The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore

Francisco Coronado. Juan de Onate. William Becknell. Kit Carson. Jedediah Smith. Bent's Old Fort. Fort Union. Fort Larned. Fort Dodge. Raton Pass. Glorieta Pass. Names resounding with history, lore, enterprise, bravery and honor; conjuring up images of treks and trading posts, stagecoaches and scouts, gunfights and gold seekers, cowboys and cavallery regiments, blizzards and buffalo herds, Indians armed to their teeth, army forts, dust, mud, heat, and just about every other cliche in the book of Western storytelling. And, of course, the name that connects them one and all: that of the Santa Fe Trail, the 900 mile-long famous trade route linking Missouri and Kansas with the West until the advent of the railroad in 1880. Already used by Indian traders long before the white man's arrival, the trail was traveled by 16th century Spanish conquistadors Coronado and Onate during their northward advance from Mexico, searching in vain for the famed golden cities of Cibola. But regular trade relationships with the lands further to the east didn't develop until 200 years later, when the French began to send commercial travelers towards what was then known as "New Spain." This took a great deal of courage on the part of the envoys, not only because of the perils of a voyage into largely uncharted territory but also because the Spanish - seeing a threat to their territorial claims and their fiercely maintained trade monopoly in their territory's northern provinces - often imprisoned French and American parties caught south of the Arkansas River, since 1819 the boundary between the United States and New Spain and, as of 1821, the newly-independent Mexico. But Santa Fe merchants welcomed and secretly promoted trade with the U.S., which they saw as a way to get out of the Spanish government's stranglehold on the economy; and after 1821, the new Mexican government actively promoted trade with the U.S. American suppliers of whiskey, food, medicine, textiles and hardware soon gained profits up to 500 percent in the newly-opened market. After the Unites States' substantial territorial gains resulting from the 1846 - 48 Mexican War, which also included New Mexico, the U.S. Army built a number of forts along the trail to secure it against increasingly fierce Native American raids, which however only stopped with the forced migration of the Indian nations to government-assigned reservations in the 1870s, shortly before the trail's history itself came to an end with the arrival of a railroad locomotive in Santa Fe in early 1880. In 1987 - a little more than a century later - Congress designated the Santa Fe Trail a national historic trail. Over the course of its history, the Santa Fe Trail saw some of the most prominent faces of the old West; from William Becknell, whose 1821 trip made the city of Franklin, MO, its first major eastern terminus, to Kit Carson, barely sixteen years old when he started working as a wagon train teamster in 1826, and Jedid

An absorbing, compelling and very readable account on the history of the Sante Fe Trail. From the early beginnings of 1500's Spanish exploration and the founding of Sante Fe by Juan de Onate in 1610, Dary takes the reader through five centuries of the magic and mystique of the Trail. Relationships, many times hostile, between the Spanish, Indians and Americans are very well documented in this descriptive chronology along with tensions between Mexico and the U.S., influences of the Civil War and the railroads, etc. all having significant ramifications on commerce between the two nations. An excellent book and very well researched.

I don't normally take the time to write reviews for books I've read, but this time I couldn't help myself. The author has done a great job of placing a very big slice of history into a single, highly readable volume. The chronological approach to telling the story of the Sante Fe Trail works great and the appearance "onstage" of several well known historical names and places is well done (ie., Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, Fort Leavenworth, etc.). For any lay-scholar of the Old West, this is a must have if only for the notes, glossary, bibliography, and index...but then there's also the great story.As for how the violence between Indians and non-natives on the Trail was portrayed, I saw it as a matter-of-fact approach that was very appropriate. The story was the Trail; almost any attempt to explain the violence would have caused a serious digression of that story. The clash of cultures (and the resulting bloodshed) between European descendants and Native Americans is a dark part of U.S. History, but a part better left detailed in other works.

I thought this was a great book! Dary builds up wonderful images out of a lot of meticulous detail. It is solidly researched; Dary has been a historian (and lover) of the West all his life. That shows, as does his journalistic background as a storyteller. The book is also well-produced by Knopf, with a large number of fascinating illustrations, most from his own extensive collection of Western Americana. The book does need more and better maps, in my opinion--the one on the endpapers is very handy but more pretty than useful. I enjoyed the cumulative effect of his details. True, any one of the paragraphs could be expanded into a history/biography of its own, or a novel, but the purpose here is a comprehensive and readbale history of a major part of the growth of this country, from 1492 to the present day. I recommend it highly!

This is an always fascinating book about one of the arteries that brought drifters, grifters, traders, and builders into the West. Good writing, exciting stories. Real substance. History as it ought to be written!