The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 147
574 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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1997 General Taylor's "Astonishing" Map of Northeastern Mexico
a West Point engineer made him a bit less appreciative of its merits than
men obliged to operate behind enemy lines such as Walker, Hays,
McCulloch, and Reid. All General Taylor says on the subject is that "The
4th Infantry took possession of a camp where the headquarters of the
Mexican general-in-chief were established. All his official correspon-
dence was captured at this place [Resaca de la Palma]."g Bvt. Maj. Philip
Barbour was aware of the usefulness of the documents taken in this
action: "We have captured all the supplies of the Mexican army ... and
what is more valuable than all the rest, Arista's portfolio, containing the
most important information."9
The official "Inventory of Captured Property," compiled by officers of
the Fourth Infantry, gives a bit more detail on what was in Arista's mili-
tary chest: "one chest, evidently belonging to a staff officer, containing
'Order Book of Division of the North,' diary of events, maps, etc."10 Also
in Thomas B. Thorpe's 1846 account (Our Army on the Rio Grande) we
find another reference to Arista's opulent pavilion and its contents:
"The furniture of the marquee was rich; the costly figured chests of the
camp were the ornamental furniture; upon their tops reposed, in osten-
tation, the heavy silver service of the table, or the elegantly finished
'maps of the campaign'.""
That some version of the Arista map was among these documents, and
that copies of it were made for planning future operations, is known by
a letter that General Taylor sent to Adjutant General Jones on
September 3, 1846. With it he forwarded a map "of the valley of the San
Juan, exhibiting the routes to Monterey and Saltillo." The usual route
from Camargo to Monterrey, said Taylor, went by the "Paso de las
Calabazas" on the Rio de San Juan, thence through the towns of
Manteca and "Cadereita." But Taylor favored the route via Mier and
"Seralvo." From that point the road either by way of Cadereyta or Marin
would be determined by his Texan spy companies." These place-names
are all on Arista's map, and it is hard to imagine that Taylor's map of the
e H. Exec. Doe. 207, 2gth Cong., Ist Sess., 1846 (ser. 485), 7.
9 Rhoda Van Bibber Tanner Doubleday (ed.), Journals of the Late Brevet Major Philip Norbourne
Barbour, Captain in the 3rd Regiment, United States Infantry . . .(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1936), 61.
10 T. B. Thorpe, Our Army on the Rio Grande ... (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1846),
16o-161, also in H. Exec. Doe. 2o9, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 1846 (ser. 486), 11-13.
" Ibid., 240o. These "maps of the campaign" are no longer with the file of papers captured
with Arista's baggage in Record Group 94, items 135 and 136, at the National Archives.
2 Taylor to Adjutant General, Sept. 3, 1846, RG 94, AGO Letters Received, T-376 (National
Archives; cited hereafter as NA); H. Exec. Doe. 6o, 30oth Cong., 1st Sess., 1847 (ser. 520), 418.
See also pp. 500-505 for Captain Bliss's use of place-names on the line of march such as
Puntiagudo, which appears on Arista's map. These names were usually mangled by other
observers, but Bliss (Taylor's chief of staff) gives them according to the captured map.147
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998, periodical, 1998; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117155/m1/199/: accessed May 14, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.