Silas Gibson Records, Eddy County, New Mexico

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Submitted By:  Richard Wilkinson jrrrr@zianet.com
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		       EDDY COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

		    SILAS GIBSON CEMETERY RECORDS


	         Records extracted by Richard Wilkinson
                 Typing by Richard Wilkinson June 2001
                 Submittal by Richard Wilkinson June 2001

GPS Coordinates for this Cedar Canyon burial site are:

32 deg. 10 min. 28 sec. North
103 deg. 58 min. 02 sec. West
Just over 3000 feet above sea level.

A concrete marker was placed over the grave in 1968 by three persons who's names 
appears on the marker.  Vic Queen, John and Lewis Means.

The marker states:  "Silas Gibson Killed in Indian Fight 1869"  About May or June 
1869.

The chance of just coming up on this site are very remote.  You will have to be 
out in this desert looking for it.  Its a very remote and primitive location.  If 
you are walking, take water.  Please remember to respect this BLM land and take 
out any trash you carry in.  Following oil field roads, you can drive very close 
to the site and only have a very short climb down into the canyon and back up 
again by foot.  The climb down and up again is short but steep.

The following is an excerpt from an article written by Lee Myers for the El Paso 
Times, the date of the article is unknown, but judging from the authors 
observations that there was no marker on the grave when he saw it, it may have 
been written prior to 1968 because the concrete marker on this grave is dated then:

"... Only a limited amount of inquiries served to tell me that two friends of 
mine, John and Lewis Means, old timers locally, were distantly related to the man, 
that he had been a member of a party of Texans, with a herd of cattle and several 
wagons, enroute to California.

My friends' maternal grandparents, Robert and Deborah Hardin, were of the party, 
and their daughter, my friends' mother, Cynthia, was born early in 1870, in one of 
the covered wagons just after arrival in California.  As youngsters, grandfather 
Hardin had told the boys how the Indians had attacked them, the death of one man 
in the ensuing fight; but in the course of a full and active lifetime the account 
had gradually faded from their memories until they now remembered little other 
than the most basic facts of the tale..."

Author Lee Myers visited the burial site and could not find out anything about 
this slain man for a long time afterward.  Then all of a sudden:

"...Several years previous Lewis Means, retired, had gone to Arizona to make his 
home and had stored an accumulation of odds and ends in Albuquerque.  Now, 
returned to Carlsbad, he had asked his brother to move these effects back to his 
re-established home and John had complied.

No sooner had the assortment of boxes been unloaded from John's pickup than Lewis, 
curious and reflective, began half absently pawing it over - and there it was!"

"...Many years before there had existed, somewhere in the family, a letter, a 
written account of the complete incident, penned by an older and well informed 
relative, but so long in the past had it been that Lewis had lost all remembrance 
of it contents, had only known in a very dim way that it had actually existed.  
John knew nothing whatever of it.

Now that story was told.
Following discovery of gold in California Silas Gibson had gone there, had 
prospered, and with a brother had returned east to Texas, where they had persuaded 
relatives to try their luck in the land of gold and milk and honey.

The party of 18, men, women and children, with four or five ox-drawn wagons, 1,500 
head of steers and 40 horses, left Bianco County, Texas, in May, 1869.  Traveling 
by way of Ft. Concho, Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing, they pushed their way up 
the east side of the Pecos to near the mouth of Black River, in New Mexico, where 
the Indians attacked fiercely.

The party split, part of the men helping the women to form a fort of the wagons 
for protection from the fire of the Indians, the rest protecting the cattle and 
horses.  The savages also split, attacking both wagons and animals, and succeeded 
in stampeding the horses, their real objective.

Now the Whites were forced to divide forces still further and to pursue and attempt 
to regain the horses.  They were successful in this effort; most of the pursuing 
party were busily engaged driving the horses back to the wagons but Silas Gibson 
and one or two others continued to fight the Indians, trying to drive them away.  
Silas was mounted on a splendid horse, a racer; then he and his companion, a 
Thomas Shelly, gave up the chase and started their return to the wagons.

Shelly, unwisely, had ridden his horse almost to exhaustion and seeing this, the 
Indians pursued them trying to bring one or both down.  Silas called to Shelly to 
ride on as best his horse could while he, Silas, dismounted to fire at their 
pursuers in an attempt to shield his companion from further pursuit.

This he was successful in doing but the Indians, wily and experienced in such 
affairs, killed Silas' mount, then, circling him madly, they were not long in 
bringing him down, too, and scalping him.

Silas was consigned to his lonely grave next day and the grave was covered with 
rocks for protection against predatory animals..."