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CHAPTER 1
MERCHANT CAPITALISM AND THE SANTA FE TRADE
In 1807 Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike — for whom Colorado's best-known mountain peak is now named — found out the hard way about Spain's restrictive foreign-commerce laws. Ostensibly reconnoitering a portion of the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase, the twenty-eight-year-old military officer and his fifteen companions wandered a bit too far west. By March of that year Pike found himself incarcerated in Santa Fe, where he desperately tried to explain the situation to a New Mexico governor who gave him a "haughty and unfriendly reception." Conversing in broken French, the officer-turned-voyager swore that he had "no hostile intentions toward the Spanish government," insisting that his sole purpose was to explore American territory. Unconvinced, the governor confiscated Pike's personal belongings, disarmed and arrested his cohorts, and sent them all south — under a military guard commanded by Facundo Melgares — to plead their case before the commandant general in Nueva Vizcaya. Wary of generating an unwanted diplomatic debacle between Spain and the United States, the governor treated Pike to a lavish dinner before sending him away, and indeed the entire group enjoyed relatively humane treatment throughout the ordeal. The wayward Americans eventually returned unharmed to the United States, and in 1810 Pike published an account of his tribulations on New Spain's far northern frontier. His descriptions of the region elicited considerable attention in the United States and sparked his country's earliest economic interest in the Southwest. In Santa Fe inhabitants began speculating about "whether the Anglo-Americans will come and the possibility that they may make themselves masters of this Province." A concerned Governor Joaquín del Real Alencaster noticed that some citizens even seemed excited about the prospects of an American takeover.
After being arrested and marched through a thousand miles of foreign territory, Pike became more acquainted with northern Mexico than he intended or wished. Explaining the strictly regulated commercial structure of New Spain, he noted "the extreme dearness of imported goods" to inhabitants who seldom owned items of overseas manufacture because of Spanish laws prohibiting most forms of international exchange. He also saw that many locally produced wares could be acquired cheaply, providing an attractive two-way market in which Americans could sell their own goods at high prices, obtain local products like mules and bullion inexpensively, and transport them back to the United States for profitable resale. According to Pike, legalization of trade with New Mexico might offer American businessmen a lucrative enterprise, if only Spain would lift its embargo. However ill-fated the 1806–7 expedition might have been, it aroused American interest in New Mexico, and thus Pike initiated the process of settlement and conquest that played out there over the ensuing five decades.
Despite the prospects for profitable trade, no demonstrable evidence yet existed that such commerce could be sustained, nor did Spain's protective laws allow traders or trappers to toil in Spanish territory without risk of imprisonment and confiscation of property. Pike was just the first of many Americans to encounter difficulties in the precarious borderlands separating the far western United States from northern New Mexico. Others followed in his footsteps over the ensuing years, and many of them similarly landed in jail as accused spies. A group of ten men, including fur trappers Robert McKnight and James Baird, went to prison in New Mexico in 1812 and did not return to the United States for nearly a decade. After learning of the arrest, Missourians were "astonished at the barbarity" of Santa Fe's officials and hoped that the U.S. government would take immediate steps to have the men liberated. The State Department did indeed take up the cause, but not until five years later, when John Quincy Adams began prodding Spain's minister plenipotentiary, Luis de Onís, to affect their release. Onís sent a dispatch to Don Ruiz de Apodaca, the viceroy in New Spain, but his communication was either lost or disregarded and nothing came of it. A year later, under increasing pressure from Secretary of State Adams, Onís renewed his efforts to free the hapless prisoners but was again ignored, demonstrating both the ambivalence of royal officials as well as the stiff enforcement of Spanish commerce laws.
Foreigners caught near New Spain's northern borders faced serious risks, but American and French Canadian opportunists could not resist the temptation of profit and continued to venture into the region. In 1817 Auguste Chouteau and Julius Demun were trading with Indians near the headwaters of the Arkansas River in today's southeastern Colorado (the international boundary at that time) when Spanish military authorities apprehended them, confiscated their merchandise, shackled them in irons, and deposited them "in the dungeons of Santa Fe" for six weeks. When the men finally appeared before Governor Pedro María de Allande, the schizophrenic head of state started pounding tables with his fists and became so enraged that he temporarily lost the ability to speak, lapsing into a bizarre state of psychological impairment. After returning to his senses, the governor realized that the party had remained on the American side of the river, traded only with Arapahoes and other Southern Plains tribes, and possessed a passport from the governor of Missouri. Based on these facts, the men were set free with instructions to return immediately to their homes. The aggrieved traders submitted a claim to Congress for remuneration in the amount of $30,000, stating that the seizure of their possessions "brought us to the brink of ruin," but they experienced considerable hardship in seeing their petition executed. Chouteau and Demun were still appealing for redress in 1836 — twenty years after the fact — and eventually received the disheartening news that stipulations in the 1819 Adams- Onís Treaty mandating that Spain pay certain indemnities did not apply to their case.
