 |
| Grave site on the lower Caja. Believed to mark the grave of the Man Who Robbed the Wrong Bank |
In the mid 1870's a one legged itinerant preacher arrived in Santa Fe along with a load of muslin cloth. Georg Berleth lost his leg during the Civil War in a skirmish near Shiloh. Georg was the son of a German speaking Lutheran immigrant who'd settled in Ohio after fleeing the incessant warfare of Europe. Too poor to escape the draft, Georg seems to have been wounded in his first battle. Georg liked to refer to himself as “Captain” but (at least according to his pension records) he was an enlisted man. Somehow in the next decade Georg picked up a Bible and learned to preach as he worked his way westward. And he learned to drink.
As a protestant in a Catholic territory, Georg stood out and quickly “Preacher Crutch” became a well known figure on the Plaza, showing up around noon, leaning on his crutch, preaching and entertaining the curious. After an hour or two, Georg would reach his climax, “hopping in a small circle, pivoting on his crutch, waving his Bible over his head, hallelujah'ing and amen'ing”. This would earn him enough small change to fund his remaining afternoon in a tavern.
On September 7, 1876, a Thursday, just as the typical afternoon mountain clouds began to thunder, Georg entered the Tecolote Tavern, ordered his standard shot-in-a-mug and sat next to Jack, a local trapper who spent most of his time in town. In bars, actually. Jack's last name was possibly L'Peer (the Daily New Mexican) or Pierson (Territorial Court records). Jack occasionally earned a meal or provisions by cleaning out the corn field's acequia's just south-east of the Plaza. Jack often found himself in fights, seemingly always on the loosing side. On this day, Jack would become known as the Man Who Robbed The Wrong Bank.
Jack knew that tomorrow, Friday, was to be the Santa Fe Lumber and Transfer Company's semi-annual payday, a day eagerly awaited by their employees, suppliers and the local merchants. A fairly substantial amount of cash had just been delivered to the bank and was being prepared for tomorrow's distribution. Jack knew it would be easy to walk in the bank, take the cash and dash. Jack was going to finish his drink, maybe finish another one too, and then become rich.
Jack seems to have had an inspiration when Preacher Crutch sat next to him. Jack had no partner and thought it would be good to have someone watch his back and the Preacher was perfect: a partner he wouldn't have to pay (the Preacher couldn't keep up in the escape) and maybe a patsy (they could catch the Preacher while Jack escaped). But Jack knew the Preacher wouldn't rob a bank, so he explained to the Preacher that he was leaving town for a better life in Las Cruces and would be taking his life savings from the bank but was afraid he'd be robbed before he left town. He said the Preacher was the only person he could trust and asked the Preacher to accompany him. He flattered the Preacher by repeatedly calling him “Captain”. The bartender overheard a little of this conversation but it seems the only thing he heard or remembered was “Captain.”
Around three o'clock, as the thunder became actual rain, Jack and Preacher Crutch left the bar and walked across the Plaza to the First National Bank. As they approached the bank, Jack gave the Preacher a pistol “just in case” and told the Preacher to “wait near the door, I'll only be a couple of minutes.”
Jack's plan had a few holes in it, the main one was that the cash was actually at the Second National Bank, not the First. And The First National Bank had a guard. Jack entered the wrong bank, fired a few drunken shots and shouted something. The guard fired equally ineffective shots back at Jack. The Preacher was stunned, then realized Jack was in fact trying to rob the bank and fired a couple of shots himself. Jack was struck in the buttocks by at least one bullet, probably fired by the Preacher even though the guard took credit (and the reward) for the shot (since Jack was facing the guard, it seems unlikely the guard's shot hit the backside of Jack, but no one seems to have considered this at the time).
Jack quickly fled, followed by Preacher Crutch. The rain was now a storm with “skull crushing hail” (from the hyperbolic Santa Fe Review) and as the Preacher hopped and shouted after Jack, he was captured by Willi Spiegleberg. Actually it was more like Willi helped Preacher Crutch back to his feet after the Preacher slipped on the hail.
Willi was an owner and the cashier of the Second National Bank, the bank that Jack should have tried to rob. Willi and his three brothers were Jewish immigrants from Germany, arriving in New York when they were of school age and moving to Santa Fe as young men, where they started a dry goods wholesale and retail business and provided supplies to the army. The brothers had opened the Second National Bank about ten years earlier and were doing very well indeed.
