February 4, 2001

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

SANTA FE, N.M. — Almost everyone is familiar with the entrance of Jews to America through Ellis Island, but few people have heard of a smaller but nevertheless important Jewish migration westward to New Mexico by wagon train along the Santa Fe Trail. Their number was not great – by 1917, fewer than 1,000 called New Mexico home – but these Jews helped shape the economy, culture and political landscape of the region.

Today, their story is being told through the art, memorabilia and family histories of the Ambergs, Bibos, Floersheims, Herzsteins, Ilfelds, Spiegelbergs, Uhlfelders and Zeckendorfs, among others, in a rich display of pioneer life at the Palace of the Governors of the Museum of New Mexico. The exhibition, “Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico,” opened in October and will remain at the museum for five years.

The first to settle in New Mexico were Ashkenazic immigrants from German principalities. They moved west from the East Coast beginning in the 1840’s, caught up in the sentiment of Manifest Destiny to populate the vast western territories. Putting down roots in this arid and mountainous landscape, where Spanish and American Indian dialects were spoken and justice was often carried out through gun fights or public hangings, was no easy task, particularly for foreigners. Yet these Jews moved into isolated areas, lived among the Indians, established community institutions and formed synagogues where none existed.

The travails of life in the West paled in comparison to the persecution and second- class citizenship these Jews would have continued to face had they remained in Europe. And, unlike much of the eastern United States, the West remained full of opportunities for entrepreneurs and was largely free of anti-Semitism and religious divisiveness, mainly because Anglos there needed one another to survive.

The interior of Gold’s Old Curio Shop in Santa Fe, N.M., in the 1880’s. Royal Hubbell/ Museum of New Mexico.

The exhibit, the museum’s first examination of the New Mexico Jewish diaspora, spans the years from 1821, when the Santa Fe Trail opened, providing a trade route from the East, through 1917, when the flow of immigration was slowed by the United States’ entrance into World War I. The show looks at the contributions made by Jewish merchants, bankers, miners, ranchers, soldiers, sutlers and traders throughout the region.

It is organized along four themes: immigration, occupations, social and family life, and religion. Elegantly displayed using panels of scanned photographs and documents alongside artifacts, the exhibit is largely based on loans and donations from families in New Mexico (an estimated 15,000 Jews live here today) and descendants of Jewish pioneers now scattered across the nation.

The flow of heirlooms has continued even after the opening, said Thomas E. Chávez, director of the museum. Among them are a number of steamer trunks, one of which traveled by boat over the Atlantic and then by wagon train over the Santa Fe Trail.

“I look at a trunk and I imagine where it’s been and the people packing it,” Mr. Chávez said. “Those trips seem even a little bit risky today.”

The show’s curator, David H. Snow, schooled as an archaeologist and anthropologist, said preparing the exhibit had felt like an excavation. “I might just as well be out there with a trowel again, digging up roots,” he said.

Jewish pioneers were mostly young single men like Solomon Jacob Spiegelberg, who left Westphalia as a teenager in search of a better life. Spiegelberg settled in Santa Fe in 1846. He was the first German Jewish merchant to live in this Western outpost along the Santa Fe Trail, where he established the Spiegelberg mercantile business and became sutler to Fort Marcy, keeping it supplied with provisions.

Like other young Jewish entrepreneurs who came West, he was also an ambassador for the region, persuading his family in Germany to join him. One by one, six Spiegelberg brothers immigrated to New Mexico between 1844 and 1861 as part of a first wave of Jewish immigrants to the territory. Once here, their first goal was to find a place in Southwestern society rather than create a religious and ethnic niche for themselves.

The idea for the exhibit came from Spiegelberg descendants – Susan and Felix Warburg, guest curators and principal donors — after a Spiegelberg family reunion in Santa Fe in 1988. Mr. Warburg’s family donated their Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City to the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1944 to house the Jewish Museum. Mrs. Warburg is the great-granddaughter of the Jewish pioneers Wolf (Willi) and Flora Spiegelberg. Willi, the youngest brother of Solomon, learned to speak Spanish, English and four Indian dialects and ultimately became the probate judge, or mayor, of Santa Fe County in 1884.

“They wanted to create a new world and they had to reinvent themselves,” Mrs. Warburg said of her pioneer ancestors. “They were highly respected because of their ability to adapt.”

Religion and culture also traveled over the dusty trails. The museum display includes a 200-year-old Torah used by the first synagogue in New Mexico, an 1870 piano and the Uhlfelder family Bible printed in 1786 with Hebrew, German and Latin texts. Handwritten notations listing birth dates of family members inside the Bible provide something of a genealogical road map.

