Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a very thoroughly researched book that tells the tale of the trail -- A commercial trail that linked the American frontier in Missouri with Spanish founded Santa Fe and points south.

The author tells the story from the time of Spanish settlement of Santa Fe through it's abandonment in the wake of the railroad. In its hay-day, the trail linked first two cultures and then the disparate parts of the western United States. The linkage was tenuous and strenuous. Traders took first pack mules then wagon trains through several hundred miles of prairie -- some of it bereft of water and all of it through Indian country.

This book mostly tells how trade bloomed along the trail from the 1820's through the 1860's. This economic detail is well fleshed out by the stories of the many characters that plied the trail or supported its existence. Interesting incidents and first person accounts are liberally strewn throughout the work and give this book its appeal -- otherwise it would be a subject as dry as the short fork to Santa Fe.

I was left with a sense of wonder at the risks these traders and travelers took -- particularly the early ones. Around 1810 -1820, most Americans who reached Santa Fe were rounded up and jailed -- some for five to eight years. Even in the era when the vast majority of early trail blazers failed to return to Missouri, there were always new would- be entrepreneurs ready to set out the next season. Such was the spirit of pioneering Americans and the lure of riches. Even after Spain/Mexico decided to welcome Americans in trade, there remained fairly high chances of succumbing to Indians, weather, or lack of water. The incredible perseverance and relentless pursuit of this open trade route is remarkable -- particularly to a reader of our era.

Although the subject is somewhat dry -- this is a story about economics and transportation -- the author does an admirable job of using interesting characters and stories from the trail to enliven the work.

This is an excellent book for those curious persons who would like to know how the Santa Fe Trail developed. David Dary has written a real history book that is very pleasant and charming while it gives you a lot of facts about the commerce on the Trail. Dary begins with the history of the Spanish exploration of the New Mexico area, the establishment of Santa Fe as a focus for Spanish control over northern expansion, the effect of the Mexican Revolution against Spain, and the increasing interaction with and fear of the Anglos from the East. The commerce between towns in Missouri and Kansas with Santa Fe is described in detail. The importance of Santa Fe as the site for exchange of American goods for Mexican silver money is explained. The eventual decline of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail becomes clear in the descriptions of the American military takeover of Santa Fe, the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, and the shift of transportation from wagon trains to the transcontinental railroad. The book has some amusing anecdotes along the way describing the colorful characters that played a part in the folklore about the Trail. The more recent history from 1900 to 2000 is given less space. The rebirth of Santa Fe as a tourist center is briefly explained but what seems missing is how this town of about 67,000 people has become now the third largest art market in the United States. New York and Chicago have larger art markets but are enormous cities by comparison. There is no mention of the influence of artists,such as Georgia O'Keefe. Perhaps this is because this book is less a history of Santa Fe itself as it is a excellent view following the Trail across Missouri and Kansas to Santa Fe.

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 Jedidiah Smith, who reportedly killed no less than thirteen Comanches before succumbing to their lances near Cimarron Spring in southwestern Kansas in 1831. Events such as the 1862 battle at Glorieta Pass, where Union troops crushed Confederate hopes of taking over New Mexico as a major Civil War prize, and the 1864 Kiowa raid of Fort Larned's entire herd of 172 horses, further fueled the danger-shrouded, mythical status of the trail, its travelers, and the events surrounding both.

David Dary's fascinating "Santa Fe Trail" condenses the trail's history into a little over 300 pages, leaving ample room, however, for the dramatic stories, achievements and failures on which the fame of the "great western highway" is built. Despite its richness in detail, Dary's prose is engaging and easily holds the reader's attention (not surprising, given the subject matter). While it certainly helps to have at least a minimal understanding of the described events' general historic context, the author's narration makes up for any bits and pieces that may have slipped the reader's recollection and also adds numerous lesser-known pieces of information, without neglecting to establish the relevant larger historic framework, such as the development of money trade in North America and the Lewis and Clark expedition, and their respective impact on the development of a trade route into Santa Fe. To a substantial extent, the book draws on primary sources: travel accounts and journals, trade invoices, contracts, newspaper articles, government documents, and more; many of them from Dary's own library - the number of illustrations alone bearing the note "Author's Collection" will be hard-pressed to find their equals elsewhere. (No small wonder: Dary reveals in the introduction that his interest in the trail's history goes all the way back to his childhood.) While a few larger maps might have been desirable - those that are provided are somewhat difficult to read - this is no serious shortcoming; the author's considerable descriptive gifts largely make up for the lack of easily decipherable cartographic devices, and the photographs, drawings, sketches, and paintings supplied throughout the book provide ample food for the reader's imagination in fleshing out the stories' narrative core and visualizing their protagonists. Although not reveling in the often bloody details of the trail's history, Dary pulls no punches, neither in his own summary of the events nor in the selected quotes. For example, he concludes the history of the whites' interactions with Indian tribes along the trail with an excerpt from Charles E. Campbell's "Down among the Red Men" (1928), beginning with the unequivocal statement that "[t]he origin of nearly every war with Indians can be traced to some offense on the part of the white man."

The book ends with a detailed glossary, annotations by chapter, as well as a fourteen-page bibliography: for the serious enthusiast, these alone should make its acquisition a virtual no-brainer. But even a first-time visitor to Santa Fe or any of the cities along the famous trail - heck, even an armchair traveler - will find plenty to marvel, agonize over and enjoy here.

Also recommended:
On the Santa Fe Trail
New Mexico: An Illustrated History (Illustrated Histories)
Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California
Four Corners: History, Land, and People of the Desert Southwest
The New Encyclopedia of the American West

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.

When I started reading this book I was quite disapponited since the first chapter deals with "From Conquest to de Onate, 1492 - 1610" and I found Dary's treatment of this period very superficial, maybe such an introductory chapter was unnecessary; fortunately the book works on an higher level when it deals with the history of the Santa Fe trail. Dary gives a lot of space to firsthand accounts and his way of telling the story gives you the feeling of how the life on the trail was: Dary has caught the essence of the time. The number of drawings, photographs and even tables of the merchandise shipped to Santa Fe from Missouri is astounding and provides further involvment in the reading.
I think this book will appeal to every history buff who is interested and/or fascinated by the Spanish South West.

What should have been an exciting book about a place central to the mythology of the West is instead a boring compendium of facts.
Dary commits the cardinal sin of storytelling by not placing his details and facts in a narrative context. His book is essentially a time-line on which he hangs dates, names and numbers like so much laundry left to dry. There is no perspective, drama or insight. This book was a big disappointment.

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!

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.

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!

I found this book to be very rewarding and interesting, but not without fault. I found the lack of maps (or the absence of a map with more of the placenames mentioned) in the book to be very annoying - and I confess I got geographically lost at some points. I found the book very well researched and some of the stories and anecdotes very entertaining. In fact, I wished that there could have been room for more traveller's stories within the book. I must say that I got a bit disorientated in the middel of the book but it came together well. The additon of many photographs (rare in a book of this type) was a fantasic bonus and really added to the enjoyment of the book. Overall a highly entertaining and educational book but would have been so much better with the addition of more detailed maps.