NEW MEXICO TRADER, TRAPPER, AND MOUNTAIN MAN ALEXANDER K. BRANCH TAOS TRADER AND MOUNTAIN MAN
MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT BOOK TITLED “MEMORANDUM A NO. 3,” KEPT BY NEW MEXICO TRADER, TRAPPER, AND MOUNTAIN MAN ALEXANDER K. BRANCH TAOS TRADER AND MOUNTAIN MAN
(Mountain Men) Among the most legendary figures in the history of the American West were the men who ranged the Rocky Mountains, from the Yellowstone to Santa Fe, during the early years of the fur trade. These so-called mountain men were legendary both because of their exploits and because of how few primary sources remain--or were ever created--to provide insights into the quotidian business of their everyday lives. Many were illiterate, or like Kit Carson learned only to sign their own names, while most of those who were able to read and write left little behind. Pen, paper, and ink, after all, were extravagances among such men. Thus the historical significance of this small manuscript, a handmade memorandum booklet or pocket ledger kept by mountain man, trader, and trapper Alexander K. Branch, recording business transactions in the neighborhood of Taos, New Mexico, from late July to early August 1828. In it, he tracks the sale of merchandise sold or traded in exchange for beaver pelts, items gifted to Native Americans, and livestock boarded or stolen. It contains, in sum, a microcosm of Branch’s work as he prepared to shift his livelihood from trapper to merchant. We have located practically no comparable manuscript material written by an American trapper and trader in New Mexico at such an early date.
In his petition for Mexican citizenship dated December 10, 1829, after which time he would officially be known in New Mexico as José de Jesús Branche, Alexander K. Branch reported that he was born in Virginia in 1798 and came to New Mexico in 1825, settling in Taos. The beginning of a regular trade between Santa Fe a nd the Missouri River region had only begun about two years earlier, and a record compiled in Santa Fe in 1825 names just 52 Americans engaged in the trade there (Loyola 1939:43-45). Branch was likely the “Mr. Branch” who had participated in an 1824 expedition of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company that rediscovered South Pass, later to become the main route over the Continental Divide for immigrants along the Oregon, Mormon, and California trails. Branch was remembered for sighting down and shooting a mountain sheep from a vertical cliff above, providing a night of feasting for the party (Lecompte 1966:61).
About a year after arriving in Taos, where he claimed to be working as a merchant, Branch joined a trapping expedition led by William Sherley Williams and Ceran St. Vrain. This party was one of four American groups that would trap the Gila and Colorado rivers and their tributaries in the 1826-1827 season, the first major incursion by American trappers into what is now southern Arizona. All such work by American mountain men was in direct violation of Mexican law, which prohibited non-citizens from procuring beaver. At some point during the season, Branch fell in with another party led by Ewing Young and William Wolfskill, and with Young was likely among the first group of Americans to explore the mouth of the Gila River (Weber 1971:122-125). Also among the party were such notables of the Rocky Mountain fur trade as Milton Sublette, Miguel Robidoux, Peg-leg Smith, and James O. Pattie. In the summer of 1827, Branch joined a trapping expedition organized by Sylvestre Pratt of St. Louis which went north from Taos to Park Kyack in the north-central Colorado Rockies. Pratt died in October, and the men elected St. Vrain, who was serving as clerk, to take the leader’s role. They wintered on Wyoming’s Green River and arrived back at Taos in May 1828 with nearly a thousand beaver skins.
Branch seems to have returned to Taos a changed man, or perhaps his proceeds from the expedition enabled him to make changes he was already contemplating. On June 8 he was baptized at Taos, taking the name José de Jesús Branche. Soon after he must have begun to engage actively in trading as a merchant. In her biography of Branch in Volume 4 of Hafen’s Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (Branch is one of 292 men profiled in the 10-volume series), Janet Lecompte expresses doubt that Branch was truly working as a merchant before 1831, as he would assert in his petition for Mexican citizenship in 1829. She notes that on August 31, 1831, he was granted a guia to transport goods to Chihuahua and Sonora for Samuel Parkman: “From this time on, there are no more references to Branch as a beaver trapper, and we may assume that he finally became the merchant he claimed to have been some years before” (1966:65). Yet the hand-stitched memorandum booklet that we offer here clearly indicates that Branch was plying the trading circuit around Taos as early as July 1828, and given that he labeled it “Memorandum A No. 3,” we can assume that there were two earlier records now lost. If these covered the same amount of time as No. 3, then we can place the beginning of Branch’s work as a merchant to sometime in June, or just about the time he returned from Colorado and was baptized.
