Frederic L. Paxson

England had had no colonies so remote and inaccessible as the interior provinces of Spain, which stretched up into the country between the Rio Grande and the Pacific for more than fifteen hundred miles above Vera Cruz. Before the English seaboard had received its earliest colonists, the hand of Spain was already strong in the upper waters of the Rio Grande, where her outposts had been planted around the little adobe village of Santa FÉ. For more than two hundred years this life had gone on, unchanged by invention or discovery, unenlightened by contact with the world or admixture of foreign blood. Accepting, with a docility characteristic of the colonists of Spain, the hard conditions and restrictions of the law, communication with these villages of Chihuahua and New Mexico had been kept in the narrow rut worn through the hills by the pack-trains of the king.

It was no stately procession that wound up into the hills yearly to supply the Mexican frontier. From Vera Cruz the port of entry, through Mexico City, and thence north along the highlands through San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas to Durango, and thence to Chihuahua, and up the valley of the Rio Grande to Santa FÉ climbed the long pack-trains and the clumsy ox-carts that carried into the provinces their whole supply from outside. The civilization of the provincial life might fairly be measured by the length, breadth, and capacity of this transportation route. Nearly two thousand miles, as the road meandered, of river, mountain gorge, and arid desert had to be overcome by the mule-drivers of the caravans. What their pack-animals could not carry, could not go. What had large bulk in proportion to its value must stay behind. The ancient commerce of the Orient, carried on camels across the Arabian desert, could afford to deal in gold and silver, silks, spices, and precious drugs; in like manner, though in less degree, the world's contribution to these remote towns was confined largely to textiles, drugs, and trinkets of adornment. Yet the Creole and Mestizo population of New Mexico bore with these meagre supplies for more than two centuries without an effort to improve upon them. Their resignation gives some credit to the rigors of the Spanish colonial system which restricted their importation to the defined route and the single port. It is due as much, however, to the hard geographic fact which made Vera Cruz and Mexico, distant as they were, their nearest neighbors, until in the nineteenth century another civilization came within hailing distance, at its frontier in the bend of the Missouri. The Spanish provincials were at once willing to endure the rigors of the commercial system and to smuggle when they had a chance. So long as it was cheaper to buy the product of the annual caravan than to develop other sources of supply the caravans flourished without competition. It was not until after the expulsion of Spain and the independence of Mexico that a rival supply became important, but there are enough isolated events before this time to show what had to occur just so soon as the United States frontier came within range.

The narrative of Pike after his return from Spanish captivity did something to reveal the existence of a possible market in Santa FÉ. He had been engaged in exploring the western limits of the Louisiana purchase, and had wandered into the valley of the Rio Grande while searching for the head waters of the Red River. Here he was arrested, in 1807, by Spanish troops, and taken to Chihuahua for examination. After a short detention he was escorted to the limits of the United States, where he was released. He carried home the news of high prices and profitable markets existing among the Mexicans.

In 1811 an organized expedition set out to verify the statements of Pike. Rumor had come to the States of an insurrection in upper Mexico, which might easily abolish the trade restriction. But the revolt had been suppressed before the dozen or so of reckless Americans who crossed the plains had arrived at their destination. The Spanish authorities, restored to power and renewed vigor, received them with open prisons. In jail they were kept at Chihuahua, some for ten years, while the traffic which they had hoped to inaugurate remained still in the future. Their release came only with the independence of Mexico, which quickly broke down the barrier against importation and the foreigner.

The Santa FÉ trade commenced when the news of the Mexican revolution reached the border. Late in the fall of 1821 one William Becknell, chancing a favorable reception from Iturbide's officials, took a small train from the Missouri to New Mexico, in what proved to be a profitable speculation. He returned to the States in time to lead out a large party in the following summer. So long as the United States frontier lay east of the Missouri River there could have been no western traffic, but now that settlement had reached the Indian Country, and river steamers had made easy freighting from Pittsburg to Franklin or Independence, Santa FÉ was nearer to the United States seaboard markets than to Vera Cruz. Hence the breach in the American desert and the Indian frontier made by this earliest of the overland trails.

Overland Trails

The main trail to Oregon was opened before 1840; that to California appeared about 1845; the Santa FÉ trail had been used since 1821. The overland mail of 1858 followed the southern route.

