XIV
SANTA FE
June — September, 1846
Not only Tamaulipas and Chihuahua but New Mexico lay within the scope of the government's war policy, and certain features of the situation made the outlook in that quarter peculiarly inviting.
The province was cut into an eastern and a western section by the Rio Grande, which ran approximately north and south; and usage divided the best settled part of it into the Río Arriba (Upstream) district near Santa Fe, the capital, which lay some twenty miles east of the great river, and the Río Abajo (Downstream) district, which had for its metropolis Albuquerque, a small town on the Rio Grande about seventy — five miles to the southwest. According to a recent census the population was 100,000, of which the greater part belonged in the lower district; and more than half the wealth also was attributed to that section. The caravan trade, which made its way from Independence,[1] Missouri, to Santa Fe, Chihuahua, Lagos and even Mexico City, gilded the name of the province. for it had advanced rapidly from the humble beginnings of 1821, and now employed 1200 men, involved a capital of some two millions, and usually paid a net profit of thirty or forty per cent on the goods transported The favorable climate believed to prevail in New Mexico was an additional source of interest.[2]
The political situation appeared singularly promising. In March, 1845, the war department of Mexico admitted publicly that the northern sections of the country were "abandoned and more than abandoned" by the general government Sensible Mexicans held that the connection of the province with their miserable system involved injury instead of benefit.
284
