These St. Louis men met the officials of Santa Fé, and were warned out of the country. Naïvely, since they could not trade in New Mexico, they started for the Columbia River, by way of the high mountains of Colorado; and the mountains, of course, stopped them. They fell back on the Arkansas, were caught by the Spaniards, had their goods confiscated, and so lost three years of time as well. Not even this pointed advice as to Spanish preferences served to hold back the west-bound men, and no doubt they sent out some party for Santa Fé every year thereafter, until they had their way, and until the Anglo-Saxon grasp was fixed upon that sleepy old Southwest, which lay winking in the sun a couple of centuries belated by the way.
The Spaniards were suspicious, as are ever the slothful, and they made a practice of imprisoning the whites that got down into their country. They imprisoned Pike, they imprisoned Merriwether, an intrepid trader who reached that country in 1819; and history tells us how, in 1812, they imprisoned the first party of the white traders to venture into New Mexico after the return of Lieutenant Pike, the twelve men who made up the party of Baird, McKnight and Chambers, commonly called the party of McKnight, Beard and Chambers. This gallant little company they kept in the fearsome penitentiary at Chihuahua for nine long and weary years,—a fate terrible enough, one would certainly think, to warn away all other adventurers from a neighborhood so hostile.
As to this first and most unfortunate of the early trading expeditions to the Southwest, that of Baird, McKnight and Chambers, there is first-hand information in the form of a personal letter from J. M. Baird, of Louisville, Kentucky, a grandson of the early trader that helped to lead the way of commerce across the plains. Mr. Baird writes:
“As to the expedition of Baird, Chambers and McKnight, it is often spoken of as that of ‘McKnight, Beard and Chambers.’ Gregg, in his book ‘The Commerce of the Prairies,’ published in 1846 (I think), first mentioned the matter. He derived his information from James Baird’s sons, and they were much disgusted to have him print the name ‘Beard.’ All other writers seem to have derived their particulars from him. James Baird was my grandfather. He was personally known to Lieut. Zebulon Pike, had known him at Fort Duquesne and at Erie. Baird went to St. Louis in 1810, where he again met Lieutenant Pike upon his return from Mexico, and learned from him the possibilities of trade with that country.
“Upon hearing of the success of the Hidalgo revolution, and believing the embargo upon trade with the United States raised, he organized a venture with Chambers and McKnight, left St. Charles, Mo., May 1, 1812, and reached Santa Fé in regular course, to find the embargo rigorously enforced. He was arrested and imprisoned in Chihuahua prison for nine years and three months, until released by Iturbide in 1821. Chambers and McKnight started back at once. McKnight was killed by the Indians on the Arkansas River. Chambers succeeded in getting back to St. Louis. Baird started back two months later, could find no company, and rode alone from Santa Fé to St. Louis. This ride has been credited to Bicknell and one Kennedy or Kendall, but James Baird was the man that did it.
“Baird and Chambers organized a second expedition in 1822. They started too late, and were caught in a blizzard at the crossing of the Arkansas, where their animals froze to death. They were compelled to remain the entire winter upon the island at that place. It was Baird and Chambers’ second expedition that made the caches near there (in 1822), and near where Dodge City now stands. Inman in his ‘Old Santa Fé Trail,’ chapter 3, says Bicknell[[33]] crossed the river at the Caches in 1812. No other caches were made in that vicinity. Bicknell was a trader with the Iatan Indians and did not go into Mexico until after Baird and Chambers’ second venture, which was made in 1822. However, it was through some of Bicknell’s men writing from Franklin, Mo., to my grandmother, in 1816, that she learned of grandfather’s fate, they saying that they heard of it from the Indians.
“Baird, Chambers and McKnight followed the course marked for them by Lieutenant Pike, and that course became the great Santa Fé trail. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé R. R. follows practically the same course. If any one is entitled to credit for the selection of the route, Lieutenant Pike ought to have it. However, my purpose is to ask you to correct the name Beard to read Baird. If one will refer to ‘American State Papers,’ Vol. 4, folio 207, and Executive Papers, p. 197, 8th Vol., 15th Congress, he will see that it is Baird.”
This communication would seem to a certain extent to discount the claims on reputation of William Becknell, generally known as the “father of the Santa Fé trail.” It ascribes the credit for the original selection of the Arkansas River route to Pike, with what justice we may ourselves determine as well as any. Our venturesome Southerners, of the Baird, McKnight and Chambers party, had lain in jail for nine years before John McKnight, the brother of Robert McKnight, in the year 1821, undertook the long journey to Chihuahua, which seems to have resulted in the setting free of all these Americans. Coming back to the United States over the Arkansas River trail, Baird and the two McKnights met the Ohio man, Hugh Glenn, and his associate or friend, Jacob Fowler, who were already at Taos, regardless of the ill-fortune of their predecessors in the hazardous game of prairie commerce. Becknell himself did not start out until 1821, and he did not intend to trade in Santa Fé, but only went thence after he had met some Mexicans on the headwaters of the Arkansas, who persuaded him to take his goods to Santa Fé instead of trading them among the Indians. Hugh Glenn and Becknell were thus both at Santa Fé during the winter of 1821-22.
That following summer Braxton Cooper and his sons, as well as Becknell, made trips to Santa Fé, and it seems to have been on this second trip that Becknell attained the distinction commonly accorded him. He took three wagons through to Santa Fé, and instead of hugging the Arkansas clear out to the mountains, he struck off southwest toward San Miguel, by way of the Cimarron desert, the risky but shorter route to which the later traders adhered ever after, in spite of surveys and all else. It is really only upon the ground of his wagons and this cutoff angle that Becknell is entitled to the glory of his title as “father of the Santa Fé trail.”
Our prisoners, who nine years before had taken the chance of the far-off Southwestern trade, were willing to take another chance, for no sooner had they reached the States than they outfitted and started back again for the Mexican trade. Their second party, that which made the famous caches referred to in the grandson’s letter above, was made in 1822. By that time there was little glory left for any one; and indeed, when we come to sift it, there was never very much glory in any part of the history of the Santa Fé trail. It was not a pathway of heroes. The true hero trail lay farther to the north, as we shall presently see.