Memorandum A No. 3 consists of six leaves folded once and hand-stitched to make a 24 pp. booklet that measures 4 by 6 inches. Twelve of the pages have manuscript content in Branch’s hand, while several pages near the end are unused (two leaves in this section are excised). Most of the ledger records Branch’s mercantile transactions in Taos and neighboring communities such as Abiquiu, here spelled “Abercue” (65 miles southwest); El Rito, here spelled “The Rit” (55 miles west); and Rio Del Norte (15 miles north). Among the goods that Branch sold or traded at Abiquiu were several different kinds of cloth (11 yds of 3/4 bleached, 5 yds of blue calico, 4 1/4 yds of red calico). He seems to have exchanged these textiles, with a value of $11, along with a two-year old burro, for two beaver skins. Other sales recorded on this page, which may also have occurred at Abiquiu, include a tea chest ($2), four butcher knives ($2), and a variety of fabrics. Among other goods itemized in the ledger we find silk thread, velvet, snuff and snuff boxes, a trunk, a shaving glass, silk and muslin robes, and paper. Branch also sold and boarded livestock. He notes that he gave Indians three glasses, three knives and a fork, but writes as well that Indians took two of his mules; he briefly describes the animals, one of which was branded 7S.
One of the most interesting notes, perhaps made at El Rito, links several textiles--including four yards of red velvet--with the word “colchar.” This is almost certainly a very early reference to the New Mexican folk tradition of colcha (from the Spanish word acolchar, to quilt), a kind of craft embroidery that originated in colonial New Mexico and southern Colorado. Today there is a resurgence of interest among New Mexican Hispanos in the maintenance and creative elaboration of this art form, which has come to symbolize heritage and collective identity. Finally, one page of the ledger contains quite a substantial list of items sold to “the priest” on August 6, 1828 at either Taos or Abiquiu. With a total value of $33 (and given “on credit”), the list includes: “6 yds black silk; 1 tea chest; 2 shaving glasses; 2 trunk locks; 2 small scissors; 2 pen knives; 1 razor; 1 ream paper; and 1 1/2 yd black cloth.” Whether the transaction was at Taos or Abiquiu, the priest with whom Branch extended such a generous line of credit was Padre Don Antonio José Martínez--the only ordained priest at either location in 1828. Born in Abiquiu in 1793 but raised in Taos, Martínez studied for several years at the Tridentine Seminary in Durango before being ordained a priest in 1823. He returned to pastor the Abiquiu parish in 1826 but also became parish priest at Taos later that same year. Padre Martínez, as he came to be known, would serve these communities until his death in 1867, in the process becoming one of the most influential men in all of 19th-century New Mexico, through its Spanish, Mexican, and American periods.
Branch himself would marry Maria Paula de Luna, daughter of an old and respected Taos family, on January 14, 1829. That December he submitted his naturalization papers for Mexican citizenship (the originals are held by the Huntington Library), which were approved before the end of the year. In September 1830 he again joined William Wolfskin on an expedition far to the west of New Mexico, this time to trap in the San Joaquin Valley; it was among the first American sallies into California. Wolfskin and several of the party chose to stay, but Branch returned to Taos. Soon he partnered with Stephen Lee of St. Louis, opening a store that was known for having one of the only plank floors in New Mexico, and over the next decade he became one of the most successful traders and merchants along the Santa Fe Trail. He died at Taos in 1841. This manuscript is a remarkably early record of American commerce in the Old Southwest, and we locate nothing quite comparable in any institutional collections or in the history of the trade.
Relevant sources:
Lecompte, Janet. 1966 Alexander K. Branch. In Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume 4, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, pp. 61-68. Arthur H. Clark Co., Glendale, CA.
Loyola, Mary. 1939 The American Occupation of New Mexico, 1821-1852. New Mexico Historical Review 14(1):34-75.
Weber, David J. 1971 The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Beck, Robin. Primary Sources
[New Mexico--Santa Fe Trail]. Alexander K. Branch. [MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT BOOKLET TITLED “MEMORANDUM A NO. 3,” KEPT BY NEW MEXICO TRADER, TRAPPER, AND MOUNTAIN MAN ALEXANDER K. BRANCH]. [Taos and neighboring communities in New Mexico, July-August, 1828]. 22 pp. (2 leaves excised), 6 x 4 in. (15 x 10 cm). Six leaves folded once and hand-stitched, light soiling and edgewear. Very good.
