New book brings Colfax County’s little-known violence to life

August 30 – In September 1875, the body of Methodist minister Franklin J. Tolby was found on the Elizabethtown-Cimarron road on the eastern slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He had been shot twice in the back.

Although robberies and murders of travelers were not uncommon in this violent era, Tolby’s horse and personal effects were still there when he was found. Suspicion immediately fell on Tolby’s political enemies. The preacher was an outspoken opponent of the Santa Fe Ring—a group of wealthy Republicans who were prominent in New Mexico politics at the time—and was even suspected of writing two anonymous letters to a New York newspaper denouncing corruption in New Mexico. Shortly before his murder, he had been reprimanded by a judge connected to the Ring and even threatened with murder by a mailman. The fact that, in the eyes of locals, the authorities were doing little to catch Tolby’s killer only increased suspicion.

Some figures associated with the Santa Fe Ring acquired political power as well as vast amounts of land, taking advantage of the friendship of surveyors and courts and the often vague wording of old Mexican and Spanish land grants. In Colfax County, owners of the Maxwell Land Grant claimed ownership of a 1.7 million-acre strip in northeastern New Mexico; others claimed the grant covered only 97,000 acres. The settlers who took up residence on the land claimed that it was public domain, while the grantors claimed that they were entitled to rent.

Tolby’s assassination sparked a series of violent confrontations and lynchings, and eventually the involvement of federal authorities and the ouster of territorial governor Samuel Axtell. Although it occurred around the same time as the Lincoln County War made famous by Billy the Kid, the Colfax County War is much less well-known. Author Corey Recko brings this largely forgotten conflict back to life in his latest book, The Colfax County War: Violence and Corruption in Territorial New Mexico.

Recko lives in Ohio but has long been interested in New Mexico history and has written numerous articles about it over the years. His first book on the state’s history was Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain (University of North Texas Press, 2008). After finishing that story, Recko says he wanted to write a book about the Lincoln and Colfax County Wars, which also took place around the same time and are linked by a dynamic of locals battling allegedly corrupt authorities tied to the Santa Fe network. But while people who can’t find New Mexico on a map have heard of Billy the Kid, Recko says that when he began his research, he found that little had been written about the events in Cimarron.

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REGIONAL NON-FICTION THE COLFAX COUNTY WAR: VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION IN TERRITORIAL NEW MEXICO by Corey Recko, University of North Texas Press, 222 pages

“There was a big hole where the Colfax County War was going on,” Recko said.

Part of the reason, Recko says, is that the Colfax County War doesn’t have a figure like William H. Bonney to center the story around. Even then, he says, events in Lincoln County attracted more press attention, due to incidents like Billy’s dramatic escape from the Lincoln County jail. The person closest to Colfax is Clay Allison, a seemingly unstable Confederate veteran who moved to the Cimarron area and was involved in numerous violent incidents related and unrelated to his support for the anti-Ring camp, including the lynching of Tolby’s alleged murderer, Cruz Vega, as well as numerous shootings.

However, Allison left New Mexico before the conflict ended, eventually purchasing a ranch outside Pecos, Texas, and dying in an accident in 1887.

“He didn’t die at 21. … He didn’t end his life as a gunslinger, and I think he’s more forgotten,” Recko said.

Because of his departure in 1878, Allison was also not included in the report that federal investigator Frank Warner Angel wrote on the disturbances in Colfax and Lincoln counties. Angel’s findings prompted President Rutherford B. Hayes to remove Axtell as governor, replacing him with Lew Wallace, who is perhaps better known today for writing Ben-Hur than for his political career.

One of the questions raised by the Colfax-Lincoln County Wars is why Axtell, who had just arrived in New Mexico from his time as governor of Utah and had no previous ties to the area, took such a strong side with the Santa Fe Ring that he refused requests to meet with Colfax County residents who had a different view. Axtell also signed a law transferring the Colfax County court to Taos County, which, in addition to forcing Colfax residents to make a dangerous trek across the mountains to reach the courthouse, had the effect of placing cases in the hands of pro-Ring jurors from Taos.

Recko said he could not find any overtly corrupt motive that could explain Axtell’s actions.

“At the time, I think, it was just that he was a Republican, they were Republicans, and they were the ones who had his ear when he was in Santa Fe and he seemed to trust people like (Stephen) Elkins and (Thomas) Catron without question,” Recko said, referring to two of the Ring’s most prominent leaders.

Things calmed down under Wallace. Although he was also a Republican, “he was always able to listen to both sides of all these conflicts,” Recko says.

Although Recko’s book is written in a narrative format that is accessible to both laypeople and scholars, it draws on a wealth of primary sources. Recko began by reading Angel’s report at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., copying out each page. He spent years working on the book in between his various other projects, traveling back and forth between his home in Ohio and New Mexico, spending time in the archives of the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, and the Palace of the Governors. He also learned the often tedious ins and outs of land grants.

“It was a very complicated subject that I was trying to simplify,” he said.

One reason Tolby’s murder remains shrouded in mystery is that two key figures were also murdered — apparently by people who should have had an interest in keeping them alive long enough to testify. Vega was kidnapped, forced to admit that a man named Manuel Cardenas had committed the murder, and then shot to death by drunken vigilantes.

Cardenas was arrested and brought to trial, where he identified Vega as the shooter and several other co-conspirators who he believed orchestrated the murder. However, when soldiers arrived in Cimarron on Axtell’s orders—allegedly to restore order, but an act opposed by townspeople who saw it as an attempt to derail the investigation into Tolby’s murder—Cardenas recanted his confession. He was later shot and killed by a group of unknown men as he was being taken from the courthouse to the jail.

“Unfortunately, the evidence was destroyed with the murders,” Recko said.

Recko says there were later claims that Clay Allison may have killed Cardenas, but there is no evidence. He mentioned another rumor about the violent Allison that is probably not true: After helping to kill serial killer Charles Kennedy, he allegedly put his head on a pole outside the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. Although Allison may have been involved in Kennedy’s lynching, the St. James did not open until after Kennedy’s death.

“Unfortunately, with this lynching, it’s the same thing,” Recko said, “people are making statements like this 50 years after the fact.”