A TALE OF TWO TRAILS

A Tale of A Tale of TwoTrails TwoTrails

evolution graphics An artist’s depiction of Native Americans watching as wagons move along the Santa Fe Trail. The map shows the major stops on both the trail (shown in green) and El Camino Real (shown in orange).

When El Camino Real When El Camino Real and the Santa Fe Trail and the Santa Fe Trail were joined in the early were joined in the early 19th century, commerce, 19th century, commerce, war, and a mingling of war, and a mingling of cultures followed. cultures followed. Julian Smith Julian Smith

On The AfTernOOn of November 13, 1821, a company of Spanish soldiers came upon a party of six bedraggled American traders south of presentday Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Americans were led by William Becknell, a bankrupt Virginia freighter, who was making a last-ditch gamble to reach Santa Fe, the capital of the Spanish province of New Mexico.

Becknell knew that the Spanish prohibited trade with foreigners and that previous expeditions had landed in jail, their goods confiscated. Spain’s vast empire stretched across Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, but its grip on its northern-most holdings was shaky. There were very few Spanish troops in New Mexico and Texas, and Spain feared it could lose these provinces. Consequently, it punished foreigners, regardless of their intentions, for entering these provinces.

But Becknell also may have known that Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain had ended in success three months earlier, and seen a golden opportunity. Whatever his motives, his plan worked: the Americans eventually reached Santa Fe as businessmen, not prisoners, and Becknell went down in history as the founder of the Santa Fe Trail, a 900mile trade and travel route from Missouri. The trail saw heavy use during the 19th century as control of the region passed from Spain to Mexico to the United States. Santa Fe was also the northern end of El Camino Real, an even older and longer trail that stretched 1,600 miles from Mexico City.

The stories behind these iconic routes are complex, and recent research is showing how they were more than a way for traders to move items from one endpoint to the other. As they connected the Southwest to the rest of the continent, each trail served as a pathway for people and culture as well as goods. They had an impact that outlasted their widely accepted expiration date of February 16, 1880, when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway reached Santa Fe. el CAminO reAl de TierrA AdenTrO, “The Royal Road of the Interior,” ran from the heart of New Spain to the Spanish settlements along the Rio Grande in what would become northern New Mexico. It was in regular use by missionaries, colonists, and traders from the early 17th century through the end of the 19th. “The Camino Real was the umbilical cord for Spanish New Mexico,” says Donald Blakeslee of Wichita State University. “It was the route by which that colony was supplied with all manufactured goods and down which it sent the hides and other products of the frontier.”

From Mexico City, the trail ran northwest through Zacatecas, Durango, and Chihuahua, crossing the Rio Grande at El Paso and following the river north to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The journey was long and difficult, especially over the dreaded Jornada del Muerto, the “route of the dead man,” a 100-mile waterless shortcut away from the

Archaeologist Edward Staski excavated this campsite, known as Paraje de San Diego, located on the northern end of El Camino Real. It was the last campsite before Jornada del Muerto.

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition on a portion of the Santa Fe Trail in the mid 16th century. A horseshoe nail, two crossbow boltheads (left) and two aglets (above) were among the artifacts recovered from one of his campsites near the trail. spring • 2009

Researchers excavate the powder room of the John Sites gunsmith shop in Arrow Rock, Missouri, in 1967. The gun shop was restored and turned into a museum.

Rio Grande between El Paso and Albuquerque. Temporary campsites called parajes were established about every 10 miles for parties to rest, gather water and repair equipment.

In 2004, Edward Staski, an archaeologist at New Mexico State University, led excavations along a seven-mile section of the Camino north of Las Cruces that turned up evidence of modern use. A dense scatter of ceramic pieces, broken bottles, and metal cans at one site may have been the remains of a cattle roundup spot from the early to mid-20th century. “On frontiers, despite people’s best efforts, they tend to do things the same way over and over,” says Staski. For example, hearths at sites along the Camino tended to look alike whether they were from prehistoric times or the 17th century. Tire tracks and car parts show the trail was used as a transportation route through the construction of Interstate 25 in the 1960s.

