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Chapter 5 New Mexico, 1852–1857 Ewell once told a fellow officer that he had spent twenty years serving in the West, where he had learned everything there was to know about commanding a company of dragoons but had forgotten everything else. He spent six of those years in New Mexico, a territory acquired by the United States as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War. Throughout that time, he was in command of Company G, 1st Dragoons. Ewell took charge of the company in October 1850. It was then stationed at Rayado , a two-company post located on the Canadian (or Red) River, roughly eighty miles northeast of Santa Fe. Nearby, the eastern branch of the Santa Fe Trail met the road to Bent’s Fort. The dragoons’ mission was to protect the territory’s settlers against hostile Indians, who swept down from the surrounding mountains to plunder unwary travelers and isolated ranches. Company G remained at Rayado but a short time. In August 1851 the dragoons made a punitive expedition into Navajo territory and established a post there, which they called Fort Defiance. Forage at Fort Defiance was not sufficient for a large mounted force, however, and in December Company G moved to Los Lunas, a town on the Rio Grande, twenty-five miles south of Albuquerque. It remained there for five years, giving chase to marauding bands of Navajos, Utes, and Apaches. Ewell was frequently the only officer on duty at the post. As such, he had to drill the troops and handle the paperwork involved in feeding, clothing, paying, and supplying them. He maintained discipline and administered justice. At times he sat on court-martial boards. When not engaged in military activities, Ewell grew vegetables in the post garden, harvested grapes at the post vineyard, and supervised the care of the post’s chickens and cows. There were days when he was as much a farmer as he was a soldier. As the post’s commanding officer, Ewell had social obligations to fulfill. He hosted travelers at his quarters and met frequently with local inhabitants. Occasionally he commented on women he had known in Virginia, but if he formed a romantic attachment to any of them, there is no record of the fact. New Mexico, 1852–1857 108 Money was never far from the young captain’s mind. Almost every letter written by Ewell during this period contains references to the stock market, the purchase or sale of land, speculations in livestock, or other financial schemes. He could not stand to see his money lie dormant. In a letter to his brother Ben, he summed up his investment philosophy: “Better a bad speculation than none at all.” Ewell sometimes pooled resources with his siblings and frequently loaned or borrowed money from them. Cousins doubled as financial agents. Through it all he prospered, steadily building a solid financial base on which he might one day retire. 45. To Benjamin Ewell Los Lunas N.M.1 July 21 1852 Dear Ben; Your last letter recd was May 11. You propose therein to purchase a farm should a chance offer itself. I would like to own someplace where one could fall back in case of leaving the Army & only fear there is not capital enough to make return from a farm of much size. I should like very much to buy Brook Grove2 if it should come into the market at a reasonable rate. There is every reason too that it should be worth $100. per acre. A plank road to the D.C. would make it worth that at once. Would it not be well to keep your eye on it for fear of its going at a sacrifice? It would be the devil to try, without a large capital to make 10 or 1200 acres of poor land productive. I am delightfully fixed just now, cows chickens &c & make my own butter & all that sort of thing as comfortably as any farmer. My garden though late is coming on finely with a fine prospect of onions & cabbages.3 I scarcely spend 30 dollars a month on my self & were I on a farm would not lay out more than half as much. I am very anxious to hear what investment Reynolds has made of my money. I have about $2000. in his hands that by the latest accounts was not yet employed. It will be too bad if he leaves it any time unemployed as I...

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