Just before the Civil War started in 1861, camels roamed free in New Mexico, but it was only because the soldiers didn’t get along with them.
Author Walter Pittman said the U.S. Army brought camels and Arab trainers to the South. While doing research, Pittman read a letter about a group of confederate raiders that hijacked a caravan of camels and took them from Apache Pass, Ariz., to New Mexico.
“The guy who had captured them, he was a leader of a confederate band. … The Yankees made him give them back. … The Confederates experimented with camels, and they traveled well across the desert, but the troops wouldn’t work with them because they were nasty, broody animals,” he said.
Pittman, a military man with a Ph.D. in history, a master’s in geochemistry, and a B.A. in chemistry/physics and geology, said his interest in the Civil War led him to pen New Mexico and the Civil War, a book that details New Mexicans’ political leaning during the war that divided the nation, among other topics. He presents his book at Bookworks on Rio Grande Boulevard on Sunday, followed by a book signing.
Pittman said the Civil War in New Mexico was three-sided.
“You’ve got the Indians, the North and the South,” he said. “And you really should include the Mexicans in that. Three-sided wars never happen.”
He said that most New Mexicans, aside from the aristocrats, had no loyalty to either side of the Civil War. One thing most New Mexicans could agree on at the time was that they didn’t like Texas because of the way it treated prisoners of war during the 1810 dispute.
Pittman said most of the research for this book will be incorporated in a larger book called Rebels in the Rockies: Confederate Irregular Warfare in the West. He read confederate soldiers’ letters and diaries, newspaper clippings and official letters sent to and from the U.S. Army based in New Mexico at the time.
“I have turned over every stone you ever heard of,” he said. “The book was a fantastic amount of research because the confederates destroyed all the info on their secret operations. The way you find out about these secret operations is when they fail.”
Pittman said New Mexico had its share of slavery which included Union supporters owning Navajo slaves, Navajo owning Mexican slaves and Mexicans owning Navajo slaves.
“Navajo wars were essentially triggered by the constant Hispanic people warring on them for slaves,” he said. “The Navajo tended to adopt them and sometimes they kept them in the slave status, but they generally amalgamated them into their families. And that is true of the Hispanics, too.”
Pittman said modern and civil war New Mexico share the trait of being socially separated from the rest of the nation.
“The soldiers that came in, Colorado troops, were just astounded at the backwardness of New Mexico,” he said. “The lack of metal in the houses, the lack of furniture, no tables and chairs in most of the houses. … It was the very insular and self-sufficient culture that still persists here.”
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Pittman said it was interesting to ponder the reasons why some New Mexicans joined the fight for the South. He said they were essentially Confederate guerillas because their reasons for joining the war weren’t necessarily aligned with the South’s ideology.
“They were probably attracted to the special units more than anything else,” he said. “It was very primitive, but the New Mexicans really wanted to be left alone. They didn’t care about the issues. They didn’t like the government, but they didn’t like Texas more. The best thing I can tell you is that this wasn’t their war.”
Walter Pittman presents
*NEW MEXICO
AND THE CIVIL WAR*
Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd. N.W.
3p.m. FREE
