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Show LEADING 478 FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN SPANISH HISTORY The results of the investigation made by Levi A. Hughes were equally startling. He discovered that the manuscript records of the ancient church of San Salvador had been mutilated by the Te: moval of entire leaves and the substitution of others containing forged entries regarding the baptism of the Maso twins and the death of the mother and the infant son. From Louis Robidoux ** and his wife he obtained a denial of all knowledge of the occurrence. He likewise ascertained that all of the depositions on which Reavis depended to establish the identity of his wife were false. He ascertained that Reavis’s wife was the daughter of John A. Treadway by an Indian woman with whom he had lived in the Sherwood valley. He found the man who had buried Treadway on November 21, 1861, more than six months before the time when it was alleged that he had brought the infant daughter of Maso to Sherwood valley. The court found The claim was heard by the court in June, 1895. that the grant was utterly fictitious and fraudulent and that the documents offered by the claimants had been forged and surreptl- tiously introduced into the Spanish archives at Madrid, Seville, and Guadalajara; that the records of the parish of San Bernandino and San Salvador were forgeries; that no such person as Miguel Nemecio Silva de Peralta de la Cordoba had ever existed and that the petitioners were in no manner related to or connected with the imaginary and mythical baron of Arizona. A more cunning, accomplished, and resourceful swindler than Reavis was never born. In poverty and in obscurity he was the author of and executed, without confederates, a crime requiring marvelous 398 Louis Robidoux was the son of Joseph Robidoux, a native of reer Canada. Joseph, the elder, came from the western part of France abou Miemiddle of the eighteenth century. Joseph Robidoux came to St. — He souri, late in the eighteenth century and was engaged in the fur tra TSouph had nine sons and daughters. Joseph laid out the present city of St. ia : Missouri, naming the principal streets of the city for his children. Robidoux, the fourth son of Joseph, was born in St. Louis in eh Te ad edd at his brother Louis were early identified with the Santa Fé trade; bot suai Taos and at Santa Fé. Antoine married the adopted daughter We : guide Armijo. He lost his eyesight at the age of fifty-six years. He acte - Prion and interpreter for General Kearny at the time of the American oce A as and interpreted the proclamations of that commander at Las phy ed wife, Santa Fé. Antoine died at St. Joseph, Missouri, August 29, 1860. cea during the later years of her life, lived at the Sisters convent 10 , ae Colorado, where she died at a very old age. Antoine Robidoux ager the of commanding figure, courageous, and was the hero of many explo! i ds Indians of the Plains. It is said that he was the master of five languag spoke nearly every Indian idiom in the plains and mountain country. AND MEXICAN LAND GRANTS 479 ingenuity and magnificent audacity. In the early years of his promotion of this gigantic fraud he was successful in securing the influence and abundant financial aid of some of the most prominent and wealthy men in the country. With funds received from them he rose to affluence, became the intimate of millionaires and prominent government officials, had a country house on Staten Island and a magnificent home on the Pacific coast; took his wife to Spain where she was introduced to the Spanish court as the fourth baroness in the line of an illustrious ancestry and the heiress of an estate as large as the kingdom of Spain. When the time came for the hearing he had exhausted all of his financial resources and, with the assistance of a briefless attorney, his former counsel, now cognizant of the gigantic swindle, having deserted him, tried his own case. he was Santa The was a sent to by her After the decree rejecting his claim, indicted in the district court of the first judicial district, at Fé, tried, convicted, and sentenced to the penitentary. make-believe baroness, the half-breed Indian woman, never knowing party to the attempted fraud. When Reavis was the penitentiary, she was entirely without means, was deserted former friends; and compelled to perform menial service for the support of herself and twin boys. In magnitude and in romance of crime no case ever paralleled this in the civil jurisprudence of the world. The documents of title in Spanish, with the translations, illustrated with maps, plats, royal seals, rubrics, genealogical trees, and photographs of ancient perSonages of the mythical Peralta family, together with the transcript of the oral testimony taken at the hearing of the claim, fill two large printed volumes, now in the records of office of the surveyor-genMr. Tipton says, ‘‘This monstrous edifice of eral for New Mexico. forgery, perjury and subornation was the work of one man. No plan was ever more ingeniously devised; none ever carried out with greater patience, industry, skill and effrontery.’’ Reavis remained in the penitentiary at Santa Fé from July 18, 1896, to April, 1898. Upon the expiration of his term he left New Mexico and went to California. |