Captain William Becknell
The first successful
venture to Santa Fe over the Santa Fe Trail was made by Captain William
Becknell. With him, according to Gregg, were "four trusty companions."
They left Arrow Rock, on the Missouri, near Franklin, but in Saline
County, September 1, 1821. On the 13th of November they met a troop of
Mexican soldiers, who prevailed upon them to voluntarily go, in their
company, to Santa Fe, whither they were returning. At San Miguel they
found a Frenchman who acted as interpreter for them. They were accorded a
friendly reception at Santa Fe, and provided the facilities necessary to
dispose of their goods. These sold at such rates as astonished the
Missourians, calicoes and domestic cotton cloth bringing as much as three
dollars a yard. The enterprise proved most remunerative. The party set out
on the return journey on the 13th of December and reached home in
forty-eight days.
That adventure may be said to have established the Santa Fe trade, and
Captain Becknell had justly been called the father of the Santa Fe Trail,
for that which he followed was accepted as The Trail from the Missouri
River to Santa Fe.
The favorable termination of the trading-journey of Captain Becknell being
extensively told on the borders of Missouri, others determined to engage
in that commerce. Colonel Benjamin Cooper organized a company which left
Franklin for Santa Fe early in May, 1822. His nephews, Braxton, and
Stephen Cooper, were members of the party, which numbered some fifteen
souls. They carried goods to the value of some five thousand dollars to
Taos, using pack-horses. The result of the expedition must have been
satisfactory for the Coopers remained in the trade for some years, Braxton
Cooper meeting his death at the hands of the Comanches some years after
this first trip across the Plains.
Captain Becknell was resolved to continue in the trade which had given him
such good returns. Within a month after the departure of Colonel Cooper he
again took the trail from Franklin to Santa Fe. The value of his cargo was
about five thousand dollars, and there were thirty men in the expedition.
On this journey he abandoned the use of packhorses and used for his
transportation, wagons drawn by mules—the first wagon-train over the Santa
Fe Trail and the first to cross the Great Plains. It was four years before
Ashley took his wheel-mounted cannon into the valley of the Great Salf
Lake, eight years before Smith, Jackson & Sublette went into the Wind
River country with wagons, and ten years before Captain Bonneville drove
wagons into the valley of Green River. This first caravan to depart from
the usual means of transportation used three wagons.
This second expedition of Captain Becknell was the pioneer party over the
Cimarron Route of the Santa Fe Trail. Captain Becknell had, through his
travels, conceived the true geography of the Southwest. It was plain to
him that the nearest way to Santa Fe from the Arkansas River was to the
southwest by the Cimarron. When he had arrived at that point afterwards
known as the "Caches" he turned south. He was not familiar with the
country which he was entering. It bore a desert aspect and proved entirely
destitute of water between the Arkansas and the Cimarron. The supply
carried in canteens was exhausted at the end of two days. It seemed that
they were destined to die of thirst on those parched and blasted plains.
They killed their dogs and out off the ears of their mules to drink the
blood, but this desperate expedient served only to aggravate their
suffering. The mirage taunted them with the appearance of water rippling
against the shores of false lakes. They had, however, come near the
Cimarron without knowing it. They resolved to turn about and try to regain
the Arkansas—something they never could have done. In the last extremity,
when despair was settling upon them, some of the party observed a buffalo
coming up from a depression they had not before seen. It seemed to come up
as from the depths and stand upon the burning plain with distended
sides—as though gorged with water. It was immediately killed and opened.
The stomach was filled with water taken but a few minutes before from the
Cimarron. This filthy water was drunk as nectar from paradise. Search was
at once made for the stream whence had come this lone providential
buffalo, and the Cimarron was found. Water was carried back by the
refreshed travelers to those perishing on the desert, and the party was
saved. The journey was continued over that route, and water was
fortunately found in quantities sufficient to enable the party to reach
San Miguel.
The misfortunes of the party under Baird, which went out in 1812, the
members of which were imprisoned so many years at Chihuahua, did not
quench the passion for trade over the Plains in their leader. In 1822 he
induced some adventurers at St. Louis to join him in taking a trading
expedition over the Santa Fe Trail. He was joined also by Samuel Chambers,
who had aided in securing the cargo to be carried, and who had descended
the Canadian in 1821. The expedition consisted of some fifty men and an
ample supply of horses and mules. It left Franklin late in the season and
was overtaken by severe weather on the Upper Arkansas. It took refuge on
an island in that river, no doubt for the reason that it was covered with
willow and cottonwood timber. So rigorous did the winter prove that these
men were compelled to remain there three months, and most of their animals
perished from exposure and starvation. This calamity left them without the
means to carry their merchandise into New Mexico. They were under the
necessity of concealing their goods there while they went to New Mexico
for horses and mules to carry in their lading. They left the island and
went up the north bank of the river some distance where they dug pits or
"caches" in which they placed their goods, covering them in very
carefully. They then went to Taos, where they secured the necessary
animals, with which they returned and on which they packed their
merchandise to that town. The several pits were left unfilled when the
goods were removed, and they stood open there on the Trail for many years.
In Gregg's day they were still open and their walls were covered with
moss. They came to be a marking point on the Trail, and this point was
known as the "Caches." The "Caches" were about five miles west of the
present Dodge City, Kansas.
In the year 1823, there is record of but one expedition from Missouri to
Santa Fe. Early in May Colonel Cooper left Franklin with two packhorses
laden with goods valued at two hundred dollars. He returned the following
October with four hundred "jacks, jinnies, and mules" and some bales of
furs.
Gregg erroneously dates the commencement of the Santa Fe trade from the
year 1824. And he falls into another error in saying that the first wagons
were used in the trade that year. At the Franklin Tavern, about the first
of April, 1824, there was a meeting to discuss the trade to Santa Fe. The
point of assembly for the expedition that year was fixed at Mount Vernon,
Missouri, and the time was set for the 5th of May. Each man was to carry a
good rifle, a dependable pistol, four pounds of powder, eight pounds of
lead, and rations for twenty days. The expedition was composed of
eighty-one men, one hundred and fifty-six horses and mules, and
twenty-five wagons. Thirty thousand dollars was the value of the goods
carried. The expedition started on the 15th of May, 1824, crossing the
Missouri about six miles above Franklin. The organization for the long
journey was effected as soon as the caravan was well under way. A. Le
Grand was elected Captain. M. M. Marmaduke, later Governor of Missouri,
was one of the party. The Arkansas River was reached on the 10th of June,
and the expedition arrived at Santa Fe on the 28th day of July. The
financial results of the venture were satisfactory.
It is not necessary to the scope of this work to present an account of
every expedition over the Santa Fe Trail, and it is not the intention to
do so. The design is to give a historical review of the Trail which will
furnish the student or casual reader of history such information as will
establish in his mind a clear but not a detailed outline of this important
highway of the Plains.
By the year 1825 the Santa Fe trade had assumed sufficient proportions to
attract the attention of Congress. There was also a growing apprehension
of the wild Indians of the Plains. While there had been no trader killed
on the Trail and no robberies of enough importance to report, there was a
gathering of Indians along the way, and it was feared that outrages would
be committed. Congress, in the winter of 1824-25, passed a bill (approved
March 3, 1825) authorizing the President to have the Santa Fe Trail marked
from Missouri to the frontiers of New Mexico. The Commissioners appointed
to carry that act into effect were enjoined to secure the consent of the
Indians whose lands were infringed, to the survey and marking of the road.
For that purpose a treaty was entered into, at Council Grove, between the
Great and Little Osages and the Kansas Indians on the 11th day of August,
1825. The object of the treaty and what resulted from it will be best
shown by the instrument itself. There were in fact two treaties—one with
the Osages and one with the Kansas. As they are identical in terms, except
as to the preliminary paragraphs, only that with the Osages is given.