Most sites along the Camino are “ephemeral,” says Staski, meaning they saw ongoing but temporary use. The resulting scatters of artifacts, spanning acres and centuries, can be difficult to interpret archaeologically, he adds, but on the plus side, they’re seldom looted or disturbed. Despite hundreds of years of use, the Camino itself remained, in a sense, temporary. The Spanish never paved it or built bridges or embankments, and for most of its length it was little more than a well-traveled dirt path, or a braid of multiple paths. “I’m interested in why they never thought it was worth their while to make the Camino into a real road,” Staski says. One reason may be the absence of traditional treasures like gold and silver in the Southwest deserts. From Mexico City, the region seemed like a far-off backwater; diaries and letters from travelers reveal that people didn’t enjoy coming up here. “It was an arduous, dangerous trip,” says Staski “one they thought wouldn’t be financially rewarding.”

That attitude has had a lasting effect. Even as the Camino set the stage for the Southwest’s great cultural diversity, it also may have kept New Mexico—currently ranked 46th in state per capita income—from developing more than it has. “New Mexico has always been poor,” he says “largely because most commodities and money passed through the region [on the Camino] to larger markets in Chihuahua, Durango, and Missouri.”

The archaeological record also suggests more economic interdependence and cooperation along the Camino than many conflict-focused histories record. The Paraje de San Diego, for example, a wellestablished stopover just south of the Jornada del Muerto, has yielded ceramics made locally as well as in northern New Mexican pueblos and

These U.S. dimes were recovered on the Santa Fe Trail in northeast Kansas. One was minted in 1823, the other in 1854. A metal step from a stagecoach or buggy was found at the Havanna Stage Station in northeast Kansas.

Independence, Missouri became one of the major stops on the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830s. This 1850s’ illustration shows a town grown prosperous from commerce.

central Mexico. “These groups had to be in contract with one another, in more than just a hostile way,” Staski says.

AfTer BeCknell’s fAmOus jOurney and Mexican independence, the Santa Fe Trail joined with El Camino Real into a major overland trade route between the Eastern United States, the Southwest, and Mexico. “Becknell’s arrival and welcome changed the function of El Camino Real,” says Blakeslee. No longer supplied by Spain, Mexico embraced trade with the United States, which, in the midst of its industrial revolution, was producing abundant and inexpensive goods. “It was a very big deal in Missouri,” he says, referring to the trail’s Easternmost point.

Clothing and other manufactured goods made their way south as Spanish mules and silver coins moved north. The U.S. had very little hard currency at that time, so its people prized the silver. Mexican merchants were as instrumental to this commerce as their American counterparts. “Anything to make a buck was welcome,” Blakeslee says, including selling whiskey to the Indians. “Some people became quite wealthy.” Becknell wasn’t one of those people; however, he did manage to extricate himself from bankruptcy.

Though he’s credited with founding the trail, Becknell wasn’t the first to travel the route, according to Blakeslee. Eighty years earlier, the French traders and brothers Paul and Pierre-Antoine Mallet had made it from present-day Illinois to Santa Fe. Part of their route through the Rockies corresponded to Becknell’s later path. In 1792, French-born explorer Pedro Vial became the first European to travel the entire length of the trail to St. Louis under orders from the New Mexico governor. In 1806, when Lewis and Clark were finishing up their more famous expedition, the explorer Zebulon Pike led a group of 70 on what would become the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas and Colorado.

Long before that, Blakeslee says, one of the first Europeans ever to see the Southwest ended up on the Santa Fe Trail. From 1540 to 1542, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led 2,000 men on a futile quest to find the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition traveled from western Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande north of Albuquerque and continuing across northern Texas. This part of the route was unclear until the 1990s, when Blakeslee led a series of excavations in Blanco Canyon, about 60 miles northeast of Lubbock. The discovery of about 30 crossbow bolt heads established the Jimmy Owens site (named after a local history enthusiast who helped find it) as a major Coronado campsite. “His was the only land expedition to Texas that carried crossbows,” says Blakeslee. “It’s a slam dunk— the first material evidence to confirm the location of any of the camps on Coronado’s Texas route.”

