ides there were attacks and insults by
the white aggressors, and a state of siege lasted for two months.
Practically from that date to 1840, the pueblo towns were a unit against
the white man.

[Illustration: A fashionable metal-worker of Taos, New Mexico, who has
not adhered to the native costume]

The last great uprising was just after the American Occupation. Bent,
the great trader of Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, was governor. Kit
Carson, who had run away from the saddler's trade at sixteen and for
whom a reward of one cent was offered, had joined the Santa Fe caravans
and was now living at Taos, an influential man among the Indians.
According to Col. Twitchell, whose work is the most complete on New
Mexico and who received the account direct from the governor's daughter,
Governor Bent knew that danger was brewing. The Pueblos had witnessed
Spanish power overthrown; then, the expulsion of Mexican rule. Why
should they, themselves, not expel American domination?

It was January 18, 1847. Governor Bent had come up from Santa Fe to
visit Taos. He was warned to go back, or to get a military escort; but a
trader all his life among the Indians, he flouted danger. Traders' rum
had inflamed the Indians. They had crowded in from their pueblo town to
the plaza of Taos. Insurrectionary Mexicans, who had cause enough to
complain of the American policy regarding Spanish land titles, had
harangued the Indians into a flare of resentful passion. Governor Bent
and his family were in bed in the house you can see over to the left of
the Plaza. In the kraal were plenty of horses for escape, but the
family were awakened at daybreak by a rabble crowding into the central
courtyard. Kit Carson's wife, Mrs. Bent, Mrs. Boggs and her children
hurried into the shelter of an inner room. Young Alfredo Bent, only ten
years old, pulled his gun from the rack with the words--"Papa, let us
fight;" but Bent had gone to the door to parley with the leaders.

Taking advantage of the check, the women and an Indian slave dug a hole
with a poker and spoon under the adobe wall of the room into the next
house. Through this the family crawled away from the besieged room to
the next house, Mrs. Bent last, calling for her husband to come; but it
was too late. Governor Bent was shot in the face as he expostulated;
clubbed down and literally scalped alive. He dragged himself across the
floor, to follow his wife; but Indians came up through the hole and down
ove