up my Indiana landing (Pierceton/South Whitley/Bippus) and then used my random lat/long app to find my next landing spot. Amazingly (for me, anyway), up popped Potsdam!

Moving right along to Potsdam’s only hook: it is the hometown of Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, who lived quite the life. From Wiki:

Marguerite Alice “Missy” LeHand (1896 – 1944) was a private secretary to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for 21 years. She eventually functioned as White House Chief of Staff, the only woman in American history to do so.

Born into a blue collar, Irish-American family in Potsdam, New York, LeHand studied secretarial science in high school and, in 1919, began to work for the Franklin Roosevelt vice presidential campaign in New York. Following the Democrats’ defeat, FDR’s wife, Eleanor, invited her to join the family at their home in Hyde Park, New York, to clean up the campaign correspondence.

FDR hired LeHand to work for him on Wall Street, where he was the partner in a law firm and worked for a bonding company.

After FDR was partially paralyzed in August 1921, LeHand became his daily companion and one of the main people to encourage him to return to politics. She remained his secretary when he became governor of New York in 1929 and when he became president in 1933, serving until a 1941 stroke left her partially paralyzed and barely able to speak.

That’s Missy on the left next to FDR (in the early ’30s)

Lehand was a popular guest among Washington society. She was glamorous (LeHand was on Washington’s best-dressed list for 1937), vivacious, and playful with her West Wing co-workers.

LeHand’s importance only increased during FDR’s second term. Following Chief of Staff Louis Howe’s death in 1936, she became the de facto White House Chief of Staff. She was at FDR’s bedside every morning as he met with key advisors, vetted his mail, spent evenings with the president in his private study, accompanied him on weekend cruises on the presidential yachts, and as gatekeeper to the President, provided a “back door” entrance to the Oval Office. She was recognized as one of the most powerful people in FDR’s administration.

The exact nature of LeHand’s relationship with FDR is debated by historians. It is generally accepted that their relationship contained a romantic element, but scholars remain divided on whether the pair had a physical relationship.

This question was widely discussed among their contemporaries and continues to be debated by historians. Roosevelt biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin states that “beneath the complexity, it is absolutely clear that Franklin was the love of Missy’s life, and that in turn he adored her and depended on her for affection and support as well as work.”

Doug Wead wrote: “Some Roosevelt historians insist that their relationship was never physical. Eleanor and the children accepted the relationship, which speaks for its innocence. Sara [Roosevelt] spoke favorably of Missy’s family and upbringing. Years later, only Elliott, of all the children, would declare that it had not been as benign as historians like to believe.”

In 1973, FDR’s son Elliott published An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park, in which he recalled seeing LeHand in his father’s lap and alleged that she “shared a familiar life in all its aspects with father.”

His eldest brother Jimmy disagreed, arguing: “I suppose you could say they came to love one another,” he wrote, “but it was not a physical love.”

Kathryn Smith, the author of the only biography of LeHand, could come to no conclusion, but wrote “As far as evidence goes, there is not a single written account of anyone seeing them in a compromising position, despite the hundreds of Secret Service agents, staff members, political cronies, family members and friends who traipsed through FDR’s bedrooms—which he used as an auxiliary office—during their twenty-one years together.”

Eleanor and LeHand remained on good terms. Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook describes the First Lady as treating LeHand warmly, “as an elder daughter or, in the manner of Asian matriarchs, as the junior wife”.

The two women went shopping together, and Eleanor took a solicitous interest in LeHand’s smoking and keeping general health. Eleanor accompanied LeHand to her mother’s funeral in Potsdam during the first presidential campaign in 1932, helping the family make arrangements.

In June 1941, LeHand collapsed at a White House dinner party, and two weeks later, she suffered a major stroke that left her partially paralyzed with little speech function. FDR paid LeHand’s medical bills and later made provisions for her in his will, stating that the principal would be divided equally among his children while half the income of his estate (which was eventually probated at more than $3 million) would go to Eleanor and half to “my friend Marguerite A. LeHand…for medical attention, care and treatment during her lifetime.” (As LeHand died before FDR, her half reverted to Eleanor.)

Grace Tully, an assistant of LeHand, took over as Roosevelt’s secretary, but was never a companion for Roosevelt in the same way as LeHand had been. After Missy departed the White House, she never saw FDR again, but he did keep in touch by writing letters, making phone calls, and sending gifts.

When LeHand died on July 31, 1944, the president issued a statement:

Memories of more than a score of years of devoted service enhance the sense of personal loss which Miss LeHand’s passing brings. Faithful and painstaking, with charm of manner inspired by tact and kindness of heart, she was utterly selfless in her devotion to duty. Hers was a quiet efficiency, which made her a real genius in getting things done. Her memory will ever be held in affectionate remembrance and appreciation, not only by all the members of our family but by the wide circle of those whose duties brought them into contact with her.

Eleanor Roosevelt attended LeHand’s funeral in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mourners included Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and former ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy.

The president’s words “She was utterly selfless in her devotion to duty” appear on LeHand’s marker at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Moving up the Raquette River to Hannawa Falls. From Northern New York Waterfalls website:

The hamlet of Hannawa Falls got its name from the waterfall there. Back around 1910, a dam was constructed for hydroelectric power. As is true for many other similar river communities, the waterfall isn’t what it used to be.

In other words, there was a lovely waterfall on the Raquette River that is no more. I could find no old photos of the original waterfall, but of course, here’s a shot of the dam:

The Village of Hannawa Falls has a Facebook page that, unlike Facebook pages for other small towns, is extremely active and up to date. In the last two years, there are hundreds of posts with hundreds of photos. I’ve selected a few photos; I’ll start with this shot of the dam and lake posted by Bryan Snyder: