Trading Caravan Style

The Spring of 1824 found all the Missouri traders bound for Santa Fe agreeing to travel in one well-defended caravan as protection against hostile Indian raiders.   The results were impressive - Indian raiders kept away, and goods worth $35,000 brought a return of $190,000 in gold, silver, and furs.  This caravan style of trade became the norm from then on except for a temporary halt during the Mexican war.  Even larger caravans made the annual trek, eventually expanding to include Taos and market in the state of Chihuahua.

By 1831 the caravan contained 100 wagons and 200 men.  Congress authorized payments to the Osage and Kansa Indians to ensure safe passages.  Occasionally military escorts were dispatched to help fend off the Comanche who would attack the wagons and run off with precious livestock.

Nature was an even greater danger.  Rockslides often made the mountain route a nightmare.  The shorter Cimarron Cutoff had it own horrors -intense heat, mirages, and clouds of choking alkali dust.  Overnight spring rains turned  streams into mile wide torrents and transformed dusty flatland in hip deep oceans of mud.

The New Mexican welcome wore thin as well.  The governor of Santa Fe and his poorly paid subordinates were empowered to charge traders whatever custom duties the traffic would bear.  Traders never knew until they left Santa Fe how much profit they would be allowed to take with them.  Bribing and smuggling were very common.  The Americans, for the most part, were determined to give up as little as possible for what one bitter skinner called "the sole use and benefit of his obesity, the Governor".

Next time - Things get rowdy in Santa Fe
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Today in Pioneer History: On June 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Santa Fe - Quaint, Trading Town

Santa Fe was a quiet town of flat-roofed adobe houses of 3000 in 1821.  It was the commercial center of the Rio Grande Valley for 40,000 ranchers and estate owners.  Prior to 1821 the Spanish had always dealt harshly with those few Americans who tried to do business in Santa Fe - even jailing or fining them heavily as well as confiscating their goods.

An accidental meeting in 1821 re-opened commerce in Santa Fe and also signaled the beginning of the end of the Spanish speaking Southwest.  On September 1st William Becknell left Franklin, Missouri with a party of 20 frontiersmen intending to visit the Plains Indians and swap manufactured goods for Indians pelts and horses.  In the Raton Pass,  the Americans assumed that jail and confiscation would follow when they were confronted by a party of Spanish speaking soldiers.  However, the soldiers were extremely cordial, explaining that Mexico had just overtaken the Spanish rule and they were eager for friendly contact with the US.  The American traders would be more than welcome in Santa Fe.

Becknell and his men wee delighted by their good fortune and hurried off to Santa Fe, receiving a warm welcome from its citizens.  The Becknell party returned to Missouri in 1822 carrying saddlebags of Mexican silver dollars.

Becknell set forth again the following spring with three heavily loaded wagons.  This time due to his heavy wagons he chose to go south of the former route to blaze the rather flat Cimarron Cutoff.  It was a dangerous decision which almost cost his entire party their lives.  While crossing the 50 mile Cimarron Desert his party ran out of water and it was only by drinking the liquids from a freshly killed buffalo that they survived at all. 

Raiding Indians also plagued the party of their journey.  The path Becknell took became known as the Santa Fe Trail, stretching some 800 miles from the border of Missouri to New Mexico.

Next time...the Wagon Caravans of Santa Fe

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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On July 25, 1832, the first recorded railroad accident in U.S. history occurs when four people are thrown off a vacant car on the Granite Railway near Quincy, Massachusetts. The victims had been invited to view the process of transporting large and weighty loads of stone when a cable on a vacant car snapped on the return trip, throwing them off the train and over a 34-foot cliff. One man was killed and the others were seriously injured.