JAMES BONNEY ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL

Jan Girand 

An agreement was made in 1829 between the two republics – the United States and Mexico – that each would provide, along their own portions of the Santa Fe Trail route, troops for protection to the travelers on the Trail. It was that which first brought U.S. General Stephen Watts Kearney to New Mexico, and which caused the United States to begin to covet that land known as New Mexico. U.S. Topographical Engineer, James William Abert, Trader Josiah Gregg and several soldiers with the Army of the West kept journals as they traversed the Trail during those eventful times.   

home of Cleofas Bonney and Trinidad Lopez 

When they marched over Bonney’s land at La Junta, James Bonney marched – briefly and unmemorably to all but a few who cared – into recorded history.  

Those various early-day journalists, historians and descendents of James Bonney said he was born in England or that he was a blue-eyed Irishman from the British Isles. He was described as handsome, with red hair and beard. That he had blue eyes has never been disputed. Those blue eyes, which must have been a dominant gene, have passed down for generations. 

James immigrated to the United States, some stories say a brother came with him, and he settled in Missouri – where and about when the Santa Fe Trail began. 

For a while, it was said, he ran a successful freighting business over the Trail from Missouri to Santa Fe and back again. About 1825, he began a settlement at what was then called La Junta – the junction – because of the fertile valley made by the crossing of two rivers, the Mora and the Sapello. 

He settled in northern New Mexico and began another family. Bonney carefully chose the site for his trading post. It was Mora grant land given to him by his new father-in-law, Miguel Mascarenas, located at the lower plaza. The place he wanted, and which Miguel deeded to him, was beside the Santa Fe Trail. In fact, it was near where two of the Trail’s branches – the Mountain Branch and the Jornada or Cimarron Cutoff with the Ocate Crossing – joined and became one before it went on to Santa Fe. It was also beside the trail that went west, up over the mountain to the high valley of lo de Moro where a settlement of grantees – one of the earliest white settlements in New Mexico – was already established on the upper plaza. 

The summer of 1846, U.S. Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearney and his Army of the West passed through New Mexico and, without firing a shot, successfully claimed it for the United States from Mexico. When the battalions led by Kearney – one under the command of Alexander W. Doniphan, Colonel First Regiment Missouri Volunteers – marched over the Santa Fe Trail that had begun 25 years earlier, they passed through the “civilized valley” of La Junta. The soldiers considered it civilized because it had plentiful water, fine grass, flocks of sheep, droves of horses, and large herds of cattle. James Bonney had a settlement there, and the dugout dwelling, log cabin, trading post, livestock, garden and animal pens those early journalists wrote of were his. 

Just a few years earlier, Bonney had hired Mexican laborers to dig an irrigation ditch from the junction of the two rivers to the higher ground where he built his settlement and trading post. That ditch, still functioning in the new millennium, is called the Bonney Ditch. 

The Bonney Ditch as it appears in 2000, more than 150 years after it was dug.

“The first settlement we had seen in 775 miles,” wrote Lieutenant Emery, a journalist with the Army of the West. He also wrote, “Mr. Boney (sic) … has been some time in this country, and is the owner of a large number of horses and cattle which he manages to keep in defiance of wolves, Indians and Mexicans. He is a perfect specimen of a generous, openhearted adventurer, and in appearance what, I have pictured to myself, Daniel Boone of Kentucky must have been in his day. He drove a heard of cattle into camp and picked out the largest and fattest, which he presented to the Army.” 

Another early-day journalist who met him recorded that Bonney had red hair and beard and was an Englishman. 

The battalions led by Kearney were guests of James Bonney on the night of August 13, 1846. His wet and bedraggled guests on the second night were those of the artillery battalion commanded by Doniphan, slowed by their wagons and cannons and the inclement weather. This is history recorded in several early records and journals. 

Lore that passed down verbally for generations from Bibiana Martin’s family and from New Mexico descendents of Bonney have said too, that those two groups of American soldiers spent those two nights camped beside the river on Bonney land and for their evening meals, James had fed them his choicest beef. 

1846 was a memorable year for the very young Bibiana. Her son, Ramon, by James was born and soon after had come armies of American soldiers, the first she had ever seen, who were brief guests of her family. Less than two months later, James Bonney was killed in early October, not far from his home. 

Indians had stolen some of his horses; the next morning, while the signs were still fresh for tracking, James took an Indian servant for translation, and a bag of freshly made tortillas for barter, and went in pursuit of his horses. 

His arrow-studded body was later found beside Dog Creek, beyond Valmora. It is said that he was buried in what later became the Tiptonville cemetery. There are still some who believe they can identify his unmarked grave.

No American forts had yet been built along the Santa Fe Trail, because the Territory had only just become property of the United States, but soon there would be many. In 1851, Fort Union was built – near what had been James Bonney’s trading post. The fort was, perhaps, built upon Bonney land. At any rate, Bonney’s grown children told Fort Union they owed them rent. 

In New Mexico are many descendents of James Bonney. Most of them come from Cleofas, Santiago (James Bonney, Jr.) and Rafaela – his three children by Juana Maria Mascarenas. Juana was the daughter of Miguel Mascarenas, the 42^nd grantee of the Mora Land Grant. That liaison was recognized in early New Mexico court documents. 

Some descendents also come from Ramon, the son of James and Maria Bibiana Martin, the daughter of Apolonia and Bernardo Martin, the 40^th grantee of the Mora Land Grant. The one between James and the very young Bibiana was his second child-producing relationship in New Mexico, but his third known family. 

James had an earlier relationship or marriage in Missouri that produced children. Historian, Herman Weisner, connected a blue-eyed Englishman named James Bonney to a family in Missouri. Into that family, said my friend and published historian, was born a child named Catherine who might have later become the mother of Billy the Kid Bonney. He found several coincidences or links to believe that was a possiblity. Herman died in January 2003 without fully proving his theory. 

In the middle of the year 2001, I traveled back 150 or 175 years in one hour of one day. What transported me was being told that I stood upon the site where James Bonney had built his dugout dwelling, store and trading post along the Santa Fe Trail in the early 1800s. Who transported me was 80-year-old Joe Lopez who has startlingly blue eyes. He said he got them from his great-great-grandfather, James Bonney. Joe owns some of that land that Bonney had owned so long ago. That included the site where we stood that day.   

Years after James Bonney’s death, his Mascarenas descendents legally fought for and regained ownership to his lands from Samuel B. Watrous, Tipton and other settlers of the area who had taken possession of them after Bonney died. 

The settlement, known as La Junta 150 years ago in northeastern New Mexico, was renamed Watrous. Also in the area of Watrous had been two other settlements. The better known one was called Tiptonville after an early area settler. 

After James Bonney’s adult children by Juana regained his lands – Rafaela’s husband, Trinidad Lopez, founded the other settlement. Soldiers at Ft. Union recommended to Trinidad – who had himself once been a lieutenant, Company A, First Infantry stationed at Ft. Union – to establish a community to protect himself and his family from Indian attacks. The adage of “safety in numbers” was then even more poignant. Trinidad named the settlement Bonneyville. 

Cleofas, Santiago and Rafaela and their families built their adobe homes there, as did many others. The three adobe Bonney abodes still stand, but only one or two non-Bonney abodes remain. Still, if you look closely and know what you are looking at, you can see foundations and indentations, stones and adobe, the earthly remains of Bonneyville, as well as a Jesuit church founded by Cleofas.

Although I am not descended from James Bonney, he has always fascinated me because Bibiana Martin was my great-great-grandmother. She later had other children in addition to Ramon.