The Santa Fe Trail - Part 1

By Dan R. Conway

(Originally printed in the Hysham Echo on March 17, 1927)

One hundred and twenty-four years ago, when the United States government purchased from Napoleon that vast domain known as Louisiana Territory, this acquisition was not valued very highly for anything other than a strategic possession. By even the most shrewd statesmen in those days, it was for commercial purposes a valueless asset. Even after Captains Lewis and Clark had found their sought-for route to the Pacific the face value of the land west of the Mississippi did not increase save for its possibilities through trade in furs. However, a century ago, fur was gold in those sections then known as the frontier; and the news that fur bearing animals existed in abundance in the Rocky mountain region lured many an intrepid spirit into the wilderness. New companies were organized and their emissaries were sent up the Missouri and into the heart of the great plains country to establish forts and solicit trade with the savages.

The Free Trappers
Lewis and Clark had, through the success which had attended their daring enterprise, taken down the bars of horror which had attended the mention of the western region, and thereby opened up a new field for adventure. In addition to the great new companies, there went into the Far West a peculiarly individual class of adventurers to hunt and trap and explore on their own account. These were the free trappers and of all the motley throng which sallied forth to defy the ever present dangers of the wild new land, they were the most romantic and, indeed, the most important when the accomplishments that have attended the making of history in the Old West are considered.

These men accounted to no “boss.” They were what might be termed the “free lances” of the fur era. Each of them went forth into the wilderness to fight his own fight and to survive or perish as the fruits of his endeavors might devise. Traveling alone, or in small bands, they proved themselves to be men picked by nature for great enterprises and great needs.

Lured by Adventure
Theirs was not a mission aimed at gain for its own sake. To the free trappers, a pack of beaver constituted but a mere gambler’s stake to be riotously squandered after the fashion of a “drunken sailor.” Their ambitions, their conquests and their accomplishments emerged from an impelling passion for that absolute freedom which can be enjoyed only in a state of nature. Of all the race that comes within the scope of “pioneers”, these men took greater risks, endured harshest vicissitudes, and severed themselves most completely from the civilization in which they had been born. Caparisoned in the wild attire of their fur cap, they roamed far and wide over deserts and mountains seeking out the inhospitable wilds, following rivers to their sources, surmounting jagged mountains, exploring a boundless territory and “ever blazing new trails.”

It was these traders and trappers who established the first routes over which primitive commerce could be conducted. They were the path finders of the West, and when the caravans of trade and of emigrant trekked the plains and mountain defiles in the years that followed the traveled paths that were laid out by these early-day free lances.

Were the Trail-Blazers
Thus, when we consider the Louisiana Purchase in the light of present day development, we cannot but appreciate the important bearing the free trapper and trader have had upon the molding of history in the old west. And, perhaps in no other section of the country west of the Mississippi river was as common and romantic a setting on the stage whereon was enacted the drama of the earliest pioneer era, than in the great southwest.

It was but a little more than a century ago that there existed west of the Mississippi river but one established and regularly traveled route over which could be conducted the fur trade, the sole commercial activity of the wilderness. This was the famous Santa Fe Trail. Print this post