Category: Middle Grade Fiction

The Lindenmeier Site

1/26/2025

The Soapstone Prairie Natural Area is in central Colorado, just south of the Wyoming border. It has within it an archeological site that few know about, even though it is very important to our understanding of man in the Americas. The Lindenmeier Folsom Site is one of the hidden gems of American Prehistory.

point from the Lindenmeier Site, 1934

Folsom Man is the name given to a group of Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters who roamed throughout Central North America between approximately 9,000 BC and 4,000 BC. They are identified by their stone points, which have a distinct concavity on one side.

Folsom Man is named after the small town of Folsom, New Mexico, In 1908, a devastating flood unearthed bison bones that were exceedingly large. It wasn’t until 1925, when scientists finally investigated the site, that stone points were found with the bones. The bones were determined to be those of bison antiquus, an ancestor of the modern bison that had died out approximately 10,000 years ago.

Bison Antiquus. They were 25-30% larger than present day bison.

Prior to the investigation of the Folsom Site, scientists believed that man had only been in North America for approximately 5,000 years.

The Folsom Site is just a kill site. It contains bones and stone points, but there is no evidence of habitation, no campfires, no other tools or implements. Although it proved that man was in the Americas much earlier than previously supposed, it shed little light on who these people were.

In 1924, three amateur archaeologists, A. Lynn Coffin, his father, Judge Claude C. Coffin, and their friend, C. K. Collins were wandering through a ranch owned by William Lindenmeier, Jr.. They were walking through an arroyo when they discovered some fluted points that were very different from the more abundant and smaller arrow points they usually found. The points were some fifteen feet below the surface. That depth suggested that they were very old. They called in the Judge’s brother, Major Roy G. Coffin, who persuaded Dr. Frank Roberts of the Smithsonian Institution to visit in 1934. The Smithsonian Institution, supported by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, excavated the site between 1935 and 1940. The Coffin brothers also did some excavating of their own.

The well-preserved site is buried under twelve to fifteen feet of sediment and covered by layers of silts and clays slowly deposited by floods and windstorms over thousands of years. It contains clusters of stone and bone debris, strewn over at least a half-mile. These clusters represent work areas, where Folsom peoples manufactured projectile points, repaired or discarded broken tools, cooked their food, cleaned and transformed animal hides into leather, and manufactured clothing.

Some archaeologists suggest that the clusters represent a single large camp simultaneously occupied by several large Folsom groups, each with twenty to forty members. These groups may have come together for a rendezvous or trade fair. Other archaeologists believe the clusters were laid down by a single group that returned year after year, generation after generation. Either way, the Lindemeier Site is the largest Folsom site yet found. It is still being excavated, and its secrets revealed.

While the original Folsom site provided no tools except points, the Lindenmeier site shows that the Paleo-indians referred to as Folsom People created many types and shapes of tools. In addition to spearheads, archaeologists found wedge shaped scrapers and other tools made for chopping, slicing and skinning the hides of the bison. They also found scored pieces of hematite which were used to extract red ochre, believed to be used to paint for their faces or for ceremonial purposes. Highly polished 1-2”discs inscribed with designs were found at the site and are the oldest artwork found in Colorado.

The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark. Artifacts from the site are held by the Smithsonian Institution, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, and in private collections.

There is not much to see at the Lindenmeier Site. A short paved trail leads to a covered overlook where visitors look out over the arroyo in which the excavations have occurred, but they are either hidden from view or so carefully reburied that they are not visible. The weather was cooler and wetter during the period when the Folsom men inhabited it, but it is still easy to look over the vastness of the rolling hills and envision what life might have been like so many millennia ago.

Soapstone Prairie has multiple trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding and is open for visitation from March 1 until November 30 each year. It is a habitat for bison, black-footed ferrets, pronghorn antelopes, and other native species.

https://fortcollinsimages.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/lindenmeier-a-folsom-man-site/
https://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/finder/soapstone

In the Shadow of Sunrise is an historical novel set during the Folsom Period. The characters in the novel shelter every winter in the San Luis Valley, but during the summers they go on long migrations, following the herds and collecting suitable rocks for making spear points and other tools. While these characters do not visit the Linenmeier Site in my story, they would have done so in other years, and some of the people who lived at this site would have met my characters at other sites that they visited. The information available about this site did a lot to inform how I structured my story.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.
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Who were the Folsom People?

12/5/2024

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Wild Horse Arroyo, location of the Folsom Site

Between about 10800 BCE and 10200 BCE, a group of people lived throughout much of central North America. These Paleo-Indians left enough artifacts that archaeologists were able to recognize that their culture was distinct from that which came before them, and that which came after. The discovery of Folsom artifacts, particularly those first found at Wild Horse Arroyo, are significant enough to site have been called the "discovery that changed American archaeology."

It took early scientists quite a while to figure out what they were finding.

Biblical tradition asserted that the world was created 6,000 years ago. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, advances in geology and paleontology began to challenge that date. European discoveries of human bones and artifacts in association with extinct Pleistocene mammals proved that human beings existed side by side with Ice Age mammals. However, most scientific experts thought that humans had been in North America for only a few thousand years. Ales Hrdlicka and William Henry Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution suggested that no one was in the Americas 3,000 years ago. Any scientist who advocated a longer antiquity for inhabitants of the Americas risked being blackballed from academia.

Carl Schwachheim, left, and Barnum Brown are examining the first Folsom point found in situ, circa 1927. Jesse D. Figgins snapped the photo. (Courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science)

In 1922, two amateur naturalists, a Raton blacksmith named Carl Schwachheim, and a banker named Fred Howarth visited a section of Wild Horse Arroyo where a cowboy named George McJunkin had discovered extremely large bison bones after a monsoon in August of 1908. McJunkin had recognized that these bones were not from modern bison, and had tried to interest paleontologists in the site, but hadn’t been able to convince anyone to visit the site before he died in 1922.

Schwachheim and Howarth collected bones and took them to Jesse Figgins, director of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and to paleontologist Harold Cook. Figgins and Cook were already proponents of human antiquity in the New World. Cook had found a human tooth among the bones of extinct mammals at Snake Creek in Nebraska in 1922. Two years later, excavators at Lone Wolf Creek in Texas reported to Figgins that they had found three projectile points associated with a bison skeleton. However, since Schwachheim and Howarth had presented nothing but bison bones to Figgins and Cook, the two scientists didn’t believe there was anything significant about the site in Wild Horse Arroyo.

In 1926, v Schwachheim, and Howarth took Figgins and Cook to the Folsom site. They began excavations, with the intention of collecting full skeletons of bison antiquus to take back to the museum. But on August 29, 1927, they found man-made stone projectile points in the same layers, and therefore of the same age as, the bison bones. Other archaeologists were invited to see the findings in situ and they agreed that the bison bones and the spear point were contemporaneous.

However, no one could pinpoint when bison antiquus had lived. At a December 1927 meeting of the American Anthropological Association, archaeologists speculated that the evidence from the Folsom site suggested that man had arrived in the New World 15 to 20 thousand years ago. Speculation about the exact antiquity of Folsom continued until radiocarbon dating came into use in the 1950s and the bison bones at the site could be dated more precisely. Even without an exact date, the Folsom point demonstrated conclusively that human beings were in North America during the last ice age—thousands of years earlier than Hrdliča's 3,000-year limit. Hrdlička, angry at having his theory criticized, managed to make Figgins and Cook were not invited to any of the seven academic symposia devoted to American antiquity which took place from 1927 to 1937.

The points Figgins and Cook discovered at the Folsom Site in Wildhorse Arroyo were distinctive. Figgins called the culture which created these points the Folsom Culture, named after the small town of Folsom, New Mexico which was nearby. Soon after the Folsom Culture was discovered, an earlier group, the Clovis Culture, was found. Folsom projectiles have a concavity running down their center that Clovis projectiles did not have. Statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates suggest that the earliest Folsom dates overlap with the latest Clovis dates, so the two technologies overlapped for multiple generations. This points to Folsom Culture being an outgrowth of Clovis Culture. It might be that the extinction of most species of megafauna marks the boundary between Clovis and Folsom Cultures. Clovis artifacts are associated with mammoth bones, while Folsom people hunted Bison antiquus, which became extinct about the same time that Folsom evolved into cultures relying on greater dependence on smaller animals and plant foods. It is unknown whether the extinctions of megafauna were caused by climate change or by over-hunting, or both.

Although the Folsom culture is associated with the kill site in Northern New Mexico, it flourished over a large area on the Great Plains, in what is now both the United States and Canada, eastward as far as what is now Illinois and westward into the Rocky Mountains. There is even one Folsom site in Mexico, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas.

In the Shadow of Sunrise, Jennifer Bohnhoff's middle grade novel about the Folsom People in what is now New Mexico, Texas and Colorado will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in April 2. It can be preordered in ebook and paperback here.

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Disaster Leads to Stunning Archaeological Discovery

11/28/2024

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On August 28, 1908, disaster struck Folsom, a ranching and farming town on the plains in north- eastern New Mexico. It was late summer, which is often monsoon season. The hay had been cut and harvested. Leftover stalks littered the fields.

Monsoons can bring stunning amounts of water to the parched plains in short amounts of time. A cloudburst on August 28 dumped 14”, an unusually large amount of rain, even for monsoon season. The waters collected the hay stalks and other debris and swept it down the arroyos and rivers that are often dry. When the water reached the small railroad bridges that crossed those arroyos and dry rivers, the debris got caught and created impromptu dams. Under pressure from the swelling river, the dams gave way, resulting in a huge surge of water.

Residents up river from Folsom realized that the town was in danger. They called Sarah J. "Sally" Rooke, the Folsom telephone operator to warn of the coming danger. In 1908, telephones were not yet automated and connections could only be made by hand, sticking wires into holes for each telephone. Rooke stayed at her station and continued to call as many residents as she could to alert them to the impending wall of water. When the flood hit the town, Ms. Rooke was washed away. She was one of 18 people who died in the disaster.

On the day after the flood, a cowboy named George McJunkin was riding the range above the ravaged town of Folsom. He was looking for cattle that had gotten bogged down in the mud and fences that had been broken down. Instead, he found something that eventually changed the story of humans in North America.

McJunkin had been born a slave on a ranch in Midway, Texas. He was born in about 1856 and was probably around 9 years old when the Civil War began. Although he never received a formal education, he had a quick and inquisitive mind. Other cowboys taught him to read and write, speak Spanish, and play the fiddle and guitar. An enterprising man, when he was freed at the end of the war, he worked many jobs, including hunting buffalo and working on ranches in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. He also spent some time loading bison bones onto boxcars.

Hundreds of thousands of bison had been shot during the time that the railroads were coming west. Their carcasses were left to rot where they had fallen. When it was discovered that bone meal strengthens concrete, many of those piles of bison bones were loaded into boxcars and shipped east, to New York City, where the first skyscrapers were beginning to rise.

At the time of the Folsom flood, McJunkin was the foreman of the Crowfoot ranch, which lay upstream from Folsom. McJunkin was riding through Wild Horse Arroyo when he saw some bones sticking out of the soil some 11 feet below the surface of the mesa. McJunkin knew that the deeper an object was found, the older they usually were. These bones must be older than the ones typically found on the high-country grasslands. Furthermore, they were much larger than any bison bones he’d seen during his time loading bones onto railroad cars. Recognizing the significance of the find, McJunkin left the site undisturbed. He spent the rest of his life trying to get scientists to visit Wild Horse Arroyo. In 1918 he sent sample bones and a lance point to the Denver Museum of Natural History, who sent paleontologist Harold Cook to look at them the following spring. Cook and McJunkin did some exploratory digging but found nothing that Cook deemed important. When McJunkin died in 1922, the site was still considered just a place where bison antiquus had died.

