The people and times of the historic Santa Fe Trail

Traveling the Santa Fe Trail in the early 1800s was high adventure — though sometimes boring, with only seeing the occasional prairie dog breaking the monotony.

There were other animals — buffalo, until they got wiped out, deer, elk and pronghorn antelope, but there were also gnats and mosquitoes, blazing heat, freezing blizzards, hailstorms, flooded streams, strong winds, mud and dust.

And there were the Plains Indians, who were hostile to outsiders invading their ancestral lands. They included the Pawnee, Kiowa, southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, Osage, Kansas (Kaw), Jicarilla Apache, Ute, Pueblo and Comanche.

Sometimes the Santa Fe Trail travelers got lucky. A U.S. Army captain named Wolf wrote in his journal:

“November 3, two men, one woman and two children, the youngest one 3 months old, who were on their way from New Mexico to the states, came into our camp and will await the escorts going to Beach’s ranch before going on.

“They report that the Kiowas had attacked them at the Santa Fe crossing (of the Arkansas), took their oxen and cow and plundered their wagon of eatables and clothing;

“(They) had one of the men bound ready to torture when a friendly party of Cheyennes put in their appearance, released the man and made the Kiowas give back the oxen and cow, with a part of the clothing and provisions, sending the travelers on their way, thankful for their release.”

It must have seemed that the only welcome mat out was from the Mexicans. They loved the trading opportunities, but there were conflicts. It would take another 27 years before there was real peace in the region, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Santa Fe Trail was opened up by trader Captain William Bucknell who took a load of goods from Franklin, Mo., to Santa Fe. Locals were delighted to be able to buy printed cloth, calico and other goods and sell them at high prices in the isolated town. Then he went back to Franklin.

When word got out about trade opportunities, more traders came — as well as U.S. Army soldiers to guard against raiding Indians.

The Santa Fe Trail was not like the Oregon Trail that pioneers used to reach the Pacific Northwest to begin a new life of farming, ranching, mining, timber and other trades. And they didn’t have to contend with hostile Indians.

Though some traveled the Trail hoping to strike it rich in the goldfields in California and Colorado, most of them were traders and military. It became a primary military route to the Southwest, with numerous forts built along the way — Mann, Atkinson, Union, Larned and Lyon.

The Santa Fe Trail generally followed old Indian trails. Then it was used by the Spaniards at the end of the 18th century, followed by the Americans crossing the southwest linking Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe.

Between the end of the Mexican-American War which ended in 1848 and the Civil War, traffic and trade boomed along the Santa Fe Trail.

Then the war went West.

Badly needing money, the Confederates had their eyes on the Colorado and California gold fields, so General Henry H. Sibley and 3,000 Confederate troops left San Antonio and headed for New Mexico, which included Arizona in those days.

The opposing sides met in battle at Valverde along the Rio Grande River south of Albuquerque near Fort Craig. The Yankees couldn’t stop them.

Then the Confederates headed east to capture Fort Union and their store of supplies on the other side of the Sangre de Christo Mountains

At Pigeon’s Ranch near Glorieta Pass, they faced a Union force of 1,300 Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Slough. The Southerners drove them to cover among the adobe buildings at the ranch. The victory was short-lived.

The following day, Union Army Major John Chivington and his troops attacked a Confederate supply train, destroying 80 wagons and killing 800 animals.

Glorieta Pass was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy in the West.

It was a major Civil War battle.

The Confederates retreated to Santa Fe, having lost 36 men killed, 70 wounded, and 25 captured. The Union army lost 38 killed, 64 wounded, and 20 captured.

A week later, the Rebs withdrew down the Rio Grande, ending their goal of winning the West.

Another interesting character of the old Santa Fe Trail was Charles Lucien B. Maxwell, who moved to New Mexico from Illinois in 1834 — before it became part of the U.S. He was formerly a hunter and trapper with the American Fur Company.

He paid $2,745 for a land grant called the Beaubien Grant that eventually gave him ownership of nearly two million acres — the largest land holding in the nation, twice the size of Rhode Island — and he married Maria de la Luz, one of Carlos Beaubien’s six daughters when she was only 15.

“The area is surrounding by breathtaking mountain views, beckoning valleys, streams teeming with fish and hillsides alive with game,” one report said.

The original grant was awarded to Charles Beaubien, a French-Canadian trapper, and Guadalupe Miranda of Taos by Governor Manuel Armijo on condition of encouraging Mexican settlers to come — offsetting the encroaching number of Americans and Indians already there.

Beaubien came to New Mexico in 1832 and married a 16-year-old local girl from a prominent Spanish family and became a Mexican citizen, opening a store in Taos, where Lucien Maxwell occasionally worked.

