Governor Charles Bent

Born: 11 November 1799; Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia)
Died: 19 January 1847; Taos, New Mexico

Charles Bent was born on 11 November 1799 in what is now Charles Town, Virginia. His family moved to Missouri and by 1823 Bent developed an interest in both fur trapping and in new opportunities for engaging in trade with New Mexico after Mexican Independence.[i] He initially joined his brother William in commercial ventures along the Santa Fe Trail, which led him to meet the French-American trapper Ceran St. Vrain. Together, they formed the Bent and St. Vrain Company which operated a series of forts in the region as well as a store in Taos, New Mexico. Perhaps the best known and largest of these was Bent’s Fort, located near La Junta, Colorado.

Bent entered into a common-law marriage with Maria Ignacio Jaramillo of Taos. Bent remained a subject of some controversy, as he did not convert to Catholicism and did not surrender his U.S. citizenship. Bent’s refusal to do so became the center of various controversies, including legal to nullify the Beaubien-Miranda Grant in which Bent was a partner.[ii] Bent’s success as a fur trapper and trader also garnered some resentment from business rivals.

In the opening months of the Mexican-American War, General Stephen Watts Kearney was able to capture Santa Fe on August 18, 1846 when Governor Manuel Armijo evacuated without giving battle. Kearney appointed Bent as the first Territorial Governor of New Mexico on September 22, 1846. Though Kearney had been able to take control of New Mexico without firing a shot, suspicion and resistance to the territorial government increased over the next few months.

While Bent was able to quash one attempt to seize Santa Fe in December 1846, he did not anticipate the scope of discontent that led to the Taos Revolt of January 1847. This revolt was initiated by New Mexicans still loyal to the Mexican Government as well as Indians from Taos Pueblo. Bent was killed in his home on January 19, 1847, with several other territorial officials killed in the days immediately following. Colonel Sterling Price, who led soldiers from the Santa Fe garrison to suppress the early stages of the revolt, noted that “It appeared to be the object of the insurrectionists to put to death every American and every Mexican who had accepted office under the American government.”[iii] Price’s forces killed approximately 150 rebels and captured perhaps another 400. In response to the revolt, U.S. forces hanged nearly 30 men, including Hipolito Salazar who had been convicted of treason and who remains to the present one of the few men to have been executed for that crime. After subsequent review, officials in the Polk Administration concluded that Salazar should not have been convicted of treason as he had not taken an oath of allegiance to the United States, even as they believed he had been rightfully executed for his association with the Taos Revolt.[iv]

Images & Documents

[1] Paul A. F. Walter, “The First Civil Governor of New Mexico under the Stars and Stripes.” New Mexico Historical Review 8 (1933): 101.

[2] David C. Beyreis, “Dangerous Alliances in the New Mexico Borderlands: Charles Bent and the Limits of Family Networks.” Journal of the Early Republic 39 (2019): 57-80.

[3] David Lavender, Bent’s Fort. (Lincon: Bison Books, 1972): 264.

[4] Carlton F.W. Larson, “Treason, the Death Penalty, and American Identity,” The History News Network. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177832, accessed July 12, 2023.

[5] Carl Teofil Gustavsson Lotave, “Charles Bent, 1797-1847,” Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_9802_45, accessed July 12, 2023.

[6] Old Fort Bent, La Junta, Otero County, Colorado. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.co0001.sheet.00002a/, accessed July 10, 2023.

[7] University of Northern Colorado, “Trappers and Traders: Bent’s Fort.” https://www.unco.edu/hewit/doing-history/trappers-traders/traders/bents-fort.aspx, accessed July 12, 2023.