Scientists already knew that giant bison, far larger than modern ones, once roamed North America. Their bones were first discovered at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky in the 1850s. One of the many megafaunas, or giant animals that existed during the Pleistocene period, or the last Ice Age, Bison Antiquus could reach 7.4 ft tall, be 15 ft long, and weigh up to 3,501 lbs. Their horns were considerably larger than those of living American bison and differed in shape, some looking more like longhorn cattle than the small, curved horns of modern bison. These giant beasts had a large range. Specimens of Bison antiquus have been discovered in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. They went extinct sometime around 9,000 years B.C.E.

Four years after McJunkin’s death, the Colorado Museum of Natural History sent a crew of paleontologists to Wild Horse Arroyo with the intention of excavating a prehistoric Bison skeleton for their museum. Instead, they discovered something that changed archaeologist's understanding of man in the North American hemisphere. The Museum workers found stone projectile points that are now known as “Folsom points.” One, actually embedded in a rib, proved that the points were left by men who were hunting bison these bison. By studying the site and the angles of the cut marks in the bones, scientists have been able to determine that ancient men herded the bison into the arroyo, then attacked them from above. Scientists have found the skeletons of 32 bison. Cut marks in the bones show that some of the choicest meats where butchered off the animals, but much was left in place.

An illustration by Ian Bristow, from Jennifer Bohnhoff's In the Shadow of Sunrise, a middle grade novel about the Folsom people.

Until this discovery, scientists had believed that men had crossed the Bering Strait into North America about 2,000 b.c.e. George McJunkin’s find showed that man was here 7,000 years earlier than previously thought. Since then, Folsom points have been found in many places in North America, and other finds have pushed back man’s arrival on the continent even further.

Sally Rooke and George McJunkin are both buried in the Folsom Cemetery, which occupies a windy and isolated hill outside of town. The town itself has a museum that is housed in an old mercantile. The Historical Society sponsors trips to the Folsom Site twice a year.

A former New Mexico History teacher, Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of books for middle grade through adult readers, many of which are set in her home state of New Mexico. Her latest book, In the Shadow of Sunrise, tells the story of Folsom people in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico and includes the Folsom site. It will be published in April 2025 and is available for preorder.

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The Colorado Contribution to New Mexico During the Civil War

10/11/2024

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Colorado came to be a territory of the United States in a piecemeal fashion. Its present-day eastern and central areas were part of the Louisiana Purchase, made 1803, while the western portion of the state was acquired during the Mexican War (1846-1848) from Mexico, who had gained control over the area in 1833 when it had won its independence from Spain. Even after all the land was firmly under U.S. control, the area was divided. Parts of present-day Colorado were included in New Mexico and Utah Territories, both organized in 1850. Others were of Kansas and Nebraska Territories, organized in 1854.

Until the late 1850s, when gold was discovered in Russellville Gulch in present-day Douglas County and along Cherry Creek near where it joins with the Platte River, Colorado only had about 7,500 settlers. By 1859, an estimated 100,000 men had entered the gold fields. Because many of these men came from Georgia and other southern states, the area had a distinctive lean towards southern sympathies.

Five days before Abraham Lincoln became President on 4 March 1861, his predecessor, James Buchanan signed the law that made Colorado a Territory. Two weeks after his inauguration Lincoln, who wanted a pro-Union governor for Colorado Territory, proposed William Gilpin to the Senate, who appointed him, but then recessed before passing any appropriations for the new Territory. Gilpin was left with just a $1,500 contingency fund with which to run the new territory. He arrived in Denver before June and toured the mining camps, discovering that the boom had passed and a new census showed only about 25,000 people including 4,000 white females and 89 Negroes in the territory, most of them concentrated in the Clear Creek, Boulder, and South Park mining districts and in the small but growing town of Denver.

On April 12, Confederate forces fired on Ft. Sumter. The U.S. government’s focus shifted to calling up troop in the east, and the needs of Colorado was forgotten. Concerned that the Confederacy would try to conquer the territory for its vast mineral deposits as well as its strategic location, Gilpin began organizing the Territorial military that summer. Morton C. Fisher, his newly appointed Purchasing Agent, was immediately sent out to buy and collect all the arms he could, both supply the new troops and to keep those arms out of the hands of Southern sympathizers. Not having the money to organize and equip the men, Gilpin issued $375,000 worth of drafts, known as Gilpin Scrip, directly upon the United States Secretary of the Treasury. These drafts were used as money in the Territory and were passed along to Washington, who honored payment for some of the script at a value considerably below face value. A year later, this illegal action would cost him his position as Territorial Governor, and he was forced to resign the next year.

Gilpin’s intent was to use the money to create the First Regiment of volunteers consisting of ten companies. He appointed John P. Slough to be its Colonel and Samuel F. Tappan, to be Lt. Colonel. Gilpin had planned for John M. Chivington, an elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to be the Chaplain, but when Chivington turned down the appointment and requested a fighting commission, he was made Major. The troops were ordered to Camp Weld, a new installation being built about two miles south of Denver. Gilpin’s Script paid for the building of Camp Weld as well as uniforms, arms, supplies and equipment for the troops.

One of the first men to join Gilpin’s new militia was Samuel H. Cook, who convinced 80 men from the gold fields of the South Clear Creek mining district to join with him on a ride to Kansas, where they would join the Union Army and serve under General James Lane. As they were passing through Denver in the middle of August, Cook met Governor Gilpin, who persuaded him to remain in Colorado and join what was becoming the First Regiment of the Colorado Volunteers. Cook’s men became a mounted troop, designated as Company F.

In December of 1861, news came from New Mexico that Confederate troops under H.H. Sibley had invaded over the Texas border, two companies of Colorado Volunteers set out for New Mexico. These companies were Captain Theodore H. Dodd’s Independent Company, Colorado Volunteers and Captain James H. Ford’s Independent Company, Colorado Volunteers. Dodd’s Company was sent to Fort Craig, where they resisted a charge of lancers in the battle of Valverde on February 21, 1862. Ford’s Company was sent to Taos and then Santa Fe before being ordered back to Ft. Union.

On February 14, 1862 orders arrived that asked that all available forces that Colorado could spare be sent south to aid Colonel Canby, the commander of the Department of War in New Mexico. On February 22, the main body of the First Colorado Regiment, including Captain Cook’s Co. F, set out amid intense snow storms. They arrived at Fort Union on March 10th and were joined the next day by Ford’s Company. Slough would march most of these men south, where they participated in the Battle of Glorieta before joining forces with Canby to shepherd the retreating Confederates back to their own territory, ensuring that both New Mexico and Colorado Territories would remain in Union hands.

Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy, Rebels Along the Rio Grande, is written for middle grade readers who are interested in the Civil War in New Mexico.

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Wagons West Under ONE BIG OPEN SKY

8/22/2024

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Back when I was a kid, if you wanted to read about families going west, you read a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder's The Little House on the Prairie series, published between 1932 and 1943, were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family. By my childhood in the 1960s, the books were considered classics. They have been continuously in print and have been translated into 40 other languages..

If you look up Best Sellers in Children's 1800 American Historical Fiction on Amazon, chances are you will find Wilder's books high in the rankings. Today when I looked, she held the #1, #4, #5 and #6 places among the top ten: not bad for books that are seventy and eighty years old! Wilder was a runner-up for the Newberry Medal, five five times, and when the American Library Association (ALA) created a lifetime achievement award for children's writers and illustrators in 1954, she was not only the first recipient, but the award was named for her.

A screen shot from 8/20/2024

But times change, and with them, tastes and sensibilities in books, and in recent years, the bloom has faded a bit on the Wilder rose. While still popular, critics have pointed out that many of the Little House books include stereotypical and reductive depictions of Native Americans and people of color, and the story they tell is a White story, giving many people the perception that the western expansion was exclusively the story of the dominant culture taking over the land.

Lesa Cline-Ransome's new middle grade novel, One Big Open Sky opens up the story of families moving west, making it more inclusive and offering the familiar tale in a way that has long been ignored.

In lyrical free verse, it tells the story of Black Americans seeking a better life in the west during post civil war reconstruction.

Ten families take the arduous journey from Mississippi to North Platte, Nebraska seeking acceptance and land of their own. They face dangerous weather, river crossings, threatening mobs, deprivation and death, but their faith and their hope in the future keep them going.

Three characters tell the story. Lettie is a perceptive girl who keeps a log of the journey. She loves her father dearly, despite his faults, which endanger the family. Losing his family when he was a child and a slave has damaged his self worth, and he is continuously trying to prove himself. Her mother, Sylvia, struggles with self determination. Years of being a slave or married to a strong-willed man has left her passive, and she must learn to be strong on this journey. The third voice is that of Philomenia, a strong-willed young woman determined to become a teacher and her own woman after years of living with the knowledge that she was a burden to the aunt and uncle who reluctantly took her in when her parents died.

Because two of the three point of view characters are adult, this story is best for older middle grade readers. It presents serious issues, including enslavement, racism, sexism, and death, and would be excellent for classroom discussion. I think this book is excellent for adult readers, too.

I have one ARC of One Big Open Sky that I would like to give away to another reader now that I have finished with it. If you'd like to be considered, leave a comment.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school English and Social Studies teacher who now writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade and adult readers. The Famished Country, book 3 in the Rebels Along the Rio Grande, will be published by Kinkajou Press in October of 2024 and is now available for preorder.

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Annabel Lee Watkins: A Character in The Famished Country

8/9/2024

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The Famished Country, book 3 in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, my trilogy of middle grade historical novels set in New Mexico Territory during the American Civil War, comes out this fall. If you've read Where Duty Calls or The Worst Enemy, books 1 and 2, you will know that, while the main characters are fictitious, many of the background and supporting characters are not. I developed my main characters by blending the experiences of several real people, so that my characters could be all the places I wanted them to be, but I set them into a world that was real and filled with real people. Here is an introduction to one of the principal characters and the real and fictious people in her life:

Annabel Lee Watkins is the beautiful teenaged daughter of a Major in the Union Army. Her mother died giving birth to her, and her father has been dragging her from fort to fort her whole life.

Annabel's father named her after the last poem Edgar Allen Poe wrote. It was about his great love for a dead woman, and has always made Annabel wonder if her father actually sees her, or the shadow of her dead mother.

Annabel despises the rustic forts of the American West and longs to be sent back east to a finishing school where she will learn the manners and make the connections that will allow her to live a much more refined life.

When Colonel Canby, the Commandant of all Union troops in New Mexico Territory learns that a Confederate Force is advancing towards Fort Craig, he sends the fort's women and children north to keep them out of harm's way. Wagons filled with these refugees lumber up the Camino Real, the old Spanish Royal Road that stretched up the Rio Grande. Some of the riders are bound for Fort Union, the great supply depot that guards the final stretches of the Santa Fe Trail, but Annabel's journey ends in Santa Fe.

