"Those people want us. But the Spanish authorities are angry and tax us as they used to tax the traders at New Orleans. The people beg us to disregard their tyrannous rulers,—they must have goods."
In 1817 young Auguste Chouteau tried it, and was cast into prison and his goods confiscated.
"What wish you?" demanded the Spanish Governor, in answer to repeated solicitations from the captive.
"Mi libertad Gobernador."
Wrathfully they locked him closer than ever in the old donjon of Santa Fé.
"My neighbour's son imprisoned there without cause!" exclaimed Governor Clark. All the old Spanish animosity roiled in his veins. He appealed to Congress. There was a rattling among the dry bones, and Chouteau and his friends were released.
And now, on the 15th of May, 1824, eighty men set out in the first waggon train, with twenty thousand dollars' worth of merchandise for the isolated Mexican capital. In September the caravan returned with their capital increased a hundred-fold in sacks of gold and silver and ten thousand dollars' worth of furs.
The Santa Fé trade was established never to be shaken, though Indian battles, like conflicts with Arab sheiks of the desert, grew wilder than any Crusader's tale. Young men of the Mississippi dreamed of that "farther west" of Santa Fé and Los Angeles.
"We must have a safe road," said the traders. "We may wander off into the desert and perish."
In the same year Senator Benton secured an appropriation of ten thousand dollars for staking the plains to Santa Fé.