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The arable acres of this large estate in
the broad and fertile valleys were farmed by native Mexicans. The
system existing in the territory at that time was the system of
peonage.
Lucien
Maxwell was a good master, however, and employed about five or six
hundred men.
Maxwell's
house was a veritable palace compared with the usual style and
architecture of that time and country. It was built on the old
Southern style, large and roomy. It was the hospitable mansion
of the traveling public, and I have never known or heard of
Mr. Maxwell
ever charging a cent for a meal’s victuals or a night’s lodging under
his roof. The grant ran from the line of
Colorado
on the Raton mountains sixty miles south and took in the little town
of Maxwell
on the
Cimarron river. The place is now known as Springer,
New Mexico.
In the yard at the
Maxwell
Palace, as we will call his house, was an old brass cannon, about
which we may speak later on. He had a grist mill, a sutler’s
store, wagon repair shop and a trading post for the
Indians.
The
Maxwell
House in
Cimarron, 1864. Unfortunately, there are no remains of
this once beautiful home other than a
marker commemorating its location.
This image available for photographic
prints
HERE.
Besides his wife, a Mexican woman,
Mr. Maxwell
had a nice little girl eight years old, whom he sent to
St. Louis
with some friends to go to school and to learn how to become a
"high-bred” lady. In the fall of 1864 on one of my trips to
Santa Fe
I met Miss
Maxwell, then a young lady about sixteen years old, and took her
to her father’s house in
New Mexico
. As we were crossing the Long Route, I asked her if she spoke the
Mexican language. She told me that she had forgotten every word
of it.
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