Annabel is the reason that Raul Atencio becomes trapped in Fort Craig in book 1, Where Duty Calls. The nephew of a prominent Socorro merchant, Raul is delivering corn to the fort when he first lays eyes on the girl that he only knows as 'The Major's Golden Daughter.' Smitten with the haughty beauty, Raul finds excuses to visit the fort. On one of those visits, he finds Annabel gone and the Confederates present. He is forced to stay, and ends up participating in the Battle of Valverde as a runner for Kit Carson, the famous mountain man and scout who is leading a group of New Mexico Volunteers.

In Santa Fe, Annabel finds shelter in the home of Louisa Canby, the wife of Colonel Canby. Annabel expects life with the officer's wife to be a whirl of balls, teas, and social events, but Mrs. Canby is a practical woman and has turned her home into a hospital for wounded Confederates as a way to keep Santa Fe from being looted.

Annabel sees Jemmy Martin, a wounded Confederate, as a way out of her circumstances. But Jemmy, and fate, has different plans for her.

Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
   I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me--
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we--
   Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea--
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired teacher who now writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade and adult readers.

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This Year's WWA Middle Grade Spur Award Winners

6/20/2024

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Western Writers of America is an organization that promotes Western literature, nonfiction, movies and music. Since 1953, it has honored the best in Western literature with the annual Spur Awards. Selected by panels of judges, awards are given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West in a number of different categories. The category of Juvenile Novel is where works for middle grade readers are represented. This year, the category awarded one winner and two finalists, that will be presented during WWA’s convention June 19-22 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

There are many books about settlers on the great plains living a harsh life in a sod dugout while trying to make a new life for themselves. Think Little House on the Prairie, and you've got the idea. A Sky Full of Song is one of these books, but it covers this experience through the lens of Judaism. It is 1905, and eleven-year-old Shoshana accompanies her mother and sisters on a voyage across the Atlantic to join her father and brother in North Dakota. They are escaping the pogroms and persecutions of Ukraine, which at this point in time was part of the Russian Empire. Shoshana finds the northern plains to be beautiful and full of promise, but she comes to realize that the prejudice she had hoped to escape lies within many of the other homesteaders, and she is now culturally isolated. Desperate to fit in, she tries to hide her Jewish identity but a series of dangerous events, some human created and some natural, make her rethink this. Susan Lynn Meyer has painted a beautiful and sometimes harsh story with such hope that it brought me to tears more than once. There's no question in my mind that this novel, which won the Spur Award this year, should win multiple more awards and become a classroom classic.

What a fun romp!

Christmas is coming, and when Buffalo Bill Cody needs help protecting the gifts he's bought for his special Christmas performance for a Tulsa orphanage, he calls on Marshal Tom Mix for help. Despite his best efforts, Mix gets buffaloed and the presents disappear. Can Cody and Mix solve the mystery in time for the Wild West Show to go on? This is a madcap adventure with lots of well delineated characters and the kind of twists and turns that will remind the reader of the fun, old time B grade movies of the 40s and 50s and of dime store western novels. I laughed out loud at the sometimes snarky dialog and the clever turns of phrase. My only concern: for a book targeting younger readers, there's a whole lot of drinking and cussing that might offend some modern sensibilities. This is book #9 in a series that intends to follow the whole career of Tom Mix from young cowboy to Hollywood superstar. It was a finalist for the Spur Award this year.

Two boys. One battle. A life-changing encounter.
Jemmy Martin left his Texas farm and followed Confederate General Sibley's Army into New Mexico to keep his mules safe. Now after the Battle of Valverde he's protecting Willie, an orphaned drummer boy with a broken arm. Cian Lochlann is an Irish orphan who gave up gold prospecting to join the Union Army. All he wants is a full belly and a strong man to lead him into an unknown future. Both are pulled toward a distant mountain pass in New Mexico territory where the decisive battle of Gen. Sibley's New Mexico campaign will be fought. Called the "Gettysburg of the West" the Battle of Glorieta Pass will test both boys as they face their worst enemy. The Worst Enemy. Book 2 in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of historical fiction novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, was a finalist for the Spur Award this year.

Book 1, Where Duty Calls, was a finalist last year. In it, Jemmy first leaves Texas and encounters Raul Atencio. The nephew of a prosperous Socorro, New Mexico merchant, Raul wants to become rich and powerful like his uncle. While at Fort Craig to deliver supplies and help build defenses, the Confederates arrive, and Raul becomes an unwilling participant in the defense of the Fort.

Upon the banks of the Rio Grande the two armies face off in the Battle of Valverde, and both Jemmy and Raul must struggle to keep themselves, and their dreams, alive.

I have a signed copy of each of these four books that I'd love to give away to eager readers. In the comments below, tell me which one you'd like to read and why, and I will choose a winner for each.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a dozen titles for middle grade and adult readers. Book three of Rebels Along the Rio Grande, her series of middle school novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, is titled The Famished Country and will be released by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in October 2024.

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New Mexico, the Famished Country

5/30/2024

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At the beginning of the Civil War, Henry Hopkins Sibley had a grandiose plan. Because he'd been stationed at Fernando de Taos and at Fort Union, he thought he knew the territory of New Mexico. But he didn't know it well enough, and his grandiose plan failed. He later blamed his failure not on his incompetence or lack of knowledge, but on the land itself.

When the Civil War broke out, Sibley was serving under the commander of the department, Colonel William W. Loring, a career Army officer who'd lost an arm during the Mexican American War. Loring, whose home state was Florida, had already sent his own letter of resignation to Washington when Sibley, a Louisiana native, tendered his resignation to him an April 28th.

Impatient to leave because of circulating rumors of high-ranking commissions in the Confederate Army, Sibley asked for “the authority to leave this Dept. immediately.”

When May 31 arrived and he still had not heard anything, he took seven days’ leave of absence, bid his command goodbye, and left Fort Union on the next stage. He accepted an appointment to colonel in the Confederate army. By June, 1861, Sibley had been promoted to brigadier general.

