During the 1846-47 U.S. conquest of New Mexico, an uprising at Taos against American occupation proved to be one of the bloodiest and least understood episodes of the entire military campaign.

Gen. Stephen W. Kearny and his Army of the West had seized Santa Fe on Aug. 18, 1846 and run up the stars and stripes over the old adobe palace on the Plaza. The general then appointed a set of civil officers to govern the territory.

They included well-known merchant Charles Bent as governor, Donaciano Vigil of a prominent local family as secretary, and large land owner of French origin, Charles Beaubien, as a justice on the Superior Court.

Kearny marched west, accompanied by part of his army, and left Col. Sterling Price, arriving with a regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers, to garrison New Mexico. Unrest simmered in various quarters, especially at Taos where local folk nursed sundry grievances, real and imagined, toward the invaders.

Bent, whose house and family were at Taos, had moved into the Governors Palace to assume his duties. On Jan. 14 with a small party, he started home, intending to make a brief visit.

With him were Cornelio Vigil, a cousin of Donaciano and an in-law of Kit Carson. Also, the new sheriff for Taos, Stephen Lee; young circuit attorney James Leal; and two boys, Pablo Jaramillo, brother of Mrs. Kit Carson, and Narciso Beaubien, the son of Judge Beaubien.

All arrived at Taos late on a cold Jan. 18. Early the next morning, a rampaging mob composed of Taos Indians and Taos town residents went on a killing spree, slaying in a horrible manner Gov. Bent and all his traveling companions.

On receiving word of the tragedy, Col. Price and his troops started for Taos, vanquishing on the way opposing forces at Santa Cruz and Embudo. On Feb. 3 they attacked the Taos pueblo, where Hispano and Indian rebels joined to make their stand.

The battle continued on the following day, the American artillery blasting away at the thick-walled adobe church where most of the defenders were concentrated. On Feb. 5 Taos pueblo fell to the attackers. It had lost 154 men, a devastating blow for such a small place.

More deaths were to come. The revolt's ringleaders and their chief accomplices were placed on trial and promptly hanged after conviction by an American-style 12-man jury. One of the judges who presided over the proceedings was Justice Charles Beaubien, whose son Narciso had been killed in the uprising. No time was allowed for appeals.

A 17-year-old Ohio youth, Lewis H. Garrard, the only eyewitness to write up the trials, was horrified by the lack of proper legal procedures.

"A strange mixture of violence and justice," he described them.

Others besides Garrard noticed the absence of formalities in dealing with the captive rebels. Famed mountain man James P. Beckwourth, attached to Price's command, told why in his latter-day memoirs.

Upon arriving in Taos, "we found," he said, "bodies of our fellow countrymen lying about the streets mutilated and hogs making a repast upon the remains. One poor victim (circuit attorney James Leal) had been scalped alive and his eyes punched out. He had begged some one to shoot him and end his misery."

Beckwourth concluded: "Such scenes of barbarity filled our soldiers with abhorrence. They became tiger-like in their craving for revenge."

An example of "revenge" was provided years later to a journalist by Charles Bent's stepdaughter, Rumalda Luna, who had witnessed him being shot full of arrows and scalped while still alive.

"I well-remember," she related, "how severely the soldiers punished the offenders. They would harness six Indians to an army ambulance and then put them on a run from the pueblo into Taos. They reached us, ambulance after ambulance, with the driver cracking his whip and blood streaming from their backs. The unfortunate captives ended their miserable existence at the end of a rope."

The words of Beckwourth and Luna should remind us of the harsh realities of life in 19th-century New Mexico.

The Taos Revolt and the death of Gov. Charles Bent brought the first American civil government to an end. For the next four years, U.S. Army commanders would rule the conquered province with an iron hand.

Postscript: In 1880, visitor Capt. John G. Bourke reported that Taos Indian children had found an American cannonball buried in the ruins of the 1847 church. They sold it to tourists!

A few years ago, a cache of arms and ammunition was discovered hidden in an old adobe wall of Taos pueblo. It had been sealed there at the time of the revolt and forgotten.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.