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The Santa Fe Trail |
While the Oregon and California Trail was
primarily a route for people to travel to the west, the Santa Fe
Trail was used for trade and to transport military supplies
during and after the Mexican War. Long
before the Euro-Americans "discovered" the road to
Santa Fe, Native Americans had traveled over roughly the same
route on trading, hunting, and raiding expeditions.
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The Santa Fe Trail
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The first American to travel the trail was
William Becknell, who in 1821 led a party of traders to Santa
Fe. Over the next few years many wagon caravans followed
Becknell's route to and from Santa Fe and Missouri.
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In 1825, an official
government survey of the Santa Fe Trail was completed by
George C. Sibley. In order to insure good relations with
the Osage Indians along the
route, a treaty was signed in August, 1825 in Council
Grove. It gave Americans and Mexicans free passage along
the Santa Fe Trail through Osage territory in exchange
for trade goods valued at eight hundred dollars. A few
days later, the Kaw Indians signed a similar treaty
near present-day McPherson, KS.
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About two-thirds of the
trail's eight hundred-mile-length crosses through
Kansas. Thousands of individual and freighting company
wagons traveled in this region from 1821 to1866. By
1842, caravans of fifty to sixty wagons each were
hauling $130,000 in goods over the Trail each season.
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Oxen yoke used on the
Santa Fe Trail is on display at the Kaw Mission.
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Pulled by oxen and mules, the heavy freight trains
traveled three or four abreast for better protection
from the Indians. The ruts they left made the trails
easy to follow.I
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to eight weeks to get from Missouri to Santa Fe with the
wagon trains averaging twelve to fifteen miles a day. In
1848, on a bet, French-Canadian Francis Aubry set out to
prove that it was possible to take three caravans to
Santa Fe in one season. His shortest trip from Santa Fe
to Independence took only five days and sixteen hours,
but he ruined at least six horses.
Trade flowed both ways on the
trail - manufactured goods, especially cloth flowed into
New Mexico in exchange for silver, wool, and donkeys
which traders took back east.
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In 1880, the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad reached Santa Fe, thus ending the
Santa Fe Trail Era. |
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