The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore.(Review)

The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore

By David Dary

Knopf, 368 pages, $30

"Early the following morning, as the travelers were breaking camp, someone in the group saw a party of Indians approaching from some distance. Fearing the worst, the party quickly forded the river and, once on the other side, prepared to defend itself .... Then the worst did happen. The Indians charged across the river and killed everybody but an eight-year-old girl, whom they took captive."

This passage is typical of David Dary's The Santa Fe Trail, a comprehensive and readable 300-year history of the primary western highway from the Mississippi to the Southwest. Unlike the Oregon Trail, which was principally an emigrant road to the California gold-fields or the rich farmland of Oregon, the Santa Fe Trail evolved over three centuries as strictly a trade route.

The Spanish conquistadors Francisco Coronado and Juan de Onate pioneered parts of the future trail as they probed northward from Mexico in the sixteenth century in a futile search for gold and empire. Coronado, for instance, wandered the desolate plains of present-day Kansas in the summer of 1541 as he sought the legendary gold-paved "Seven Cities of Cibola." Frustrated, he executed the devious Indian slave responsible for guiding his wild goose chase.

By the mid-eighteenth century the French had founded the outpost of St. Louis on the Mississippi and were sending commercial-minded "voyageurs" toward New Spain, particularly Santa Fe, the capital of its northernmost province New Mexico. The Spaniards, fearful of French threats to their territory, imprisoned French traders (and later Americans) who wandered south of the Arkansas River. The Spanish government in Mexico City maintained a harsh trade monopoly in the northern provinces, forcing them to buy merchandise from Spain at exorbitant prices. Santa Fe merchants quietly rebelled, encouraging clandestine trade with the new United States. American merchants prospered in this market, with some foodstuffs, fabrics, hardware, medical supplies, and whiskey gaining them profits of 500 percent.