The Friar, the Engineer and the Speculator (December 2025)

In the 19^th century, the blurring of empire and statehood in present-day New Mexico was facilitated by war and innovation, history’s prime movers. In this tale, which also anticipates the past’s future, contemporaneity is only slightly inconvenienced in order to move the plot along. However, in the main, our cast operates in close spatial proximity, roughly within the boundaries of the present American state of New Mexico. Jumping about in time is unquestionably more unnerving than similar movements in space, so the reader’s patience is respectfully requested. What follows is a preliminary sketch of our three characters and their place in our tale, which owing to publication deadlines is limited in brevity and depth.

The tech-savvy Franciscan, Brother Dreyfus, uses an iPad to record speech from the Chiricahua and Navajo. He then translates directly into his native French and occasional Spanish, bypassing Latin which he never learned. Nevertheless, he is uncomfortably familiar with the concept of terra nullius all too well. Brother Dreyfus keeps his translations secret, for if the Church finds out about them, he will be put on the first ship back to Spain or worse. His work would be a sacrilege as it contradicts the spirit of the Papal Bulls that legitimate the Spanish Crown's empire building in the Americas. Ultimately, he is found out, through no little help from one of Geronimo’s spies it’s been said, and shipped back to Spain, where one door closing leads to another door opening.

Our Franciscan meets Macintosh, a Scottish engineer from Edinburgh, who introduces him to the latest steam technologies and is, in turn, fascinated by the friar’s iPad and its technical and commercial potential. Macintosh is traveling throughout the territory to study the steam technology in use and suggest improvements in its deployment, particularly in silver mining. His mission is to assess the market for British mining equipment, notably the stamp mill and the steam monkey. The stamp mill pulverizes ore in order to retrieve minerals, foremost among them silver, while the steam monkey comprising a wood-burning steam boiler, powerful winches and thick metal cables loaded on wooden skids (more like logs shaped into enormous Bunyanesk skis) can haul heavy loads over difficult terrain or along tramway lines in the deep mines. Brother Dreyfus regards the steam donkey with a mixture of fear and humour but settles on a third emotion, joy. Joy, because he can envision the future where Indians (once for a short while, the name for the indigenous people of Turtle Island) need no longer be forcibly conscripted alongside inmates from nearby prisons and jails to do the back-breaking and dangerous lifting and moving.

Macintosh introduces the good friar to Knebel who tells him about George Hearst and his dream of a publication empire. Apparently the idea came to George when he saw how important the mining camp newspapers had become—miners didn’t have to wait for weeks for the Eastern press to reach them and their local papers provide much better coverage of news that is relevant. As a prospector and later a speculator, Knebel, who picks up languages very quickly, travels widely along the Red and Canadian rivers in eastern New Mexico territory and the Rio Grande and Pecos rivers from south to north and north to south. Because many of his speculative ventures never pan out, he is often on the move. He never meets Geronimo but hears many stories not all of which are flattering as it seems that Geronimo is not wildly popular among his tribal members. His intransigence in negotiating with the pale faces leads to what many think is needless slaughter of their young braves and innocents.

In our next installment, interactions among the principals will proceed on the basis of the backstory provided herein.