The Old Santa Fe Trail by Henry Inman

Author:Henry Inman [Inman, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536919806
Google: SCwBvgAACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2016-08-06T00:22:46+00:00

CHAPTER XIV. TRAPPERS.

Table of Contents

The initial opening of the trade with New Mexico from the Missouri River, as has been related, was not direct to Santa Fe. The limited number of pack-trains at first passed to the north of the Raton Range, and travelled to the Spanish settlements in the valley of Taos.

On this original Trail, where now is situated the beautiful city of Pueblo, the second place of importance in Colorado, there was a little Indian trading-post called "the Pueblo," from which the present thriving place derives its name. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad practically follows the same route that the traders did to reach Pueblo, as it also does that which the freight caravans later followed from the Missouri River direct to Santa Fe.

The old Pueblo fort, as nearly as can be determined now, was built as early as 1840, or not later than 1842, and, as one authority asserts, by George Simpson and his associates, Barclay and Doyle. Beckwourth claims to have been the original projector of the fort, and to have given the general plan and its name, in which I am inclined to believe that he is correct; perhaps Barclay, Doyle, and Simpson were connected with him, as he states that there were other trappers, though he mentions no names. It was a square fort of adobe, with circular bastions at the corners, no part of the walls being more than eight feet high. Around the inside of the plaza, or corral, were half a dozen small rooms inhabited by as many Indian traders and mountain-men.

One of the earlier Indian agents, Mr. Fitzpatrick, in writing from Bent's Fort in 1847, thus describes the old Pueblo:—

About seventy-five miles above this place, and immediately

on the Arkansas River, there is a small settlement, chiefly

composed of old trappers and hunters; the male part of it

are mostly Americans (Missourians), French Canadians, and

Mexicans. It numbers about one hundred and fifty, and of

this number about sixty men have wives, and some have two.

These wives are of various Indian tribes, as follows; viz.

Blackfeet, Assiniboines, Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes,

Snakes, and Comanches. The American women are Mormons,

a party of Mormons having wintered there, and then departed

for California.

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