Sibley's promotion was prompted by his visit to Richmond, Virginia, where he persuaded Confederate President Jefferson Davis that he could sweep through New Mexico and seize Colorado and California for the Confederacy.This bold plan would not only increase the size of the Confederacy, but it would achieve the dream of Manifest Destiny, making the rebel nation stretch from sea to shining sea. Gold from Colorado and California's gold fields would enrich the Southern war chest, and the deep water port of Los Angeles would help supply the army with materiel that was not getting through the Atlantic Union blockade. The proposal sounded too good to be true, especially since Sibley claimed he could do it without encumbering the Confederacy for his supplies. Sibley claimed that he could live off the land during his trek through New Mexico. He believed there was enough water, fodder for the animals, and food for his men. He had heard enough New Mexicans complain about the army presence that he believed New Mexicans would willingly support a Confederate army. Sibley was wrong, both about the amount of supplies available and about the people's opinion of the Confederate army that he led.

Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley's supply problems began long before he entered New Mexico Territory. Sibley began assembling his small army in San Antonio late in the summer of 1861. He quickly discovered that outfitting his troops would take far longer than he had anticipated. There were few available weapons, uniforms and military supplies for his 2,500 man force, which he had named The Army of New Mexico, and so when the men finally began the trek to the territories, many did so wearing their civilian clothing and carrying whatever weapons they had brought from home. This included squirrel guns, shotguns, and ancient blunderbusses.

One of the reasons Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley was so wrong about New Mexico's ability to sustain his army was a matter of timing. Since outfitting and training his troops took far longer than expected, Sibley's force didn’t begin the 600-mile march across Texas until November. The landscape of West Texas provided very little grass and other forage for the Army's horses and mules, and there was so little water that Sibley's line of march spaced itself so that each regiment was a full day behind the next, allowing the springs to recover somewhat between regiments. Still, the going was rough and the army began losing hoof stock.

After the war, William Lott Davidson, a 24-year old private in Company A of the 5th Texas, recalled that “‘Chill November’s surly blast’ came down upon us as we camped upon the Nueces. There was no timber to shield us and the wind swept at us, and the boys on guard at night must have had a hard time pacing their beats on the cold frozen ground. We were tasting the bitter delights and mournful realities of a soldier’s life. We are now for the first time beginning to find out that we are engaged in no child’s play.”

map by Matt Bohnhoff

Nothing became easier after The Army of New Mexico entered New Mexico Territory. The weather at New Mexico's higher elevations was brutal. Firsthand accounts recall repeatedly waking up covered in snow. Davidson wrote that the sentries "paced in rags and tatters, their weary best through the long tedious hours of the night, with bare-feet over the frozen and ice-covered ground. ‘Found dead on post’ and ‘froze to death last night’ were sounds we often heard, as a poor, stiff, lifeless body was brought into camp, the dauntless spirit having gone to sleep, to rest with the brave.”

Blizzards, combined with too little food and forage led to illness among both men and beast. Measles and pneumonia ran rampant through the troops.

map by Matt Bohnhoff, from Where Duty Calls

After failing to take Fort Craig in a frontal assault, Sibley decided to execute what he called "a roundance on Yankeedom" and bypass the fort. This flanking march forced the Confederate Army away from the Rio Grande, the only source of water in the area. Both the men and their animals suffered intense thirst. Private Laughter of the 2nd Texas recalled that “The dry beef we had for supper needed moisture. The fact was, if one of us coughed you could see the dust fly.”

The old western saying that “whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting” proved true. The Battle of Valverde occured when the Confederate Army finally returned to the river on the other side of Contadora Mesa and found their access to water blocked by Union troops.

To add to the misery, a major sandstorm, one of many recorded in soldier's diaries and memoirs, hit just before the battle of Valverde. These brutal storms were more proof that Sibley's men were campaigning in the extreme and inhospitable environment of the upper Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.

illustration by Ian Bristow in The Worst Enemy

The Confederate's problems continued as the Army continued to head north. In Albuquerque, where they had hoped to pillage the government storehouses. They found that the Union soldiers had burned the supplies before retreating north. Running low on everything, Sibley was once again forced to split his forces in order to maximize their ability to forage on the sparse winter grass. Private Davidson was part of the army that was sent into the Sandia Mountains, where it was believed that grass was abundant. He found that what grass there was was buried beneath deep snow. "The army was marched out in the mountains east of Albuquerque and camped, as I thought, for the winter as the weather was very cold, sleeting and snowing all the time. At this camp we remained a week and we buried fifty men, and if the weather and exposure had continued much longer, we would have buried the whole brigade.”

The weather was no kinder in the mountains east of Santa Fe, where the Santa Fe Trail snaked through Glorieta Pass on its way to Fort Union, where the Confederate Army hoped to capture a wealth of Union supplies. The Texans won another tactical victory at the Battle of Glorieta, but returned to their supply train to find it burned. That night, Davidson wrote that “a severe snow storm arose and snow fell to the depth of a foot and several of our wounded froze to death.”

illustration by Ian Bristow in The Famished Country

Weakened by two battles, long marches, extended exposure, repeated winter storms, and insufficient supplies, it became clear that the Confederate Army had no choice but to to withdraw back down the Rio Grande. With the exception of a couple of cannonade skirmishes at Albuquerque and Peralta, Colonel Canby, the cautious commander of Union forces in New Mexico was content to not engage in any more battles. Instead, he allowed the weather and terrain to finish off Sibley’s army while he skirted alongside the Rio Grande, herding the pitiful remnants of The Army of New Mexico out of the territory they'd hoped to conquer.

map by Matt Bohnhoff, included in The Famished Country

Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley had launched an invasion force of 2,500 men in a grandiose scheme to take the Colorado and California goldfields, establish a port on the Pacific coast, and open a route for a coast to coast railroad system, all of which would have dramatically expanded the Confederacy’s presence in the Southwest and perhaps changed the trajectory of the war. By the time his disastrous retreat was completed in the summer of 1862, he returned to San Antonio with less than a third of the men he had begun with. Davidson wrote that, “We left San Antonio eight months earlier with near three thousand men ….And now in rags and tatters, foot-sore and weary, we again march, if a reel and stagger can be called a march, along the streets of San Antonio with fourteen hundred men. I can furnish a list of four hundred and thirty-seven dead, but where are the other sixteen hundred?” While not all the the unrecorded can be accounted for, many deserted on the long retreat, heading for California or hiding in the hills.

