4. [ALLEN, G. N.]. Mexican Treacheries and
Cruelties. Incidents and Sufferings in the Mexican War;
With Accounts of Hardships Endured; Treacheries of the
Mexicans; Battles Fought, and Success of American Arms;
Also, an Account of Valiant Soldiers Fallen, and the
Particulars of the Death and Funeral Services in honor of
Capt. George Lincoln, of Worcester. By a Volunteer Returned
from the War. Boston & New York, 1847. [32] pp.,
wood engravings. 8vo, original tan printed upper wrapper
within ornamental borders and illustration of the
‘Heroine of Fort Brown’ (The Great Western).
Lacking lower wrapper, edge wear to upper wrap, loose and
somewhat worn. Preserved in a brown cloth folding box.
First
edition. Christensen & Christensen, The
U.S.-Mexican War, p. 72: "One hero of the bombardment
of Fort Texas was a laundress and cook named Sara
Borginnis, a large, capable woman whom the soldiers
nicknamed ‘The Great Western’ after the
world’s largest steamship. Borginnis set up a tent in
the middle of Fort Texas and doled out food and coffee. She
nursed the wounded and fearlessly carried water to the
soldiers." Connor & Faulk, North America Divided
131 (citing the 1848 edition). Garrett, The
Mexican-American War 4. Graff 39 (1848 edition).
Haferkorn, p. 9 (1848 edition). Howes A140. Tutorow 3186.
Pingenot: A jingoistic account of the experiences of a
Massachusetts Volunteer, along with a summary of the
various battles with Mexicans, anecdotal stories, and a
detailed description of the funeral procession of Captain
George Lincoln who was killed in the Battle of Buena Vista.
Rare in the first edition.
This
lurid, flagrantly racist pamphlet contains several
engravings of scenes from the Texas theatres of the war,
most notably the cover illustration (repeated in text) of
The Great Western. There is scant documentation on
women’s experiences in the war, and this is one of the
few, albeit popular in approach. The Handbook of Texas
Online (Sarah Bowman) article on the The Great Western
(ca. 1816-1866?) discusses the various names by which she
is known: "She acquired several husbands during the course
of her travels, many without benefit of clergy, so there is
considerable confusion about her surname. In various
sources and at different times she is referred to as Mrs.
Bourjette, Bourget, Bourdette, Davis, Bowman,
Bowman-Phillips, Borginnis, and possibly Foyle." The Great
Western deserves more than passing mention; therefore,
following is a longer quotation from the excellent New
Handbook article.
The legends surrounding her exploits grew during the bombardment of Fort Brown in May 1846, when she refused to join the other women in an underground magazine but calmly operated her officers’ mess uninterrupted for almost a week, despite the fact that a tray was shot from her hands and a stray shell fragment pierced her sunbonnet. Her fearlessness during the siege earned her another nickname, the Heroine of Fort Brown. She traveled with the army into the interior of Mexico and opened a hotel in Saltillo, the American House, where she again demonstrated her bravery during the battle of Buena Vista by loading cartridges and even carrying some wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety. During this period she was married to her second husband, known variously as Bourjette, Bourget, and Bourdette, a member of the Fifth Infantry. Sarah apparently remained in Saltillo as a hotelkeeper until the end of the war, but in July 1848 she asked to join a column of dragoons that had been ordered to California. By this time her husband was probably dead, and she was told that only married women could march with the army. Undaunted, she rode along the line of men asking, "Who wants a wife with fifteen thousand dollars and the biggest leg in Mexico? Come, my beauties, don’t all speak at once. Who is the lucky man?" After some hesitation a dragoon named Davis, probably David E. Davis, stepped forward, and the Great Western once again marched with the army.
In 1849 Sarah arrived in El Paso and briefly
established a hotel that catered to the flood of
Forty-niners traveling to the gold fields. She leased the
hotel to the army when she left for Socorro, New Mexico,
with a new husband, Albert J. Bowman, an upholsterer from
Germany. When Bowman was discharged on November 30, 1852,
the couple moved to Fort Yuma, where Sarah opened another
restaurant. She lived first on the American, then the
Mexican, side of the river, to protect her adopted
children. By the mid-1860s she was no longer married to
Bowman, but she served as company laundress and received an
army ration. In 1856 she traveled to Fort Buchanan to set
up a hotel ten miles below the fort. She had returned to
Fort Yuma by 1861. Although Sarah was well known as a
hotelkeeper and restaurateur, she probably had other
business interests as well. One chronicler referred to her
as "the greatest whore in the West," and Lt. Sylvester
Mowry, a soldier stationed at Fort Yuma in 1856, wrote of
Sarah that "among her other good qualities she is an
admirable ‘pimp.’" The date of Sarah’s
death, reportedly caused by a tarantula bite, is unclear,
though one contemporary source indicates that she died in
1863. She was buried in the Fort Yuma post cemetery on
December 23, 1866, with full military honors.
($300-600)