Many of the first Jews who immigrated were cousins. In many cases they became further connected in New Mexico through marriage. By 1860, half of the Jewish population in the territory was related, the museum says. But there was also intermarriage with the local Hispanic and Indian populations.

Of all the members of the Bibo clan — children of a cantor in Brakel, Westphalia — who immigrated to New Mexico, Solomon Bibo immersed himself the most in American Indian life through marriage and his involvement in tribal government. In 1885, after establishing a trading relationship with Acoma Pueblo and learning its language, Keres, he married Juana Valle, the granddaughter of the tribe’s governor. In the late 1880’s Bibo was chosen as governor of Acoma Pueblo, a title he held again in later years.

Before 1870, there were no banks in New Mexico, so merchant families functioned as financial institutions by holding deposits, extending credit and even mortgages. The role of Jewish merchants as bankers is documented by a fine example of scrip issued in 1863 by Spiegelberg Hermanos, the Spiegelberg Brothers.

Ushering in a new era, the railroad arrived in Las Vegas, N.M., in 1879 and in Albuquerque in 1880. New cities emerged including Clayton, Deming and Tucumcari. East Las Vegas and New Albuquerque also sprouted up, mirroring the adjacent established towns. In response, Jews relocated to seize opportunities. By 1880, half of the original Jewish pioneers had left New Mexico, but a Jewish population of about 200 grew during the next two decades, bolstered by a second wave of Jewish immigrants who arrived with the railroad. Most businesses became more specialized because goods could be carried swiftly and in greater quantities to distant locations.

Meanwhile, Charles Ilfeld and his family presided over the expansion of what would become the state’s largest mercantile business. Their company grew from its original retail location in Las Vegas to wholesale branches throughout New Mexico. The Ilfelds established themselves as a precursor to Wal-Mart with their slogan, still painted on the side of the Ilfeld building on the plaza in Las Vegas: “Charles Ilfeld Company Wholesalers of Everything.”

Despite the civilizing effect of the railroad, which began to transform New Mexico from a frontier into a marketplace, Jews were not immune from the lawlessness that was part and parcel of Western society. Levi Herzstein discovered this when he came face to face with one of the West’s most notorious gangs — the “Black Jack” Ketchum gang. In 1896 the Herzstein store and post office was held up by these outlaws. Levi, who was summoned to Liberty in the early 1890’s to help run the family store by his older brother Morris, pursued the gang and was killed in a shoot-out.

The Herzstein business later moved to Clayton and ultimately into the Texas panhandle. This expansion is captured by the inscription on a shoe brush: “Herzstein’s Clayton, New Mexico — Dalhart, Texas. If it’s from Herzstein’s it’s correct.”

“There was kind of a Jewish telegraph through the Southwest, and my grandmother and the family knew all of the Jews in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and western Texas,” said Mortimer H. Herzstein, 74, who was born in Trinidad, Colo., and is a descendant of two Jewish pioneer families.

“Jewish Pioneers” presents a balanced picture of Jewish life, blemishes and all. A prison portrait from 1901 shows Jake Gold, who by 1882 established Gold’s Old Curio Shop, one of the first stores to sell American Indian crafts, with a number pinned on his suit: he served time in the New Mexico Territorial prison for abandoning his wife.

Before synagogues, Jews maintained civic affiliations through membership in the Order of Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Germania Club and as founders of the Historical Society of New Mexico.

As Reform Jews, these pioneers were initially satisfied with private expressions of their faith. The first synagogue, Temple Montefiore, in Las Vegas, was founded in 1884, well after the first pioneers arrived. The first Jewish cemetery followed in 1888. A synagogue did not exist in Santa Fe until 1953.

Although the exhibit focuses predominantly on men, one woman who stands out is Yetta Kohn. She came across the Santa Fe Trail in the mid- 1860’s and became the matriarch of a ranching dynasty, known today as the T-4 Cattle Company, in Montoya. The family has operated the business since 1902.

Despite their small numbers, Jewish pioneers and their descendants rose to prominence in New Mexico territory and after it became a state in 1912. Towns and railroad sidings were also named for Jewish pioneers, although these names have largely vanished from maps.

In assembling the shards of Jewish life, “Jewish Pioneers” reveals an enduring legacy of Jews in New Mexico and their successful efforts to blend into the landscape and culture.

“They made every effort to fit in, and that applies not only economically but politically,” said the historian Henry J. Tobias, author of “A History of the Jews in New Mexico.” “It’s part of the heritage they left. In some ways you might think of them as part of the glue that held society out here together.”