The year 1822 was not only the earliest in the Santa FÉ trade, but it saw the first wagons taken across the plains. The freight capacity of the mule-train placed a narrow limit upon the profits and extent of trade. Whether a wagon could be hauled over the rough trails was a matter of considerable doubt when Becknell and Colonel Cooper attempted it in this year. The experiment was so successful that within two years the pack-train was generally abandoned for the wagons by the Santa FÉ traders. The wagons carried a miscellaneous freight. "Cotton goods, consisting of coarse and fine cambrics, calicoes, domestic, shawls, handkerchiefs, steam-loom shirtings, and cotton hose," were in high demand. There were also "a few woollen goods, consisting of super blues, stroudings, pelisse cloths, and shawls, crapes, bombazettes, some light articles of cutlery, silk shawls, and looking-glasses." Backward bound their freights were lighter. Many of the wagons, indeed, were sold as part of the cargo. The returning merchants brought some beaver skins and mules, but their Spanish-milled dollars and gold and silver bullion made up the bulk of the return freight.

Such a commerce, even in its modest beginnings, could not escape the public eye. The patron of the West came early to its aid. Senator Thomas Hart Benton had taken his seat from the new state of Missouri just in time to notice and report upon the traffic. No public man was more confirmed in his friendship for the frontier trade than Senator Benton. The fur companies found him always on hand to get them favors or to "turn aside the whip of calamity." Because of his influence his son-in-law, FrÉmont, twenty years later, explored the wilderness. Now, in 1824, he was prompt to demand encouragement. A large policy in the building of public roads had been accepted by Congress in this year. In the following winter Senator Benton's bill provided $30,000 to mark and build a wagon road from Missouri to the United States border on the Arkansas. The earliest travellers over the road reported some annoyance from the Indians, whose hungry, curious, greedy bands would hang around their camps to beg and steal. In the Osage and Kansa treaties of 1825 these tribes agreed to let the traders traverse the country in peace.

Indian treaties were not sufficient to protect the Santa FÉ trade. The long journey from the fringe of settlement to the Spanish towns eight hundred miles southwest traversed both American and Mexican soil, crossing the international boundary on the Arkansas near the hundredth meridian. The Indians of the route knew no national lines, and found a convenient refuge against pursuers from either nation in crossing the border. There was no military protection to the frontier at the American end of the trail until in 1827 the war department erected a new post on the Missouri, above the Kansas, calling it Fort Leavenworth. Here a few regular troops were stationed to guard the border and protect the traders. The post was due as much to the new Indian concentration policy as to the Santa FÉ trade. Its significance was double. Yet no one seems to have foreseen that the development of the trade through the Indian Country might prevent the accomplishment of Monroe's ideal of an Indian frontier.

From Fort Leavenworth occasional escorts of regulars convoyed the caravans to the Southwest. In 1829 four companies of the sixth infantry, under Major Riley, were on duty. They joined the caravan at the usual place of organization, Council Grove, a few days west of the Missouri line, and marched with it to the confines of the United States. Along the march there had been some worry from the Indians. After the caravan and escort had separated at the Arkansas the former, going on alone into Mexico, was scarcely out of sight of its guard before it was dangerously attacked. Major Riley rose promptly to the occasion. He immediately crossed the Arkansas into Mexico, risking the consequences of an invasion of friendly territory, and chastised the Indians. As the caravan returned, the Mexican authorities furnished an escort of troops which marched to the crossing. Here Major Riley, who had been waiting for them at Chouteau's Island all summer, met them. He entertained the Mexican officers with drill while they responded with a parade, chocolate, and "other refreshments," as his report declares, and then he brought the traders back to the States by the beginning of November.

There was some criticism in the United States of this costly use of troops to protect a private trade. Hezekiah Niles, who was always pleading for high protection to manufactures and receiving less than he wanted, complained that the use of four companies during a whole season was extravagant protection for a trade whose annual profits were not over $120,000. The special convoy was rarely repeated after 1829. Fort Leavenworth and the troops gave moral rather than direct support. Colonel Dodge, with his dragoons,—for infantry were soon seen to be ridiculous in Indian campaigning,—made long expeditions and demonstrations in the thirties, reaching even to the slopes of the Rockies. And the Santa FÉ caravans continued until the forties in relative safety.

Two years after Major Riley's escort occurred an event of great consequence in the history of the Santa FÉ trail. Josiah Gregg, impelled by ill health to seek a change of climate, made his first trip to Santa FÉ in 1831. As an individual trader Gregg would call for no more comment than would any one who crossed the plains eight times in a single decade. But Gregg was no mere frontier merchant. He was watching and thinking during his entire career, examining into the details of Mexican life and history and tabulating the figures of the traffic. When he finally retired from the plains life which he had come to love so well, he produced, in two small volumes, the great classic of the trade: "The Commerce of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa FÉ Trader." It is still possible to check up details and add small bits of fact to supplement the history and description of this commerce given by Gregg, but his book remains, and is likely to remain, the fullest and best source of information. Gregg had power of scientific observation and historical imagination, which, added to unusual literary ability, produced a masterpiece.

The Santa FÉ trade, begun in 1822, continued with moderate growth until 1843. This was its period of pioneer development. After the Mexican War the commerce grew to a vastly larger size, reaching its greatest volume in the sixties, just before the construction of the Pacific railways. But in its later years it was a matter of greater routine and less general interest than in those years of commencement during which it was educating the United States to a more complete knowledge of the southern portion of the American desert. Gregg gives a table in which he shows the approximate value of the trade for its first twenty-two years. To-day it seems strange that so trifling a commerce should have been national in its character and influence. In only one year, 1843, does he find that the eastern value of the goods sent to Santa FÉ was above a quarter of a million dollars; in that year it reached $450,000, but in only two other years did it rise to the quarter million mark. In nine years it was under $100,000. The men involved were a mere handful. At the start nearly every one of the seventy men in the caravan was himself a proprietor. The total number increased more rapidly than the number of independent owners. Three hundred and fifty were the most employed in any one year. The twenty-six wagons of 1824 became two hundred and thirty in 1843, but only four times in the interval were there so many as a hundred.

Yet the Santa FÉ trade was national in its importance. Its romance contained a constant appeal to a public that was reading the Indian tales of James Fenimore Cooper, and that loved stories of hardship and adventure. New Mexico was a foreign country with quaint people and strange habitations. The American desert, not much more than a chartless sea, framed and emphasized the traffic. If one must have confirmation of the truth that frontier causes have produced results far beyond their normal measure, such confirmation may be found here.

The traders to Santa FÉ commonly travelled together in a single caravan for safety. In the earlier years they started overland from some Missouri town—Franklin most often—to a rendezvous at Council Grove. The erection of Fort Leavenworth and an increasing navigation of the Missouri River made possible a starting-point further west than Franklin; hence when this town was washed into the Missouri in 1828 its place was taken by the new settlement of Independence, further up the river and only twelve miles from the Missouri border. Here at Independence was done most of the general outfitting in the thirties. For the greater part of the year the town was dead, but for a few weeks in the spring it throbbed with the rough-and-ready life of the frontier. Landing of traders and cargoes, bartering for mules and oxen, building and repairing wagons and ox-yokes, and in the evening drinking and gambling among the hard men soon to leave port for the Southwest,—all these gave to Independence its name and place. From Independence to Council Grove, some one hundred and fifty miles, across the border, the wagons went singly or in groups. At the Grove they halted, waiting for an escort, or to organize in a general company for self-defence. Here in ordinary years the assembled traders elected a captain whose responsibility was complete, and whose authority was as great as he could make it by his own force. Under him were lieutenants, and under the command of these the whole company was organized in guards and watches, for once beyond the Grove the company was in dangerous Indian Country in which eternal vigilance was the price of safety.

The unit of the caravan was the wagon,—the same Pittsburg or Conestoga wagon that moved frontiersmen whenever and wherever they had to travel on land. It was drawn by from eight to twelve mules or oxen, and carried from three to five thousand pounds of cargo. Over the wagon were large arches covered with Osnaburg sheetings to turn water and protect the contents. The careful freighter used two thicknesses of sheetings, while the canny one slipped in between them a pair of blankets, which might thus increase his comfort outward bound, and be in an inconspicuous place to elude the vigilance of the customs officials at Santa FÉ. Arms, mounts, and general equipment were innumerable in variation, but the prairie schooner, as its white canopy soon named it, survived through its own superiority.

At Council Grove the desert trip began. The journey now became one across a treeless prairie, with water all too rare, and habitations entirely lacking. The first stage of the trail crossed the country, nearly west, to the great bend of the Arkansas River, two hundred and seventy miles from Independence. Up the Arkansas it ran on, past Chouteau's Island, to Bent's Fort, near La Junta, Colorado, where fur traders had established a post. Water was most scarce. Whether the caravan crossed the river at the Cimarron crossing or left it at Bent's Fort to follow up the Purgatoire, the pull was hard on trader and on stock. His oxen often reached Santa FÉ with scarcely enough strength left to stand alone. But with reasonable success and skilful guidance the caravan might hope to surmount all these difficulties and at last enter Santa FÉ, seven hundred and eighty miles away, in from six to seven weeks from Independence.

When the Mexican War came in 1846, the Missouri frontier was familiar with all of the long trail to Santa FÉ. Even in the East there had come to be some real interest in and some accurate knowledge of the desert and its thoroughfares. One of the earliest steps in the strategy of the war was the organization of an Army of the West at Fort Leavenworth, with orders to march overland against Mexico and Upper California.

Colonel Stephen W. Kearny was given command of the invading army, which he recruited largely from the frontier and into which he incorporated a battalion of the Mormon emigrants who were, in the summer of 1846, near Council Bluffs, on their way to the Rocky Mountains and the country beyond. Kearny himself knew the frontier, duty having taken him in 1845 all the way to the mountains and back in the interest of policing the trails. By the end of June he was ready to begin the march towards Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, where there was to be a common rendezvous. To this point the army marched in separate columns, far enough apart to secure for all the force sufficient water and fodder from the plains. Up to Bent's Fort the march was little more than a pleasure jaunt. The trail was well known, and Indians, never likely to run heedlessly into danger, were well behaved. Beyond Bent's Fort the advance assumed more of a military aspect, for the enemy's country had been entered and resistance by the Mexicans was anticipated in the mountain passes north of Santa FÉ. But the resistance came to naught, while the army, footsore and hot, marched easily into Santa FÉ on August 18, 1846. In the palace of the governor the conquering officers were entertained as lavishly as the resources of the provinces would permit. "We were too thirsty to judge of its merits," wrote one of them of the native wines and brandy which circulated freely; "anything liquid and cool was palatable." With little more than the formality of taking possession New Mexico thus fell into the hands of the United States, while the war of conquest advanced further to the West. In the end of September Kearny started out from Santa FÉ for California, where he arrived early in the following January.

The conquest of the Southwest extended the boundary of the United States to the Gila and the Pacific, broadening the area of the desert within the United States and raising new problems of long-distance government in connection with the populations of New Mexico and California. The Santa FÉ trail, with its continuance west of the Rio Grande, became the attenuated bond between the East and the West. From the Missouri frontier to California the way was through the desert and the Indian Country, with regular settlements in only one region along the route. The reluctance of foreign customs officers to permit trade disappeared with the conquest, so that the traffic with the Southwest and California boomed during the fifties.

The volume of the traffic expanded to proportions which had never been dreamed of before the conquest. Kearny's baggage-trains started a new era in plains freighting. The armies had continuously to be supplied. Regular communication had to be maintained for the new Southwest. But the freighting was no longer the adventurous pioneering of the Santa FÉ traders. It became a matter of business, running smoothly along familiar channels. It ceased to have to do with the extension of geographic knowledge and came to have significance chiefly in connection with the organization of overland commerce. Between the Mexican and Civil wars was its new period of life. Finally, in the seventies, it gradually receded into history as the tentacles of the continental railway system advanced into the desert.

The Santa FÉ trail was the first beaten path thrust in advance of the western frontier. Even to-day its course may be followed by the wheel ruts for much of the distance from the bend of the Missouri to Santa FÉ. Crossing the desert, it left civilized life behind it at the start, not touching it again until the end was reached. For nearly fifty years after the trade began, this character of the desert remained substantially unchanged. Agricultural settlement, which had rushed west along the Ohio and Missouri, stopped at the bend, and though the trail continued, settlement would not follow it. The Indian country and the American desert remained intact, while the Santa FÉ trail, in advance of settlement, pointed the way of manifest destiny, as no one of the eastern trails had ever done. When the new states grew up on the Pacific, the desert became as an ocean traversed only by the prairie schooners in their beaten paths. Islands of settlement served but to accentuate the unpopulated condition of the Rocky Mountain West.

The bend of the Missouri had been foreseen by the statesmen of the twenties as the limit of American advance. It might have continued thus had there really been nothing beyond it. But the profits of the trade to Santa FÉ created a new interest and a connecting road. In nearly the same years the call of the fur trade led to the tracing of another path in the wilderness, running to a new goal. Oregon and the fur trade had stirred up so much interest beyond the Rockies that before Kearny marched his army into Santa FÉ another trail of importance equal to his had been run to Oregon.

The maintenance of the Indian frontier depended upon the ability of the United States to keep whites out of the Indian Country. But with Oregon and Santa FÉ beyond, this could never be. The trails had already shown the fallacy of the frontier policy before it had become a fact in 1840.