Legend has it that when William Becknell rode into Franklin on his return in January , a rawhide bag of silver coins was slashed open and spilled to the cobblestone street, the profits of the meager goods taken to Santa Fe. This Missouri town, and indeed the whole state, caught the fever and the Santa Fe trade was off and running.
Not to be outdone, there is evidence that within the next couple of years, New Mexicans also joined in the trade and made good profits. Over the next twenty-four years, countless men from the Missouri frontier purchased goods, hired hands and headed for Santa Fe. Profits were good, but by the little Mexican province of New Mexico was saturated with goods and the traders then continued down into Old Mexico to the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua; to the towns of Chihuahua, Durango, San Juan de los Lagos, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, and Mexico City, and continued to make money.
Louis and on to New York City and Philadelphia where they would purchase goods, to return home with, to sell. Some New Mexicans would continue over the Atlantic Ocean to London and Paris to get the latest goods for their customers in the Southwest. Cloth of various kinds was the major item of trade taken to the Southwest. Calico, chambray, dimity, flannels, ginghams, linens, muslins, percales, and silks were some of the kinds of cloth included. What was taken back to Missouri were silver coins, processed gold, wool, and a great number of mules.
The silver coins and all the returns from the trade enabled Missouri to thrive when financial depression struck the rest of the country in the period from to The Spanish and Mexican 8 Reales coin was legal tender in the United States until because of its reliable silver content.
Missouri became known for its mules which really came from the southwest. The year brought war with Mexico and the Santa Fe Trail became a route of invasion. The initial invasion was peaceful and successful and the trail then became a military supply route. Military posts were established in New Mexico and soldiers were stationed there. Because New Mexico had a subsistence economy, everyone raised just enough for their families and no extra.
Whatever the military needed had to be brought over the Santa Fe Trail. The army accomplished this by hiring experienced teamsters and green farm boys from Missouri to take the supply-filled wagons to the southwest. Although this arrangement worked, it was awkward and inefficient. On the eastern side of the trail the departure point for most of the military goods became Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri River north of Kansas City.
Here goods were received that had been shipped up the Missouri River by steamboat and then loaded on wagons for the trip to New Mexico. With the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, the southwest was purchased from Mexico by the United States. New Mexico, Arizona, and California now became territories of the United States The army now turned to professional civilian contractors to haul the freight.
Some freighting firms became famous during this period. William Bullard, who had been freighting in New Mexico before the war, turned his business into a professional operation and contracted with the Army. By , a total of 16,, pounds is said to have been carried, 9, men were employed, and 6, mules, 27, oxen and 3, wagons were used. The following chart is from Josiah Gregg's book Commerce of the Prairies.
These American Indians, for the most part, were content to let the caravans travel through their lands. But as more game was killed, as more of the buffalo began to disappear, and as the grass that sustained all animals on the Great Plains grew scarce where the caravans had traveled, the tribes became increasingly concerned.
Their resistance to the wagons traveling the trail increased as lone hunters and small parties were attacked. Eventually, it was all in vain for the ever growing settlements and settlers put more pressure on the Army to subdue and place the Indian people on reservations.
National Park Service. Tragedy and Restoration. Santa Fe National Historic Trail. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Oregon Trail was a roughly 2,mile route from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, which was used by hundreds of thousands of American pioneers in the mids to emigrate west.
The trail was arduous and snaked through Missouri and present-day Kansas, At the beginning of the s, nearly , Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida—land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained Even before Oregon Country—the disputed area claimed in the early s by both Great Britain and the United States—was officially claimed by Congress as a United States territory in , pioneers had been traveling west to explore its bounty.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark Today, he is thought of mainly as the jolly man in red who brings toys to good girls and boys on Christmas Eve, but his story stretches all the way back to the 3rd In , the now-legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap—a notch in the Appalachian Mountains located near the intersection of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee—through the interior of Kentucky and to the Ohio River.
Known as the Wilderness Lewis chose William Clark as his co-leader for the mission. The excursion lasted over In the spring of , a group of nearly 90 emigrants left Springfield, Illinois, and headed west. Led by brothers Jacob and George Donner, the group attempted to take a new and supposedly shorter route to California. They soon encountered rough terrain and numerous delays, and The cowboy played an important role during the era of U.
Though they originated in Mexico, American cowboys created a style and reputation all their own. Soon, many traders , as well as the military, were traveling the route. Both routes followed the same path from Missouri, traveling west to the Arkansas River and following the river into southwest Kansas. At Fort Larned , Kansas, the trail split into two branches.
The Mountain Route was longer but not quite as dangerous, with fewer warlike Indians and more water along the route. Though the shorter Jornada Route, also called the Cimarron Cutoff, provided less water, it saved the travelers ten days by cutting southwest across the Cimarron Desert to Santa Fe. The Cimarron Desert route was shorter and easier for the wagon parties than the mountainous Raton Pass, but travelers risked attacks by Native Americans in addition to shortages of water.
William and Charles Bent, Ceran St. By this time, the trail was being frequently used with more than wagons, in caravans of about 50 departing each spring from Missouri. When the Mexican-American War began, travel and trading along the trail were restricted but, the military heavily used it for transportation of supplies from the Missouri River towns to the Southwest. When the war ended in , trading resumed, and considerable military freight continued to be hauled over the trail to supply the southwestern forts.
Trade was limited again during the Civil War , but by the late s, activity along the trail had resumed. Early Transportation on the Great Plains. Pathways To the West. Primary Menu Skip to content. Santa Fe Trail Map. William Becknell blazes the Santa Fe Trail. Wagon Train on the Santa Fe Trail. Mule Train by Frederic Remington.
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