Other Spanish artifacts included distinctive horseshoe nails, fragments of bridle chains and bits, lead harquebus bullets, and the brass tip of a sword belt with a three-pointed tulip motif. A pair of copper aglets (cord tips) likely belonged to a captain. Blakeslee estimates that five percent or less of

the metal items they found came from Coronado’s party. The rest—mostly fence staples, bullets, buckshot, wire, and tin cans—was left by Indians, sheepherders, ranchers, and the U.S. Army.

After crossing Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle, Coronado continued north to Kansas with 30 hand-picked Spaniards, a few servants, and an unknown number of Mexican-Indian allies. “He crossed the Arkansas River at its southernmost point in the region, and from there to Great Bend he was on the Santa Fe Trail,” says Blakeslee. After reaching Quivira and realizing the native buildings were not made of gold, he backtracked along the same section of the trail.

The sAnTA fe TrAil had many incarnations. In the decades after Becknell’s journey, it was mostly used by traders, but it also served the military. The U.S. government surveyed and documented the New Mexico portion of the trail with the consent of the Mexican government, which had taken control of the territory from Spain. Ironically, during the Mexican-American War (1846-48), it then became a highway for American troops marching to New Mexico. When the end of the war left much of the West in American hands, more and more settlers took the Santa Fe Trail west.

The journey from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe took about eight weeks. Midway through, travelers could choose between the Mountain Route through the Rockies in southeastern Colorado and the Cimarron Cutoff across the grasslands of the Oklahoma panhandle. Travelers had a long list of things to worry about, from deserts and mountains to horrific weather on the open plains. The trail also passed through Native American lands. George Sibley, the Indian

An artist’s depiction of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (on horseback), who led 2,000 men into Arizona and New Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola. These cities were reputed to be bursting with treasure, but Coronado found no gold. Jack Davis, an expert in early frontier guns, demonstrates the method of loading and firing a flintlock rifle at the John Sites gunsmith shop.

agent and factor at Fort Osage, in Missouri, met with tribal chiefs along the trail to dissuade them from attacking travelers. He succeeded to some extent, but there were many accounts of wagons being raided and people killed. “A gun was one of the primary tools you needed on the Santa Fe Trail, not only for protection, but also for food,” says Tim Baumann, an archaeologist with Indiana University. Baumann has studied the history of a 19th-century gun shop in Arrow Rock, Missouri, one of many towns where travelers geared up at the start of the Santa Fe Trail. Missouri gunsmith

The Kansas State Historical Society and the Kansas Anthropological Association teamed up to excavate the McGee-Harris Stage Station in 1995. The station, located in northeast Kansas, was one of the stagecoach stops on the Santa Fe Trail.

John Sites, Jr. made and sold arms in Arrow Rock throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Baumann recently reexamined documents and artifacts from two excavations of the building in the late 1960s.

Sites started out making flintlock rifles, but as the technology advanced he switched to guns that fired percussion caps. “It was like upgrading your computer,” says Baumann. Sites’ handmade rifles, marked with “J Sites” on the barrel or stock, have been found in California, Oregon, Montana, and New Mexico. “What we’re seeing is not just artifacts moving west, but also knowledge and technology,” says Baumann. By the end of the 19th century, though, a flood of cheap massproduced guns left over from the Civil War meant that gunsmiths like Sites were spending most of their time repairing and selling weapons instead of building them.

Many items associated with the gun business were found

maintaining the Trails

A marker on the Santa Fe Trail in central Kansas. El Camino Real De Tierra Adentro and the Santa Fe Trail are National Historic Trails, and they are administered by the National Park Service in partnership with other federal, state, and local agencies. Private organizations such as Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association and the Santa Fe Trail Association also play a role in preserving and interpreting the trails.

But most of the nearly 3,000 miles the trails stretch across is privately owned and beyond the jurisdiction of the park service and its partners. “If a landowner wants to go out and bulldoze his (wagon) ruts, he can do it,” says Harry Myers, the manager of the Santa Fe Trail Association. These public and private organizations try to compensate for their lack of authority by educating landowners about the historical significance of the trails and the threats they face from numerous development projects.