Maxwell met famed frontiersman Kit Carson, who was working for the American Fur Company, and they became lifelong friends.

Near Cimarron, Maxwell built a palatial ranch home and encouraged his friend Kit Carson to move down from Taos and build a home near him at Rayado. Carson eventually accepted the suggestion, building a smaller adobe house.

Maxwell’s ranch became a center of activity, “where scores of people would often be luxuriously entertained and fed by many servants,” according to one account. “Most everyone, servants, guests, and natives alike, seemed to hold Mr. Lucien ‘Max’ Maxwell in very high regard; as evidenced by the fact that the house, and ‘his desk which was always full of cash, bonds, and treasure, was never locked.

“When one friend suggested that he procure a safe for his valuables, Mr. Maxwell said, “If anyone would dare to steal from me, I should like to catch them!’”

By 1858 at age 40, Maxwell and his family had moved to their new home and ranching headquarters 10 miles north to start the new town of Cimarron, where wagons on the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Cimarron River.

In 1870, Maxwell decided to sell the Grant to a group of financiers, representing an English syndicate for $1,350,000. Maxwell moved to Santa Fe, and then to Fort Sumner, where he died in 1875.

It was at Maxwell’s Fort Sumner home in 1881 that Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid. The outlaw was buried a few feet from Lucien Maxwell at the fort.

The new owners of Maxwell’s Rayado ranch inherited an unresolved problem — squatters who claimed that Maxwell gave them a verbal permission to live on the ranch land.

When the English owners tried to evict them, they fought back in what was called the Colfax County War. Murder and mayhem ensued and local authorities couldn’t control the violence.

Federal troops were called in to restore law and order — including a unit of Buffalo Soldiers. One of them was killed in the fight.

Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the matter by granting a clear title.

The colorful history of the Santa Fe Trail — with all its drama, violence and hardship, and the personalities who made it happen began to an end on Feb. 9, 1880, when the first Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train pulled into Santa Fe.

There would be no more wagon trains, stagecoaches or Indian raids.

The curtain was coming down on a vital and vibrant chapter in the opening of the American Southwest.

On Aug. 24, 1851, Katie Bowen wrote to her mother from Fort Union, N.M., “At last we are at our destination, safe in every particular, in health, and our goods in as good order as anything could possibly be after the hard journey they have had.”

Many who traveled the Santa Fe Trial couldn’t say that.

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Contact Syd Albright at silverflix@roadrunner.com.

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Stealing horses…

All of the Plains Indians were great horse stealers, but the Pawnees were the masters. They knew every trick in the art of camouflage, psychological warfare, sudden attack, and quick retreat with the spoils.

— Kansas Historical Society

Tough life on the frontier…

“August 29, I visited Bent’s Fort and saw his scalped messenger, above described. He is a pitiable sight. Each arm had received arrow wounds. His revolver had failed him entirely.

“The Indians closed in on him, tomahawked him from the rear and then scalped him. His hair was all gone, less a small strip behind his right ear. The tomahawk wound on the top of his head was nearly healed up, a thin gauzy skin had grown over the scalp part, his arm wounds were slowly healing, so that now he can feed himself. He remarked that when well he would lift some of their hair.”

— Capt. Wolf, U.S. Army

Santa Fe’s rich history…

“The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe is the oldest government building in the nation. The Spanish built it as part of a fortress during the winter of 1609-1610. In 1909, it was converted to the Palace of the Governors History Museum which houses exhibits on Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization dating back to the late 1500’s.”

— Legends of America

The Wild, Wild West…

New Mexico had its share of notorious characters — good and bad — including Billy the Kid, Black Jack Ketchum, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett. “Judging by local newspapers, crime was as big an issue then as it is today. From 1870 to 1910, newspapers from Las Cruces to Taos decried the general lawlessness in New Mexico. New Mexico’s ‘Wild West’ period didn’t really end until Gen. John J. ‘Black Jack’ Pershing started chasing Pancho Villa and his men in 1916.”

— quote from Mike Gallagher, Albuquerque Journal

Echoes of the past…

One of the legacies of the 16th century Spanish conquistadores is their language. In some isolated villages in New Mexico, such as Truchas, Chimayo’ and Coyote in the north-central part of the state, some descendants of those conquistadors still speak the Spanish as the conquistadors — spoken nowhere else in the word.

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‘Look for History Popcorn every Wednesday brought to you by Ziggy’s.’

Invitation to readers …

Everyone has a story. Press readers are invited to submit their Community History Popcorn stories (“Tasty little morsels of personal history”) for possible publication. Keep them 600 words or less. The stories may be edited if required. Submission of stories automatically grants permission to publish. Send to Syd Albright at silverflix@roadrunner.com.