YANKEE GOLD – IT’S SIGNIFICANCE

Steve Elkins

Tom  Catron

Yankee Gold unlocks the secret of the “Santa Fe Ring”, one of the great mysteries of western lore. The Santa Fe Ring was a creation of Congressman Chaves and his surrogate, A. P. Sullivan, editor of the Santa Fe Post. They conceived the idea of a New Mexico power ring at the same time the Tweed Ring was notorious for stealing public monies in New York City. Giving a similar name to the associates of Steve Elkins would throw evil aspersions on their political enemy who was a member of their own party, a fellow Republican. At the same time, Chaves could have the power of appointments to office which he used liberally.

The Republicans appointed to New Mexico offices in the Lincoln administration were almost entirely abolitionists. However, Lincoln was persuaded by an old friendship with John Watts, another former Illinois attorney, to make James Carleton the general in charge of martial law in the territory after Confederates attacked in 1861. Carleton was a Democrat and would support McClellan in the 1864 presidential election. During this period only about 1500 easterners lived as settlers in New Mexico and around 50,000 Spanish speaking former Mexicans lived there.

Frank Chaves’ family owned a half million acre land grant based in the central district of New Mexico and on the Rio Grande River. The family was dependent on the labor of peons, several hundred Indian “debt slaves” for their farming income. These enormous land grants supplied the Army during the war with food and provisions. Chaves’ father had sent him east for an education with the admonition, “The heretics are going to over-run all this country. Go and learn their language and come back prepared to defend your people.”

Chaves’ primary concern was to protect his and other land grant owners’ rights to their huge properties granted under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a hastily conceived treaty which served the purposes of early eastern and Missouri traders with Mexican commercial interests. The ownership of these estates was not established by the usual requirements of land ownership in the United States: valid surveys. Furthermore, these estates were so vast that only slavery could make them economically feasible. Chaves’ secondary concern was a private prejudice against former Confederate officers whom he held were not entitled to hold offices in the territory. Following the Civil War, a significant political faction held this view. Chaves made possible the creation of the second Republican newspaper, the Santa Fe Post, to take positions which would make Steve Elkins and his programs appear subversive.

Steve Elkins entered New Mexico as a teamster, escaping death from Quantrill’s Raiders in Missouri. The Raiders were an outlaw band which supported the Confederates since the Confederate army was prohibited from operation in Missouri. Steve had been a spy for the Union and, as such, functioned in opposition to his friends and family. He ferociously guarded this secret his whole life. While in New Mexico he never wavered from the position that he had served neither side in the Civil War. 

One of the reasons Steve maintained his position as a non-combatant was that in 1861-1862 he had taught a number of Quantrill’s youngest outlaws. Among them was the son of his own family’s close friends, the family of Cole Younger. The Younger family was seriously abused by a Union officer and the men of the 5th Missouri Militia. The latter company crashed a wedding party and was insulted by the refusal of a Younger daughter to dance with the outfit’s captain, a married man. The wedding party was primarily of southern sympathies. The grudge was carried to extremes, the Younger father was killed and the family home was destroyed. Steve felt a terrible responsibility for the later deaths of several women, wives, sisters, and sweethearts of these young men whom he had taught. These women were imprisoned for abetting their husbands, brothers, and fiancés. 

After the war Steve aided his best childhood friend and his former college roommate as well as his own family by providing them with positions which would support them in New Mexico. His roommate, Tom Catron, became a Republican and his law partner in Santa Fe. His childhood friend, a Democrat, would become another law partner and by 1876, New Mexico’s Supreme Court Chief Justice. The theme of Steve’s life after the war became redemption. His need to become a hero, to win statehood and a railroad for the territory, were attempts to fulfill his need for redemption.



—PHOTOS COURTESY OF PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS, NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS, NEG. 50616.