There is rivalry for the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail."
As early as 1812, when the United States was at war with England,
a party of men on horseback trading into the West, commonly
called the McKnight, Baird, and Chambers party, made their way
west to Santa Fe. There, however, they met with disaster. All
their goods were confiscated and they themselves lay in Mexican
jails for nine years. Eventually the returning survivors of this
party told their stories, and those stories, far from chilling,
only inflamed the ardor of other adventurous traders. In 1821
more than one American trader reached Santa Fe; and, now that the
Spanish yoke had been thrown off by the Mexicans, the goods,
instead of being confiscated, were purchased eagerly.
It is to be remembered, of course, that trading of this sort to
Mexico was not altogether a new thing. Sutlers of the old fur
traders and trappers already had found the way to New Spain from
the valley of the Platte, south along the eastern edge of the
Rockies, through Wyoming and Colorado. By some such route as that
at least one trader, a French creole, agent of the firm of Bryant
& Morrison at Kaskaskia, had penetrated to the Spanish lands as
early as 1804, while Lewis and Clark were still absent in the
upper wilderness.
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