A curious and little-known incident of the Civil War in New Mexico involved a large painting — seven feet tall — of the French general Napoleon Bonaparte.

Confederate Major T.T. Teel came into possession of the portrait as the rebel army was retreating down the Rio Grande, following its setback at Glorieta Pass on March 27, 1862.

Teel, age 30, was a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas, when the war broke out. Enlisting in the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles, he got caught up in the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, launched from El Paso.

At the end of the failed campaign, the Texan rebels began their withdrawal southward from Albuquerque. Before leaving there, Capt. Tom Ochiltree approached Teel, asking for a loan of $110 and offering as security a rolled up canvas bearing the image in oil of Napoleon.

Major Teel was surprised for he had earlier seen the framed canvas on the living room wall of a prominent Albuquerque family. He estimated its worth around $1,000.

Whether the piece of art had been obtained legally or illegally was not disclosed. In wartime, questions like that are not easily answered.

In any case, Teel made the loan, anticipating perhaps that the picture would never be reclaimed. He rolled it up and stowed it away in the carriage he was using travel.

The major had been ill earlier and he'd also suffered a wound at the battle of Valverde, which might explain his reliance on a private carriage.

When the evacuating army reached a point on the Rio Grande below Belen, its commander, Gen. Henry H. Sibley, decided to swing west around two mountain ranges and then return to the river, thus bypassing Union-held Fort Craig.

The route over broken and rocky country, as it turned out, added another hardship to those that the Confederates had already experienced.

In their wake, they left a trail of disabled wagons, dead livestock, and military equipment. While passing through the rugged San Mateo Mountains, Major Teel was obliged to abandon the carriage and personal possessions, including his Bonaparte art treasure.

He and the rest of the army eventually made it out of New Mexico and back to San Antonio. Then one day in 1887, when the Civil War was fast becoming ancient history, Teel happened to be in El Paso.

On some chance errand, he visited the office of a local newspaper, The Bullion. There, hanging on display, was the Napoleon he had left in New Mexico's San Mateo Mountains 25 years before.

Understandably, his jaw dropped, for he had never expected to see thing again.

The paper's editor, Carl Longuemare, explained how he had acquired it. Years before, while passing through Socorro, he saw the painting hanging on the adobe wall of the town's historic San Miguel Church.

Long ago a sheepherder was said to have found it in the San Mateos and he gave it to the priest. Somehow the man depicted on canvas came to be identified as San Miguel, patron of the parish. After the object had been blessed with holy water, it was installed in the church nave for public viewing.

Longuemare was able to convince the people that the figure was Emperor Napoleon of France and not their beloved San Miguel. As a result, the priest took down the portrait and gave it to him. And that is how it ended up in The Bullion office, or so the editor claimed.

Teel, in recounting the tale just a year before his death in 1899, said that the same night, after he had visited the newspaper, the painting had mysteriously disappeared and, as far as he knew, it had not been seen since.

We are left to wonder, of course, whether the editor, upon learning that Teel might legitimately have a claim on "The Napoleon," had not himself squirreled it away!

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