It was during the early years that Trail practice coalesced into multi-wagon caravan expeditions departing Missouri annually. Commerce continued fifty-five years with increasing quantity of wagons and tonnage, Trail proprietors included Mexican traders early in its history.
Articles on this website explore and resolve ambiguity regarding early Trail operations in the new Republic of Mexico:
- Merchandise retail from fixed locations, such as the Santa Fe Plaza, were usually unsuccessful.7
- Majority of New Mexico citizens did not participate in Santa Fe Trail commerce.8
- Where did the people of New Mexico get the purchasing power?9
- Wholesale agents met incoming caravans in Santa Fe contracting for wagonloads.10
- Apache, Navaho, Ute, Pueblo nations in addition to Plains Peoples bartered with American frontiersmen and merchants for merchandise shipping the Santa Fe Trail.
- Foreign trappers and elite citizens of New Mexico, the ricos, acquired Trail merchandise.
The majority in the province of New Mexico could not afford Santa Fe Trail trade goods, were destitute and bartered for critical items they could neither grow nor create. Silver and gold bullion and specie did not circulate in the province yet beginning in 1824 hundreds of thousands of milled silver pesos returned to Missouri most years.
Moorhead in New Mexico’s Royal Road and Gregg in Commerce of the Prairies identify Mexican brokers meeting Trail caravans on arrival in Santa Fe contracting for wagon loads. These wagons transshipped south to the populated states in the Republic of Mexico. The Santa Fe Trail became the principal pipeline for modern manufactured goods flowing into Mexico from the north after centuries of exclusive Spanish products protected by embargos. This distribution channel has not been recognized nor reported as the dominant export path for American goods and source of the bonanza of Mexican hard currency flowing into Missouri and the United States.
Another channel for Trail goods … Apache, Navaho, Ute and Pueblo nations residing in and around New Mexico. Their population censused after the Mexican war around thirty thousand equaled the citizens of New Mexico. Their barter currency … mules, other livestock … circulated quite well throughout the Borderlands. Stolen from ranchos and haciendas in the northern states of Sonora and Chihuahua, this stock exchanged for American goods.
The tragedy of unintended consequences of increased barter trade spreading violence, terror and death to Mexican citizens inhibits American reporting. Mexican sources, however, abound depicting moonlight raids extending cruelty and devastation on the Mexican frontier.
Ignacio Zuniga, commander of northern Presidios, reported five thousand citizens slain, nearly as many homes abandoned and a hundred settlements deserted along the northern Mexican frontier between 1820 and 1835.11
Foreign frontiersmen swarmed into the New Mexican province on expeditions as trail hands, teamsters, security and sellers then remained through winter trapping seasons. Within a few years they reduced the beaver population dramatically in streams and tributaries of northwestern New Mexico. Beaver pelt bartered for Santa Fe Trail products.
Another segment of Trail customers represented by the elite, wealthy class citizens in New Mexico. A small portion of Trail traffic, these customers consumed a larger share of the initial, smaller expeditions to visit Santa Fe and their residences on the Rio Norte.
References
[7] (James 1846) & (Marmaduke 1911)
General Thomas James and M. M. Marmaduke rented stores on the Santa Fe Plaza to sell to walk in trade. In James gave up after six months, June 1822, wholesaling remaining goods for specie and livestock. Two years later Marmaduke, a member of the LeGrande expedition, spent close to twelve months in Santa Fe with little success at retail trade returning on the last party departing Santa Fe, June 1825.
See also; Cash is Scarce – No Money, Appendix.
[8] See https://benjamindaviswilson.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/santa-fe-trail-early-years-1821-1826.pdf
See also; Santa Fe & Taos – Living Conditions, Appendix.
[9] (Connor and Skaggss 2000) Broadcloth and Britches, The Santa Fe Trade
The core problem in this early trade as well as in the later trade with Missouri was New Mexico’s financial viability; that is where did the people of New Mexico get the purchasing power? Professor Morehead did not answer this satisfactorily and neither did we.
[10] (Gregg 1954) page 80
But the merchants generally were anxiously and actively engaged in their affairs striving who should first get his goods out of the customhouse and obtain a chance at the ‘hard chink’ of the numerous country dealers, who annually resort to the capital on these occasions.
(Moorhead 1958)
What kept such season traders in business was the arrival of Mexican merchants from the interior who met the caravans at Santa Fe and bought them in wholesale lots. This practice continued long after the Americans themselves began to seek the lucrative interior markets. … In one month alone, August of 1844, eight Mexican merchants took from Santa Fe more than $90,000 worth of American imports to sell in Chihuahua, Durango and Aguascalientes.
[11] (Worcester 1985)
Bibliography
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