Doing so well that Willi was able to travel back to Germany for a year, where he met and married his new wife Flora. Flora was also from a Jewish German immigrant family, growing up in New York and going to Germany to further her education. I guess Flora found Willi more interesting than school and they were married in Nueremberg before returning to the US and to Santa Fe. Flora was shocked by her new frontier life but quickly adapted and became a leading society figure and got involved with a number of laudable social causes. And now her husband The Banker became her husband The Hero.
By now people from the First National Bank had arrived at Willi's side, grabbed Preacher Crutch and excitedly accused Preacher of robbery. As Willi later testified “I heard noises that weren't thunder so I look and I see Preacher running and shouting at someone. I think he was shouting to wait, to help the Preacher. Then I learn the Preacher robbed First.” The crowd wanted to lynch Preacher Crutch on the spot but Willi convinced them to "let justice speak."
Meanwhile Jack escaped out the west side of the Plaza and as he had a gun but hadn't taken any money, no one bothered to pursue him. A bit down the road Jack found a donkey owned by an Ortiz and rode the donkey out of town. Or as the Review said “He fled on Ortiz's ass as he bled from his own ass.”
On Sunday the donkey returned alone to Ortiz. About a week or more later Joseph Trujillo from the Cochiti Pueblo arrived in town with a pair of boots. Trujillo said as he was traveling along the Camino Adentro, he noticed “activity” in the desert and upon investigating, found “remains beyond recognition.” I assume this means vultures were eating the corpse. Trujillo was a devout Catholic and he covered the few bones and other remains with rocks, said a prayer and brought the boots to town. Jack was identified by the boots which were “notoriously ill-kept.” Trujillo was briefly detained (after all, he was an Indian with a white man's property, even if the white man was Jack) but Jack had no money, the boots had no value and there wasn't much motive for robbery or murder. Further, Trujillo was well known to the Spieglebergs, in particular Flora, and they vouched for him. Trujillo was freed and so Jack's story ended.
Preacher Crutch was arrested and convicted. Clearly he entered the bank with a gun, he fired it, he fled. The bartender reported Preacher's meeting with Jack and the overheard “Captain” which was taken as proof that the Preacher was the leader of this gang. Didn't take too much to convict in those days.
The Preacher spent the next several years in the Territorial Prison just a block away from his former preaching grounds. The New Mexico prison was infamously harsh but given his one leg, Preacher Crutch was treated better than most. Flora took an interest in the Preacher, visiting him several times, learning and eventually believing his version of the story (and much of this comes from Flora's Frontier Diaries). The Preacher didn't want to be known as a thief but he did lament his shooting (and thus killing) of Jack and felt he deserved punishment for that reason. The Preacher said prison was good for him: he was sober for the first time in more than a decade and he had a chance to do some real preaching. It does seem he affected a few prison conversions.
Among Flora's many connections was Archbishop Lamy, who had became a good friend. Before she and her husband returned to New York to give their daughters a chance to marry within their faith (and where she would become a leading advocate for public sanitation, earning herself the title “Garbage Can Flora”), Flora prevailed upon Lamy to take up the Preacher's cause. Lamy agreed and is credited for convincing Territorial Governor Edmund Ross to pardon Preacher Crutch. In 1889 Preacher was released after almost 13 years in prison (and a year after Lamy's death and two years after Willi and Flora returned to New York). Thanks to his missing leg and a law passed by Congress in 1890, the Preacher received a small Civil War disability pension and was able to spent the last years of his life quietly living in a small room near Fort Marcy. Preacher Crutch passed away in 1906.
Jack lay largely forgotten and lost. Then sometime early in 1968, Antonio Trujillo, the great-grandson of Joseph, was listening to his grandfather Ray tell family stories to a UNM professor capturing the oral history of the Cochiti Pueblo. Antonio had never heard the story of Jack and while he waited to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, Antonio wandered the lower Caja looking for the grave. Ray's story was fairly specific and after a few trips, Antonio found a small pile of basalt rocks with a few bones. More to honor his great-grandfather and his family and clan than to honor Jack, Antonio tidied up the grave site, then went off to war.
Twenty five years later Antonio took his then 10 year old son Onofre up to the Caja, where he again found the grave and told Onofre the story as they spent an evening over a small campfire near the site. They again neatened the rock grave. Ten years later Onofre revisited the site and added a small wooden cross.
And a few weeks ago as I was aimlessly wandering in the desert, I noticed the small cross from a distance away. I approached, found the grave site, took the picture you see here and made up this story you just read.
Much of which is true.
