Four key players at Glorieta Pass

Mar. 3—GLORIETA PASS — As you walk the Glorieta Pass battlefield, it's hard not to notice the traffic whizzing by on nearby Interstate 25.

The nearby community of Pecos has been on a travel corridor for a long time. In 1862, it was a stop on the Santa Fe Trail, with several inns where travelers could get a hot meal, a glass of whiskey and a bed for the night. In March of that year, Union and Confederate armies fought for control of the Southwest within shouting distance of the trail, at times on the land of a couple of local innkeepers who were left destitute by soldiers who looted their wares and shot at each other in their fields.

Roughly 100 men, including Confederate Maj. John Shropshire, laid down their lives in the canyons and mountains southeast of Santa Fe. For Union commander Col. John Chivington, who destroyed the Confederates' wagons, thus laying waste their plans to conquer the West, the battle was a crowning achievement in a career that otherwise would be mostly remembered for murderous brutality.

These are four of the men whose stories are forever intertwined with the battle of Glorieta Pass.

Alejandro Valle

There is much we do not know for sure about the owner of Pigeon's Ranch, where some of the fiercest fighting took place on March 28, 1862.

Valle probably was born in France and came to St. Louis as a child. He was in Northern New Mexico by 1850, where he established a farm and inn on the Santa Fe Trail near Pecos. He wasn't born as Alejandro Valle — different sources give his birth name as Alexander Pigeon or Encher Pigeon, while others claim "Pigeon" was a nickname. He was illiterate and has left no writings of his own to answer these questions.

"Before the destruction brought upon his property as a result of the Battle of Glorieta, Alexander Valle was a prosperous man," according to a paper written for the state Office of Archaeological Studies in 1995. One early-20th century source described him as a "genial, vivacious, and obliging host."

However, both armies plundered his ranch, leaving him ruined. He sold it in 1865 and in 1870 filed a damage claim with the federal government.

"Testimony given by Mr. Valle and one of his employees reveals losses of oxen, a horse, grain, molasses, whiskey and other supplies; and destruction of structures, equipment and family possessions," according to a state historic preservation study from 1985. "In spite of various testimonies from participants in the battle affirming Mr. Valle's claim ... [the] government rejected [it]."

Martin Kozlowski

Kozlowski also was an immigrant. Born in occupied Poland, he fought for freedom against Prussia in 1848 and, when that failed, fled first to England and then to America. He joined the U.S. Army and, after his enlistment, built a trading post and tavern in Pecos. The earliest portion of the building dates to 1858, some of it built with timber and bricks from the pueblo the Pecos Natives had abandoned 20 years before.

"He was short and stout, with the build of a gladiator, and feared neither man, devil, nor tax collector," Santa Fe Trail traveler Jim Carter said of Kozlowski.

The Union Army camped next to his store, using his property as a hospital and a prison. Kozlowski appears to have had a better experience with the boys in blue than his neighbors Valle and Anthony Johnson, who both sought compensation after the war for damage the soldiers wrought.

"When they camped on my place, and while they made my tavern their hospital for over two months after their battles in the [canyon], they never robbed me of anything, not even a chicken," Kozlowski said after the war.

Col. John Chivington

Chivington is perhaps best remembered for the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, the murder and mutilation of several hundred defenseless Cheyenne and Arapaho by cavalrymen under his command.

The "fighting parson" combined a willingness to stand up for his antislavery beliefs with a sadistic hatred of Native Americans. He is also, arguably, the man who saved the Southwest for the Stars and Stripes, turning the Battle of Glorieta Pass into a "strategic victory" for the North, as Ranger Byron Parker put it during a recent tour of the battlefield.

As the fighting raged seven miles away, soldiers under the commands of Chivington and Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Chaves came across the Texans' supply wagons at Johnson's Ranch. The wagons — between 60 and 80 of them, depending on the source — were poorly defended, Parker said, with a cannon pointed toward the Santa Fe Trail but not at the Union soldiers on the mesa above and with the guards so bored they were playing sports.

Chivington looted and burned the wagons and killed the horses and mules as the larger rebel force fought, unaware of the unfolding disaster for their side.

With the wagons gone, the Confederates were "deprived of almost their entire supply of ammunition, equipment and stores," Ralph Emerson Twitchell wrote in his 1917 book Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico's Ancient Capital, which is available at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.

While the battle could be "classed as a victory for the reason that the Union forces retired from the field of battle under cover of darkness, it was in truth disastrous to the invaders," Twitchell wrote. The rebels retreated back to Santa Fe and a month thereafter began their march back to Texas. While there would be minor skirmishes as the Texans fled south, Union control of the Southwest was never again in doubt.

Maj. John Shropshire

Shropshire, a Kentucky native who moved to Texas in 1854, was a wealthy man with a 750-acre plantation and 61 enslaved people in 1860. He opposed secession, but when his state left the Union he went along, organizing a cavalry unit to fight for the South.

After the Battle of Valverde, Shropshrie wrote a letter to his wife Caroline that included a list of men in his company killed and wounded in the fight.

He would not make it back to her. While giving what Parker described as a rousing speech to rally his troops at Glorieta Pass, a Union private shot Shropshire in the forehead, killing him.

In 1987, a man building a house near the former Pigeon's Ranch discovered a mass grave of 31 Confederate soldiers. Archaeologists were able to positively identify three of the soldiers; one of them was Shropshire.

According to a 1988 Albuquerque Journal article in the state archives, New Mexico politicians and historians pushed to have the soldiers buried at the battlefield, while Texans wanted them returned home. While Shropshire would be reinterred next to his parents in his native Kentucky, the rest were reburied at Santa Fe National Cemetery. The two others who had been identified got their own graves; the other 28 were reburied in a mass grave at the national cemetery in 1993.

The monument marking the mass grave notes that 34 men from the 4th, 5th and 7th regiments of the Texas Mounted Volunteers died at Glorieta Pass but only 31 have been located, and pays respects to the "three others whose burial site remains known only to God." Perhaps they still lie somewhere near the field where they died, waiting to be found.