In a letter to John McRae, the father of Alexander McRae, a native South Carolinian who fought for the Union, General Sibley blamed the countryside itself for his retreat.

“You will naturally speculate upon
the causes of my precipitate evacuation
of the Territory of New Mexico
after it had been virtually conquered.
My dear Sir, we beat the enemy
whenever we encountered him.
The famished country beat us.”

Sibley's New Mexico Campaign was small in comparison to the battles waged in the east. But on a percentage basis, it was one of the most devastating campaigns any Civil War army suffered through without surrendering. That outcome is even more dramatic when we consider the fact that each of the engagements was a tactical victory for the Confederate forces. Ultimately, Sibley was driven back, far short of his ambitious goals, by the sparsely populated territory's brutal terrain and unforgiving distances. It was, indeed, the famished country that beat him.

The Famished Country, a phrase taken from Major Sibley's letter to John McRae, is the title of Book 3 of Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of historical fiction novels for middle grade through adult readers. Published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, The Famished Country will be available in October, 2024.

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Meg Goes to America: An Interview with Katy Hammel

5/9/2024

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One of my favorite books this spring was Meg Goes to America, by Albuquerque author Katy Hammel. The gold winner of the Douglas Preston Award for Published Fiction, this middle grade novel tells the story of Kay, a missionary's daughter who was born and raised in Japan. With the coming of WWII, it is no longer a safe place for Americans, and so her family leaves for the United States -- or that's the plan. When father is detained by Japanese officials, Meg, her younger but very wise young brother, and her mother must make the trip back to Michigan on their own. It's a harrowing trip, but not more harrowing than learning to fit into American society. This novel hit all the sweet spots for me: it is historically accurate and the author really understands how middle grade girls think. Even more enticing, it's based on the real story of the author's mother! I was so interested and charmed that I asked the author if I could interview her. Here are the responses she gave me to my questions.

What inspired you to write this novel? Why do you think it's an important story to share with middle grade readers?

I wasn’t satisfied there were enough books that portray the inner life of a ‘thinky’ child who grapples with big ideas about religion and loneliness and countries and cultures. When I was growing up, I treasured the novels of Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Madeleine L’Engle. They wrote books about America that were specific to time and place through the lens of girl protagonists. I wanted to participate in that kind of story-telling.

Other than family history, how much research did you have to do to write Meg Goes to America? Where did you get the most help?

Katy Hammel

Family history was definitely the beginning. The character of Meg is inspired by my mother and Meg Goes to America recounts their actual journey from Japan to the U.S. My mother and uncle shared memories, photos, and letters with me and my uncle explicitly gave me permission to write the story. But I had a few other aces up my sleeve. First, back in the early 80’s, I interviewed my grandfather about his experiences during the war years. He recorded the story of his incarceration for me on the cassette Dictaphone he used to prepare his sermons. I digitalized that audio recording and I still have it, so I can hear my grandfather’s actual voice with his distinctive timbre and tone whenever I want. Second, my parents became missionaries to Japan post-war and I grew up there, so the things Meg thinks and experiences in the book are actually an amalgam of my mother’s memories and my own. Third, the Presbyterian Historical Society had a portfolio about my grandparents and other records about missionaries held in Japan during World War II. Those repositories were useful.

Meg and The Rocks: 2023 Winner in the WILLA Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction and Nonfiction category

You had to move from middle grade to young adult to write the next book in the series, Meg and the Rocks. Why did you do that?

That was a decision I tussled with for a long time. It was very important to me that my main character of Meg be a moral decision-maker who had agency to take actions that had impact. That’s hard to pull off in a setting driven by world and family calamities outside her control. Everyone who writes historically based fiction for children faces this problem, including you! I’m thinking about books like the “I Survived” series, Titanicat by Marty Crisp, and your “Rebels Along the Rio Grande” books. There is a scene in the second book where Meg confronts an evil doer and of course, the second book gets us closer to the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan. It’s mature content.

What’s next?

Meg is a teenager at the close of Meg and the Rocks and the family is about to leave the Manzanar concentration camp where her father worked as a chaplain with our Japanese-American prisoners. I’m going to have the family move to Albuquerque, which is definitely not what happened IRL. Stay tuned because Meg is growing up!

Click here to see more on Katy Hammel's books.

I've got three copies of Meg Goes to America to send off to three interested readers. Leave a comment and tell my why this book appeals to you, and I'll pick three people at random.

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Gabriel Paul, Civil War Hero

7/20/2023

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Just about anyone can name a general from the Civil War. Gabriel René Paul’s name doesn’t come as readily as others, but he was an important figure and his story is an interesting one.

Gabriel René Paul was born on March 22, 1813, in St. Louis, Missouri, a city that had been founded by his maternal grandfather, the prosperous fur trader René-Auguste Chouteau, Jr. His father, Rene Paul, was a military engineer who had served as an officer in Napoleon’s army and who was wounded at Trafalgar. Paul followed in his father’s military footsteps, entering the United States Military Academy, commonly known as West Point, when he was only 16 years old. He graduated in the middle of the Class of 1834, ranked 18th of the 36 graduates.

