The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

Overland Trails

The main trail to Oregon was opened before 1840; that to California appeared about 1845; the Santa Fé trail had been used since 1821. The overland mail of 1858 followed the southern route.

The year 1822 was not only the earliest in the Santa Fé trade, but it saw the first wagons taken across the plains. The freight capacity of the mule-train placed a narrow limit upon the profits and extent of trade. Whether a wagon could be hauled over the rough trails was a matter of considerable doubt when Becknell and Colonel Cooper attempted it in this year. The experiment was so successful that within two years the pack-train was generally abandoned for the wagons by the Santa Fé traders. The wagons carried a miscellaneous freight. "Cotton goods, consisting of coarse and fine cambrics, calicoes, domestic, shawls, handkerchiefs, steam-loom shirtings, and cotton hose," were in high demand. There were also "a few woollen goods, consisting of super blues, stroudings, pelisse cloths, and shawls, crapes, bombazettes, some light articles of cutlery, silk shawls, and looking-glasses." Backward bound their freights were lighter. Many of the wagons, indeed, were sold as part of the cargo. The returning merchants brought some beaver skins and mules, but their Spanish-milled dollars and gold and silver bullion made up the bulk of the return freight.

Such a commerce, even in its modest beginnings, could not escape the public eye. The patron of the West came early to its aid. Senator Thomas Hart Benton had taken his seat from the new state of Missouri just in time to notice and report upon the traffic. No public man was more confirmed in his friendship for the frontier trade than Senator Benton. The fur companies found him always on hand to get them favors or to "turn aside the whip of calamity." Because of his influence his son-in-law, Frémont, twenty years later, explored the wilderness. Now, in 1824, he was prompt to demand encouragement. A large policy in the building of public roads had been accepted by Congress in this year. In the following winter Senator Benton's bill provided $30,000 to mark and build a wagon road from Missouri to the United States border on the Arkansas. The earliest travellers over the road reported some annoyance from the Indians, whose hungry, curious, greedy bands would hang around their camps to beg and steal. In the Osage and Kansa treaties of 1825 these tribes agreed to let the traders traverse the country in peace.

Indian treaties were not sufficient to protect the Santa Fé trade. The long journey from the fringe of settlement to the Spanish towns eight hundred miles southwest traversed both American and Mexican soil, crossing the international boundary on the Arkansas near the hundredth meridian. The Indians of the route knew no national lines, and found a convenient refuge against pursuers from either nation in crossing the border. There was no military protection to the frontier at the American end of the trail until in 1827 the war department erected a new post on the Missouri, above the Kansas, calling it Fort Leavenworth. Here a few regular troops were stationed to guard the border and protect the traders. The post was due as much to the new Indian concentration policy as to the Santa Fé trade. Its significance was double. Yet no one seems to have foreseen that the development of the trade through the Indian Country might prevent the accomplishment of Monroe's ideal of an Indian frontier.

From Fort Leavenworth occasional escorts of regulars convoyed the caravans to the Southwest. In 1829 four companies of the sixth infantry, under Major Riley, were on duty. They joined the caravan at the usual place of organization, Council Grove, a few days west of the Missouri line, and marched with it to the confines of the United States. Along the march there had been some worry from the Indians. After the caravan and escort had separated at the Arkansas the former, going on alone into Mexico, was scarcely out of sight of its guard before it was dangerously attacked. Major Riley rose promptly to the occasion. He immediately crossed the Arkansas into Mexico, risking the consequences of an invasion of friendly territory, and chastised the Indians. As the caravan returned, the Mexican authorities furnished an escort of troops which marched to the crossing. Here Major Riley, who had been waiting for them at Chouteau's Island all summer, met them. He entertained the Mexican officers with drill while they responded with a parade, chocolate, and "other refreshments," as his report declares, and then he brought the traders back to the States by the beginning of November.

There was some criticism in the United States of this costly use of troops to protect a private trade. Hezekiah Niles, who was always pleading for high protection to manufactures and receiving less than he wanted, complained that the use of four companies during a whole season was extravagant protection for a trade whose annual profits were not over $120,000. The special convoy was rarely repeated after 1829. Fort Leavenworth and the troops gave moral rather than direct support. Colonel Dodge, with his dragoons,—for infantry were soon seen to be ridiculous in Indian campaigning,—made long expeditions and demonstrations in the thirties, reaching even to the slopes of the Rockies. And the Santa Fé caravans continued until the forties in relative safety.

Two years after Major Riley's escort occurred an event of great consequence in the history of the Santa Fé trail. Josiah Gregg, impelled by ill health to seek a change of climate, made his first trip to Santa Fé in 1831. As an individual trader Gregg would call for no more comment than would any one who crossed the plains eight times in a single decade. But Gregg was no mere frontier merchant. He was watching and thinking during his entire career, examining into the details of Mexican life and history and tabulating the figures of the traffic. When he finally retired from the plains life which he had come to love so well, he produced, in two small volumes, the great classic of the trade: "The Commerce of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fé Trader." It is still possible to check up details and add small bits of fact to supplement the history and description of this commerce given by Gregg, but his book remains, and is likely to remain, the fullest and best source of information. Gregg had power of scientific observation and historical imagination, which, added to unusual literary ability, produced a masterpiece.

The Santa Fé trade, begun in 1822, continued with moderate growth until 1843. This was its period of pioneer development. After the Mexican War the commerce grew to a vastly larger size, reaching its greatest volume in the sixties, just before the construction of the Pacific railways. But in its later years it was a matter of greater routine and less general interest than in those years of commencement during which it was educating the United States to a more complete knowledge of the southern portion of the American desert. Gregg gives a table in which he shows the approximate value of the trade for its first twenty-two years. To-day it seems strange that so trifling a commerce should have been national in its character and influence. In only one year, 1843, does he find that the eastern value of the goods sent to Santa Fé was above a quarter of a million dollars; in that year it reached $450,000, but in only two other years did it rise to the quarter million mark. In nine years it was under $100,000. The men involved were a mere handful. At the start nearly every one of the seventy men in the caravan was himself a proprietor. The total number increased more rapidly than the number of independent owners. Three hundred and fifty were the most employed in any one year. The twenty-six wagons of 1824 became two hundred and thirty in 1843, but only four times in the interval were there so many as a hundred.