Trading in Santa Fe Plaza - Day 2

The second day of trading in Santa Fe's town square finds the cigar-smoking wagon owner has beaten everyone through customs and is trading his wares ahead of the others, getting the best bargains.  After he hired a translator to figure out local taxes and how to fill out forms, the locals look over his axes and rifles, and a mule driver displays one of his specialties - a blanket from Saltillo.  Other crates hold windowpanes, glass bottles, and mirrors.  The townspeople want the glass to decorate the home with colorful shards.  Some barrels contain tacks, brass nails, butcher and hunting knives, and hoes and rakes.  When the boxes are emptied of their cotton and silk thread, hooks and eyes, needles and pins, spoons and scissors, the boxes will be sold to be made into chandeliers and mirror frames. 

The trader will sell his wagon for as much as it cost and get a $10 a yoke for his oxen.  Operating as a entrepreneur - there are no big companies in this trade - he will bring back blankets, jewelry, mules, (soon the famed Mexican mules), gold dust, coins, and silver bullion to sell profitably in Missouri.

The plaza isn't all business though...under the cottonwoods, boys play "pitarrilla", a type of checkers.  Nearby and laid out on a "jergus" (course wool carpets or blankets), is a display of round loaves of bread, sacks of cornmeal and apples, corn, apricots, melons, grapes, peaches, tomatoes and chiles.  A butcher sells mutton hung from the tree limbs.  The locals know that the small sheep that graze the Santa Fe plateau is nutritious and quite tasty. 

In the shade of the "portales" (arcades that rim the plaza and protect from sun and rain) Pueblo Indians sell cooking and storage pots.  A burro goes by dragging two planks, costly timber that is cut from up in the mountains. 

Overlooking all this activity a soldier stands guard and Albino Perez, governor of New Mexico, watches.  His palace is plain but contains offices, a guard room, living quarters, a prison, a dirt floor ballroom with buffalo hide doors and a rare luxury - glass windowpanes.  In front of the flagpole runs the "accquia", a open ditch that brings water for drinking and washing from a nearby swamp area since the town lacks a sewer system. 

Our trip to Santa Fe is through - time to ride back to Missouri with our profits!

Next time - Moving into Texas
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On this Day in Pioneer History: On August 8, 1839, Nelson Miles, one of the most successful but controversial officers in the Plains Indian Wars, is born on a farm in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile in Santa Fe Plaza

To get an idea of the community of Santa Fe in its infancy, let's visit the town square, or plaza which is the center of commerce and community.

The square is noisy - clanging caravan bells, hawking peddlers, arguing traders, and shouting wagon master arriving in town.  At 10 am everyone is eager to do business before the midday heat drives most inside to the coolness of thick-walled whitewashed rooms or the tree shaded courtyards around the private homes. 

In 1835, the 4,000 residents of Santa Fe welcome the caravans as a break in their isolation imposed by Spanish trade restrictions, lack of roads and navigable rivers.  The Santa Fe locals trade in pinon nuts (from mountain scrub pine), sheep, goats, and coarse wool.  They have a limited outlet for their products.  Their tools are primitive with no craftsmen or manufacturers. 

To the American traders, Santa Fe means safety after weeks of danger and with luck, good profits. One trader wrote "arrived at last in the strange place to which our wild love of novelty lead us - excitement tingled through our veins."

What makes up the town plaza?  As wagons enter the plaza's east side from the road to Pecos, they cross San Francisco Street.  It leads to the cathedral with its shady portales.   Beyond are the snow capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  They stop at the ornate customhouse to unload goods for inspection.  Adjoining the customhouse are the shops, in the rear is a placita (little court) which is shared by private homes.

The hotel welcomes wagon crews with clean beds, bathing facilities, meals of chili and lamb, costly liquor and free nightly dances.  The wagon master goes to the fashionable salon of Spanish gambling, La Tules.  Shrewd, wealthy and bejeweled, the owners is an aristocrat respected in New Mexican society. 

The trader's paymaster pays the crew - some in goods, others in gold coins.  The men, from seven countries speak diverse languages.  The trader's partner, a shopkeeper, checks goods brought to his shop on the plaza's south side.  His store, like the others, have interior wooden shutters and barred windows without panes. 

Next time...more inside the Santa Fe Plaza.
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 4, 1873, while protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, Custer and his 7th Cavalry clash for the first time with the Sioux Indians, who will defeat them three years later at Little Big Horn.

Walker's New Plan

During those 3 months, Walker had not lost a man and only 2 or 3 were wounded by the Apache, none seriously.  Six Apache were killed.  Walker's party was no closer to Arizona than before so Walker devised a new plan - kidnap Chief Mangas.  Now Mangas was about 6'4" - 6'7" by all historical accounts.  The plan:  if white men were allowed to pass through Apache territory without harm, Mangas would be released unharmed. 

Walker did kidnap Mangas, but the military disregarded Walker's plan and killed Mangas.  After that, the military sent troops to kill some 20 Apache.  Walker left Fort McLane  in disgust.

Walker's party stopped to explore the upper waters of the San Francisco River and then on to Tucson in April of 1863.  They came to present day Phoenix and then on to Prescott. By Christmas of 1863, there were so many newcomers in the area that Walker had had enough and relinquished command of the party.  He is recorded as saying "We opened the door and held it open for civilization and now civilization will do the rest."

Next time...Civilized Arizona?

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Today in History:  On January 22, 1870, pursuing American soldiers badly beat Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife (Mountain Star) and his people as they make a desperate bid for freedom. In doing so, the soldiers effectively crushed the so-called Dull Knife Outbreak in Wyoming/Montana.

The Road to Santa Fe

On July 1823, the survey party began working their way across Kansas.  They had no means to make signs to mark their path through the short grass of the flat plains, so they mounded up piles of dirt and rock to mark special points and directions.

150 miles out from Fort Osage they stopped to rest under the last sizable grove of trees, which came to be known as "Council Grove".  Crazy Bill Williams brought 50 Osage chiefs and warriors to the camp for a 4 day negotiation session.  A treaty was signed which gave the men permission for the trail to pass through Osage territory unmolested for $800 worth of goods.

Within a week the team had left Council Grove and Williams again brought the leaders of the Kansas tribe to sign the same treaty.  On September 11, they continued on to the Arkansas River, stopping for 3 weeks (public affairs in those days were done casually and slowly).

It was during this three week period that someone pointed out that they needed Mexico's permission since most of the trip would run through their territory, so the request was sent to Washington and the Mexicans.  It took almost 9 months for an agreement to come from Washington and Mexico which by that time was too late.

Most of those interested in the Santa Fe Road project and they who were financing the work, were no longer interested. Sibley and Williams had left for New Mexico, and by next summer when the men tried to resurrect the project, but the dirt market by then had begun to erode away and the project was deemed insignificant .

Years later Walker commented that though they had not built a true road to Santa Fe or made the trail more convenient, they at least "broke the crust"...