After graduating, Paul was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 7th United States Infantry. He served in Florida in the last 1830s and early 1840s, where he participated in the Seminole Wars. Like many of the other men who would become generals during the Civil War, he served under both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War. He saw battle action at Fort Brown, Monterrey, Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and Chapultepac. He was given an honorary promotion, or brevet, to the rank of major when he led a storming party and captured a Mexican army flag during the battle of Chapultepac. After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Paul served in several different frontier army posts and participated in several expeditions up the Rio Grande and into Utah.

When the Civil War began, Paul was a Major in the 8th Infantry Regiment stationed at Fort Union in the New Mexico Territory. In December 1861 he was appointed Colonel of the 4th New Mexico Volunteers and commander of the fort. After the Battle of Valverde, Colonel E.R.S. Canby, the commander of all Union troops in New Mexico, sent a message to Paul telling him to hold the fort at all costs. However, when Colonel John Potts Slough arrived with his Colorado volunteers, he announced that he outranked Paul because he had been commissioned a few days earlier than Paul had. Slough deliberately ignored Canby’s orders and proceeded south with his troops, who engaged in the Battle of Glorieta, leaving Paul to guard the fort.

A portrait taken after Gettysburg. If you look closely, it is clear that his eye socket is empty.

In late May 1862, Paul mustered out of the New Mexico Volunteers, and holding the rank of Major in the Regular Army, was sent east to work on the defenses of Washington. While he was stationed there, his wife went to the White House and pleaded President Lincoln for a promotion for her husband. Lincoln documented the meeting with a note that read “Today Mrs. Major Paul calls and urges appointment of her husband as a Brigadier [General]. She is a saucy woman and will keep tormenting me until I may have to do it.” Less than two weeks later, President Lincoln signed Gabriel Paul’s commission as a Brigadier General of volunteers. He was given the assignment of brigade commander in the First Army Corps, and he led troops at Fredericksburg and at Chancellorsville.

At Gettysburg, he was transferred to a brigade in 2nd Division, where he led the soldiers of the 16th Maine, 13th Massachusetts, 94th and 104th New York, and 107th Pennsylvania Infantries as they threw up makeshift barricades and entrenchments in front of the Lutheran Seminary building during the early parts of the first day of fighting. When some 8,000 Confederates backed with 16 cannons began making significant inroads into the Union First Corps’s exposed right flank along a prominent rise of ground known as Oak Hill Ridge, the Second Corps was called in. When Henry Baxter’s brigade was nearly out of ammunition, Gabriel Paul’s brigade was brought forward to take its place. It was soon after his men had arrived on Oak Hill that he was struck in the head by a bullet that entered behind his right eye, passed through his head, and exited through his left eye socket. The men who watched him fall believed that Paul had been killed and left him where he lay as the battle intensified. Late in the afternoon, the First Corps and Eleventh Corps troops surrounding Paul’s brigade broke and began to retreat. Baxter’s and Paul’s men followed. When the division reformed on Cemetery Hill, it was discovered that 1,667 of the approximately 2,500 men who had gone into battle that morning had become casualties. Paul was one of the 776 men killed, wounded, or missing from his brigade.

When soldiers returned to the field to search for living among the dead, they found Paul and carried him to a field hospital in the rear. Later, Paul was brevetted a Brigadier General in the Regular Army “For Gallant and Meritorious Service at the Battle of Gettysburg.” He was completely blind and his sense of smell and hearing were seriously impaired for the rest of his life, and he suffered frequent headaches and seizures, yet he refused to leave the service. He worked as Deputy Governor of the Soldier’s Home near Washington, and then was the administrator of the Military Asylum at Harrodsburg, Kentucky. On December 20, 1866, he finally retired.

For the next twenty-two years, Gabriel Paul’s health deteriorated. During the final years of his life, seizures were an almost daily occurrence, and he suffered up to six epileptic attacks a day. When he died on May 5, 1886 twenty-two years, ten months, and five days after the battle of Gettysburg, his doctor pronounced that the cause of death was an “epileptiform convulsion, the result of a wound received at the battle of Gettysburg, Pa.” He was buried in Section 1, Lot 16 of Arlington National Cemetery.

The Battle of Gettysburg claimed the lives of more generals than any other battle in the American Civil War. Six general officers fell either dead or fatally wounded at both Antietam and Franklin. By most accounts, nine generals were either killed or listed among the mortally wounded at Gettysburg. The casualties include four Union (John Reynolds, Samuel Zook, Stephen Weed, Elon Farnsworth) and five Confederates (Lewis Armistead, Paul Semmes, William Barksdale, Dorsey Pender, Richard Garnett.) If we include Strong Vincent, who fell atop Little Round Top and who was posthumously honored with a promotion to brigadier general, the number climbs to ten, five for each side. I think that Gabriel Paul should be included in this list, even though he didn’t die until much later. He represents the countless many whose lives ended due to the Civil War, even if they didn’t die.

Gabriel Rene Paul is a background character in The Worst Enemy, book 2 of Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande. Written for middle grade readers and above, the trilogy tells the story of the Civil War in New Mexico Territory. It is published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. Contact the publisher for class set discounts and teacher's guides.

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The Lindenmeier Site

Who were the Folsom People?

Disaster Leads to Stunning Archaeological Discovery

The Colorado Contribution to New Mexico During the Civil War

Wagons West Under ONE BIG OPEN SKY

Annabel Lee Watkins: A Character in The Famished Country

Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe

This Year's WWA Middle Grade Spur Award Winners

New Mexico, the Famished Country

Meg Goes to America: An Interview with Katy Hammel

Gabriel Paul, Civil War Hero

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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Annabel Lee By Edgar Allan Poe

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe