Westward Bound on the Santa Fe Trail

ENG 3510
Spring 2003

At the dawn of the 19th century, America was still a young nation home to new freedoms, new ideas, and everyday heroes working towards a new life. Many of these everyday heroes blazed their way into the uncharted American frontier through exploration, innovation, and fortitude, laying the foundation for future growth and development. The Santa Fe Trail, an example of this development of a frontier territory, was forged by pioneering individuals looking for a way to open trade between two cultures. Thousands of hooves and wagon wheels pounded into the earth between 1820 and 1880, a thousand different stories in their wake. The method in which the Trail was formed was violent; yet somehow, history has cast its romantic spell on scholars and non-scholars alike. Modern day professors, researchers, and poets have all found some connection with the past, with the heroes of the Santa Fe Trail. This was a time full of excitement, change, danger, and also possibility.

Up until the 1820s, Spanish rule dominated Mexico and a large part of what is today known as the western and southwestern United States. Attempts by Anglo-American frontiersmen and trappers were made in the early 1800s to initiate trade with the Spanish empire, but to no avail. Spain had a strict policy against foreign trade. The majority of these frontiersmen wound up in Mexican prisons for their attempts at economic trade. According to Leo Oliva's 1967 book, Soldiers on the Santa Fe Trail, Americans as a whole did not even realize that Santa Fe held potential for trade until an 1810, when an American who had been imprisoned for trading with the Mexicans released a detailed publication. The desire for trade was reciprocated by the Mexicans, but not by the Spanish. Americans could provide the manufactured goods that Mexicans desperately wanted. However, until Mexico declared independence from Spanish rule, neither party could engage in commerce with the other without fear of punishment.

In 1821, William Becknell left Franklin, Missouri, with a mule train, a team of men, and intentions of doing business with Indians. Since he found no Indians, he and his team traveled nine hundred miles across dry prairie land into what they believed to be Spanish territory. Becknell decided that if they couldn't find trade with the Indians, then they might as well try with the Mexicans. On the outskirts of Santa Fe, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America, Becknell's team learned the happy news that Mexico had won its independence from Spain. Mexican guides led the pack train into Santa Fe, where Becknell and the Mexican citizens conducted the historical first legal trade between their two countries.

According to Seymour Connor and Jimmy Skaggs in their book, Broadcloth and Britches: the Santa Fe Trade, previous "Santa Fe adventurers had used horses, mules, and ox-drawn wagons … They had found their way across the plains by a variety of routes, but a definite trail, with modifications, was beginning to emerge across the prairie vastness." However, it wasn't until Becknell made his second trip to Santa Fe, in 1822, that the rest of the country realized the enormous trade potential Santa Fe offered, and what was to become known as the Santa Fe Trail was born.

Becknell's business success and the trail he forged between Missouri and New Mexico cleared the way for other entrepreneurs to try their luck. The following decades saw the Santa Fe Trail hold as much as seventy-five percent of all traffic to the New Mexican Territory. Trail Dust: a Quick Picture History of the Santa Fe Trail indicates that the trail was one of the only few roads with terrain suitable for wagon travel.

Many travelers of the Santa Fe Trail discovered a road wrought with new adventures and devastating hardships. In the 1820s, the U.S. government organized treaties with several native Indian tribes along the Trail. "Unfortunately," says Morris Taylor in First Mail West: Stagecoach Lines on the Santa Fe Trail, "similar agreements were not reached with the Plains Indians further west along the Arkansas River and south of it. Attacks on trader caravans increased in scale and frequency, but pleas to Congress brought no results." Limited military protection was available to travelers, and it was several years before the first military fort was constructed alongside the Trail. As a result of the frequent Indian attacks, traders were forced to form large wagon trains as a means of protecting their goods, their cattle, and their lives.

The severity and frequency of Indian attacks throughout the 1820s had many less-adventurous traders wary to set out on the Trail. The chance that they would lose their cargo, or even their lives, was too high. Caravan sizes began to dwindle. In 1829, in response to this threat to the booming trade route, President Andrew Jackson authorized the use of military escorts for wagon trains traveling along the Santa Fe Trail. However, the escorts were only authorized to go halfway to Santa Fe. This partial protection allowed traders who had grown fearful of the Trail to feel safe enough to travel the Trail with their military escorts.

By the 1840s, the Santa Fe Trail had become the established route west with two primary routes: a longer route through the mountains and a shorter, dryer Cimarron route. However, wagon trains still faced many dangers, as M. Katherine Heinrich explains in her 1996 article, "Trail of Destiny." A combination of "[t]wo gold rushes and expanding trade had increased traffic" along the Trail as well as the tensions between Anglo-Americans and Indian tribes. "[T]reaties were violated by both sides," says Heinrich. As a result of the U.S.-Mexican War and increased violence between Indians and Anglo-Americans, several more military forts were constructed along the Trail, starting in 1851. The first such construction was Fort Union, which provided Army escorts for caravans on the Trail. At the same time, it also increased the need for supplies and therefore the level of traffic on the Trail.

In spite of all this local unrest, the greatest danger traders faced often came from Mother Nature. Morris Taylor describes some of the extremes with which travelers were faced: "[d]rought, heat, flash floods, [and] high winds." In the annotated collection, On the Santa Fe Trail, letters, journal entries, and narratives also provide reports of the severe winter storms common on the plains. One entry, a letter to the governor of the Territory of New Mexico, details the trials and tribulations of individuals who had attempted to cross the Santa Fe Trail in the winter. In 1849, the letter reveals, a company of twenty wagons was suddenly overcome by a strong snowstorm. Within hours, all of the animals had died and high snowdrifts surrounded the covered wagons. When the storm finally ended, the men were forced to use their wagons for kindling and had to wait until spring to continue onward. Other wagon trains frequently suffered not only the loss of cattle and supplies but the loss of human life as well. In the 1850s and 1860s, several non-military forts were established. These were places where traders could stop to wait out a winter storm, replenish supplies, find water, or simply rest a bit.

As a result of military posts, the lure of Western gold, and the desire for expansion, traffic along the Santa Fe Trail increased to unforeseen heights. Trade with Santa Fe boomed, yielding yearly figures in the millions. Indian attacks still occurred sporadically throughout the 1850s, but by the late '60s, many tribes were forced onto reservations and the fear of attack grew less and less. Gene and Mary Martin's Trail Dust names February 16, 1880, as the date on which the Santa Fe Railroad reached Santa Fe, New Mexico. The arrival of the railroad irrevocably transformed the countryside and marked the death of the Santa Fe Trail. Gone were wagon trains as the preferred method of transportation. Gone were the fears of being caught in a deadly flash flood or surrounded by a group of angry Jicarilla Apaches. Here to stay was a fast, safe, and efficient way to transport goods across the plains. The Santa Fe Trail was officially closed in 1880, and the surrounding forts slowly followed one by one.

Today, the Santa Fe Trail exists as the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. In some places, wheel marks are still visible where history was pressed upon the plains. The individuals who dared to follow that long, hard trail without regular water, firewood, or game, who saw the future in the dry prairie grass countryside, are as much heroes as the Wyatt Earps and Bat Mastersons of Wild West lore. Today, conservation organizations such as the Santa Fe Trail Association (http://www.santafetrail.org/) are working to ensure that William Becknell - now called "the Father of the Santa Fe Trail" (http://www.ku.edu/heritage/trails/sfthist.html) -- and the other pioneers of the Santa Fe Trail are not forgotten. History is oftentimes full of pain, hardship, and sorrow. The history of the Santa Fe Trail is no exception. The rewards of the Trail are so enormous and have had such an important national impact, that it is easy to forget the people and places involved in its formation and progress. It is crucial that they not be forgotten, or we may risk losing our connection with the past.

Works Cited

Connor, Seymour V. and Jimmy M. Skaggs. Broadcloth and Britches: the Santa Fe Trade College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977.

Heinrich, M. Katherine. "Trail of Destiny." National Parks July-August 1996 v70 n7-8 p46.

Martin, Gene and Mary. Trail Dust: a Quick Picture History of the Santa Fe Trail 3rd Edition Colorado Springs: Littlehorn Press, 1972.

Oliva, Leo E. Soldiers on the Santa Fe Trail Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Santa Fe Trail Association. Last Updated 20 November 2002. Last Accessed 7 February 2003. http://www.santafetrail.org/

"Santa Fe Trail History." Kansas Heritage Group Websites Last Updated 20 December 1996. Last Accessed 7 February 2003. http://www.ku.edu/heritage/trails/sfthist.html

Simmons, Marc Ed. On the Santa Fe Trail Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986.

Taylor, Morris F. First Mail West: Stagecoach Lines on the Santa Fe Trail Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971.