The Archaeological Conservancy is also playing a role in preserving the trails. In 1996, the Conservancy acquired the 80-acre Hole-inthe Rock site in southeast Colorado along the Santa Fe Trail. The site contains trail ruts and the remains of an 1886 stagecoach stop. The Conservancy also owns the Camino Real site, a 17th-century Spanish Colonial ranch that it obtained in 1990. The site is just south of Santa Fe along El Camino Real.

inside the building, including shotgun shells, a rifle butt plate, files, lead shot, and brass cartridges. What’s interesting, Baumann says, is how excavations next to the building in what was probably a powder magazine-turned-trash dump, turned up four fishing hooks, a broken pair of scissors, and two locks. These items show how Sites expanded his business into “more of a general sporting goods store” as early as 1860. Responding to the needs of his customers, he started sharpening knives, repairing locks, and selling fishing tackle.

By now settlers were flooding west along the Santa Fe Trail, and the Oregon and California Trails that branched off it near Gardner, Kansas. Gold had been discovered in California, and new military forts made travel less dangerous. Western Missouri was “the eye of the needle” for all this traffic, says Baumann, and local merchants like Sites responded to the changing needs of travelers over the decades.

“A TypiCAl frOnTier has many more men than women,” Blakeslee says. “The Western frontier had a very unbalanced sex ratio.” He believes this was a factor in marriages between American men and Mexican women, unions that became commonplace. “Having in-laws in the country you are trading in,” Blakeslee adds, “opens doors for you.”

The history of the Santa Fe Trail often focuses on the commercial side, says Minette Church of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, but it’s also important to examine the relationships among the many people who lived along the way. “What we often frame as disinterested Anglo-American commerce along the trail was really embedded in family and community ties,” she says.

Together with archaeologists Richard Carrillo and Bonnie Clark, Church has been delving into the importance of women at two 19th-century settlements along the Mountain Branch of the trail in southeastern Colorado, near the boundary line between the United States and Spain and, later, Mexico. Carrillo and Clark led the investigation at Boggsville, which was settled in 1862, the heyday of trail trade, by Thomas Boggs, son of the governor of Missouri. Boggs’ access to the land came not through his father, but through his Hispanic wife, Rumalda Jaramillo Luna Boggs, claimant to a two-million-acre Mexican land grant through her uncle.

Like their marriage, the Boggs’ house showed a blending of cultures that fit this border region. It was built of adobe blocks, but had a painted façade facing the trail that resembled a stone-built Missouri building. The family of John Powers, who arrived five years later, lived nearby in a house with a courtyard facing east, not toward the trail or the warm southern sun. This was puzzling until Clark suggested that the style reflected the Cheyenne heritage of Powers’ wife Amache (Cheyenne constructions typically opened toward the rising sun). Kit Carson and his Hispanic wife Josepha Jaramillo Carson later joined the settlement.

At the other settlement, Church and students at the field school she directs have found more evidence of cultures and gender roles in transition. In the 1870s, Domacio and Loretta Lopez settled in the canyon of the Purgatory River along the Mountain Branch of the trail. The family flourished, as did others that joined them, and by the late 19th century “they were well aware of the increasing importance of U.S. trade and settlement around them and to the north and east,” says Church. The train had just come through the area, and with it ever more Anglo, Victorian culture. “They saw which way the wind was blowing.”

The Lopezes held onto some traditions: excavations have yielded Spanish style hair combs and a women’s eyeliner pencil. But family memoirs show they educated their younger daughters in English, an unusual practice at the time. They also decorated their home with “Victorian knickknacks,” says Church, like a ceramic figurine in an 18th-century frock coat.

“Like many iconic western places, I think the Santa Fe Trail has at least two lives,” says Church. “There is the mythic trail, the route for aspiring young Horatio Alger types like Becknell to take a gamble, ‘Go West Young Man,’ and make a tidy profit.” And then there is “the nitty gritty reality of the trail” as shown in its artifacts and settlements, “which also attest to an admirable heritage, but one built more on negotiating a landscape of cultural diversity and the way people relied on the communities they created together.”

A woman’s hair comb and eyeliner pencil were recovered from the Lopez family homestead.

JULIAN SMITH is a travel and science writer living in Portland, Oregon. His article “How North American Agriculture Began” appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of American Archaeology.