THERE WAS Independence on the Missouri River, then eight hundred miles
of twisting trail across hills, plains, and mountains, all uninhabited
save by a few wandering Indians and uncountable buffaloes. Then there
was Santa Fe. On west of it lay nearly a thousand miles of wild broken
lands before one came to the village of Los Angeles. But there was
no trail to Los Angeles. At Santa Fe the trail turned south and after
crawling over the Jornada del Muerto--Journey of the Dead Man--threading
the great Pass of the North (El Paso) and crossing a vast desert,
reached Chihuahua City.
Looked at in one way, Santa Fe was a mud village. In another way, it was
the solitary oasis of human picturesqueness in a continent of vacancy.
Like that of Athens, though of an entirely different quality, its fame
was out of all proportion to its size. In a strong chapter, entitled "A
Caravan Enters Santa Fe," R. L. Duffus _(The Santa Fe Trail)_ elaborates
on how for all travelers the town always had "the lure of adventure."
Josiah Gregg doubted whether "the first sight of the walls of Jerusalem
were beheld with much more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy" than
Santa Fe was by a caravan topping the last rise and, eight hundred miles
of solitude behind it, looking down on the town's shining walls and
cottonwoods.
No other town of its size in America has been the subject of and focus
for as much good literature as Santa Fe. Pittsburgh and dozens of
other big cities all put together have not inspired one tenth of
the imaginative play that Santa Fe has inspired. Some of the
transcontinental railroads probably carry as much freight in a day as
went over the Santa Fe Trail in all the wagons in all the years they
pulled over the Santa Fe Trail. But the Santa Fe Trail is one of the
three great trails of America that, though plowed under, fenced across,
and cemented over, seem destined for perennial travel--by those happily
able to go without tourist guides. To quote Robert Louis Stevenson, "The
greatest adventures are not those we go to seek." The other two trails
comparable to the Santa Fe are also of the West--the Oregon Trail for
emigrants and the Chisholm Trail for cattle.
For additional literature see "Mountain Men," "Stagecoaches,
Freighting," "Surge of Life in the West."
CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New York, 1927.
Historical novel.
CONNELLEY, W. E. (editor). _Donithan's Expedition_, 1907. Saga of the
Mexican War. OP.
DAVIS, W. W. H. _El Gringo, or New Mexico and Her People_, 1856;
reprinted by Rydal, Santa Fe, 1938. OP. Excellent on manners and
customs.
DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1930. OP. Bibliography.
Best book of this century on the subject.
DUNBAR, SEYMOUR. _History of Travel in America_, 1915; revised edition
issued by Tudor, New York, 1937.
GREGG, JOSIAH. _Commerce of the Prairies_, two vols., 1844. Reprinted,
but all OP. Gregg wrote as a man of experience and not as a professional
writer. He wrote not only the classic of the Santa Fe trade and trail
but one of the classics of bedrock Americana. It is a commentary on
civilization in the Southwest that his work is not kept in print. Harvey
Fergusson, in _Rio Grande_, has written a penetrating criticism of the
man and his subject. In 1941 and 1944 the University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, issued two volumes of the _Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg_,
edited by Maurice G. Fulton with Introductions by Paul Horgan. These
volumes, interesting in themselves, are a valuable complement to Gregg's
major work.
INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897. A mine of lore.
LAUGHLIN, RUTH (formerly Ruth Laughlin Barker). _Caballeros_, New York,
1931; republished by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1946. Essayical goings
into the life of things. Especially delightful on burros. A book to be
starred. _The Wind Leaves No Shadow_, New York, 1948; Caxton, 1951. A
novel around Dona Tules Barcelo, the powerful, beautiful, and silvered
mistress of Santa Fe's gambling _sala_ in the 1830's and '40's.
MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, Yale University
Press, New Haven, 1926. Delectable diary.
PILLSBURY, DOROTHY L. _No High Adobe_, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1950. Sketches, pleasant to read, that make the _gente_
very real.
RUXTON, GEORGE FREDERICK. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky
Mountains_, London, 1847. In 1924 the second half of this book was
reprinted under title of _Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains_. In 1950,
with additional Ruxton writings discovered by Clyde and Mae Reed Porter,
the book, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, was reissued under title of _Ruxton
of the Rockies_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Santa Fe is only
one incident in it. Ruxton illuminates whatever he touches. He was in
love with the wilderness and had a fire in his belly. Other writers add
details, but Ruxton and Gregg embodied the whole Santa Fe world.
VESTAL, STANLEY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1939.