oña María Gertrudes Barceló, the midnineteenth- century figure known more commonly as "La Tules," was a legend in her time—the most notorious lady of the New Mexico Territory and perhaps the entire region west of St. Louis, Mo. So widespread were the stories about her that it is difficult to separate fact from fancy, and historians still debate their accuracy. Who was this person who commanded such attention at a time when women—especially Hispanic women—were largely invisible in public life?

Doña Tules by artist Diana Bryer

dianabryer.com

Most sources agree that La Tules was a monte card dealer who operated a gambling hall and salon in Santa Fe during the 1840s and ’50s, when New Mexico was in the process of being annexed to the United States by Mexico. Beyond these basic facts, most details about La Tules life are open to debate.

It is generally agreed that La Tules was a Hispana, but one correspondent of the time, Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, argued in his book Narrative of the Texas—Santa Fe Expedition that she was French, even referring to her as Madame Toulouse. Early writers concurred that La Tules had lived in squalor in Taos before settling permanently in Santa Fe, where she prospered as a gambler. But John Sunder, editor of the book Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail, probably embellished the story when he wrote that La Tules was born in Spain and lost her mother in New York before moving to Taos.

The origin of the tale that La Tules was from Taos, along with other unsubstantiated stories about her, can be attributed to the writings of Josiah Gregg, a merchant on the Santa Fe Trail whose chronicle, The Commerce of the Prairies, became the primary source about the Santa Fe Trail and the people involved in it. It is apparent that La Tules had been practicing her trade in relative obscurity until the arrival of Gregg, who instantly became the chronicler of everything relating to New Mexico. His work essentially became the window through which Americans saw New Mexico and her people, and because of his jaded, puritanical perspective, it was not a very flattering picture. Some of Gregg’s most biting rhetoric was reserved for La Tules. In 1844 he wrote:

Some twelve or fifteen years ago there lived (or rather roamed) in Taos a certain female of very loose habits known as La Tules. Finding it difficult to obtain the means of living in that district, she finally extended her wanderings to the capital. She then became a constant attendant in one of those pandemoniums where the favorite game of monte was dealt pro bono publico... On one occasion she left the bank with a spoil of several hundred dollars! This enabled her to open a bank of her own, and being favored by a continuous run of good fortune, she gradually rose higher and higher in the scale of affluence, until she found herself in possession of a very handsome fortune. In 1842, she sent to the United States some ten thousand dollars to be invested in goods... She is openly received in the first circles of society. I doubt, in truth, whether there is to be found in the city a lady of more fashionable reputation than this same Tules, now known as Señora Doña Gertrudes Barceló.

If La Tules reputation was not sullied enough by Gregg, it didn’t take long for another American observer, Susan Shelby Magoffin, to contribute her perspective. In her narrative published under the title Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico, she recounted attending a ball given by occupying American soldiers and wrote disapprovingly about the manner in which Spanish woman "displayed their limbs and smoked cornhusk cigarettes while fat priests drank wine and aguardiente as no person would." The most outrageous thing to Magoffin was the presence of "La Tula, a stately dame of a certain age, the possessor of a portion of that shrewd sense and fascinating manner necessary to allure the wayward, inexperienced youth to the hall of final ruin." She proceeds to describe La Tules as "an old woman with false hair and teeth," which would seem to contradict her earlier description as a seductress.

Later writers embraced this characterization and added some opinions of their own. Ralph Emerson Twichell, in his classic The Leading facts of New Mexican History, described La Tules as a "woman of shady reputation" who alerted American authorities of an impending plot against the occupying American forces in 1847. In another account, Twichell described her as the mistress of Governor Manuel Armijo who essentially served as the "power behind the throne." In an August 1950 article in El Palacio, the venerable historian Fray Angé lico Chávez set out to uncover the truth about La Tules. What he found, he said, was "new but not sensational." In searching the church records, Chávez found no evidence that La Tules had ever lived in Taos but rather that Gertrudes and a sister, Luz, came to New Mexico as young girls with their widowed mother, Doña Dolores Herrera, who settled in Tomé in Sandoval County. Gertrudes married Manuel Antonio Sisneros at Tomé in 1823, and eventually moved to Santa Fe, where she operated a gambling salon. While La Tules occupation was unusual for a woman at the time, fellow Hispanics and the clergy were tolerant and accepted her for her good deeds and status in the community. According to Chávez, "to the Latin there was nothing in the law of nature or in the scriptures that labeled tobacco, liquor or gambling as sins in themselves ... These activities were pleasant forms of recreation and relaxation and of social well-being."

In contrast, Ruth Laughlin’s 1948 novel, The Wind Leaves No Shadow, offered a romantic and sympathetic portrayal of a Doña Tules Barceló who emerges from poverty and hopelessness to become a notorious and powerful gambling queen in Santa Fe. Still, Laughlin’s character is tainted by the earlier writings, as she is still portrayed as the mistress of the governor.

Whether Chávez succeeded in challenging the negative caricature of La Tules is open to question. Certainly he offers some convincing evidence that Gregg’s and Magoffin’s portrayals of La Tules were born of religious and cultural bias. He also offers an alternative view, that Tules could have been well regarded in her own community as a "respectable woman and faithful wife." He concludes by hoping that just as "the wind leaves no shadow," no shadow might be left on the "character of a century-buried woman who brought to Santa Fe ... the noisy glamour of an open gambling house such as had not been seen before ..."

Maurilio E. Vigil is a professor
emeritus from New Mexico
Highlands University and the
author of several books.