In 1820 David Meriwether — who later succeeded Henry Clay as a Kentucky senator — encountered similar circumstances. Spanish troops confronted his encampment on the Canadian River, arrested Meriwether and his black servant, Alfred, and killed a number of the Pawnee Indians accompanying them. The two men, accused of spying for the United States, were ushered into Santa Fe to appear before Governor Facundo Melgares, the same man who, thirteen years earlier, had escorted Zebulon Pike to Nueva Vizcaya under identical pretenses of espionage. "This was the most miserable day of my life," Meriwether recalled of his capture, "for I felt as though I would as soon die as live." Once in Santa Fe, the nineteen-year-old was tossed into a tiny prison cell at the Palace of the Governors. During the interrogation, Melgares told Meriwether that "Americans are bad people," mentioning Andrew Jackson's forceful occupation of Spanish Florida the year before as evidence of this universal indictment. When asked about the purpose of his expedition, Meriwether assured the governor that he intended only to "find out if it was practicable to make a road to New Mexico by which we could transport our articles of merchandise in wagons and exchange them for gold and silver." Upon hearing this, Melgares shook his head in disbelief and ordered that the Kentuckian be returned to his cell. Eventually, authorities freed the young man and his slave after they promised never to return to New Mexico. Meriwether broke his promise thirty-two years later when he came back to Santa Fe, ironically carrying an appointment as territorial governor.
Although such injurious and humiliating occurrences irked some Americans and offended their nationalistic pride, there was little that could be done to reverse Spanish policy at that time. With the War of 1812 having recently ended in stalemate, the fledgling United States had come to realize that its military might still lagged behind that of leading European powers. Humbled by the failure to achieve decisive victory over Great Britain, uncharacteristically apprehensive war hawks balked at the thought of a costly conflict with Spain over seemingly petty commercial laws and an unproven trade with Santa Fe. But fortuitously for those wishing to initiate such commerce, Spain's New World possessions fell into an irreversible process of mass rebellion, with one Latin American colony after another declaring independence in the decades after America's own democratic revolution set an example in 1776. Mexico would be among the last colonies to break free from Spanish dominion; as one of its earliest independent acts, in 1821 the new country abolished restrictive commercial codes and established free trade with the United States and other nations. In 1825 Augustus Storrs explained that the Spanish government had "viewed, with extreme jealousy, an intercourse of other nations with her American dependencies," and he lauded the fact that Enlightenment-era revolutions and Mexican independence "entirely altered its policy in this respect." For Anglo-Americans itching to capitalize on the potential wealth of New Mexico, the foremost obstacle to commercialization — Spanish hegemony — had been removed.
Santa Fe and Taos lay at the extreme northern terminus of the Camino Real, and prior to 1821 New Mexico remained a widely neglected and highly dependent economic entity at the periphery of the Spanish empire. After Mexican independence and the abrogation of commercial restrictions, the advent of trade with Missouri transformed these two towns into international crossroads and vibrant ports of entry. This placed them in a position for capitalist development and, incidentally, for the concomitant processes of Americanization that culminated in military conquest twenty-five years later. Just as this burgeoning inland commerce between the United States and Mexico permanently altered the configuration of the latter's economy, so too did it prove important for Missouri, an infant state born just one year before Mexico's independence in the sectional compromise bearing its name. As Mexico's northernmost province and America's most westerly state, New Mexico and Missouri became mutually interdependent frontier zones, sparsely populated regions whose inhabitants benefited from multilateral trade networks that helped to ensure political legitimacy and economic viability.
For Missouri, international trade with New Mexico augmented its preexisting north-south commercial orientation astride the Mississippi River, rendering the new slave state important for the national — and particularly the southern — economy. During the early 1800s millions of dollars in American goods crossed the southern plains to Santa Fe, from whence caravans and teamsters transported much of that merchandise to markets in California, Sonora, Chihuahua, and even Mexico City. At the other end of the trail, St. Louis served in a similar capacity as a conduit through which Mexican products and specie filtered into U.S. markets for resale and redistribution, and many Missouri residents benefited from their position at the interstices of these business networks. It comes as little wonder that Missourians so feverishly clamored for the establishment of this trade, so fervently defended their commercial interests in New Mexico, and so adamantly demanded federal support to sustain these economic endeavors.
The Missouri–Santa Fe trade that developed in the 1820s provided a prototype for transcontinental commerce and economic policy in the United States. Unlike the Oregon Trail and other routes westward, the primary purposes of which were to convey one-way settlers to new frontier homes, the Santa Fe Trail retained a predominantly commercial and military imperative from the time of its founding in 1821 until its abandonment after the railroad entered New Mexico in 1879. Ports of entry were established at opposite ends of the lengthy overland highway, connecting two separate nations with a wagon road in a region where navigable waterways did not exist. This transnational connection allowed for the dissemination of a wide array of goods across an entire continent through mutually negotiated laws and treaties, such as that signed in 1831 promoting "amity and commerce" between the United States and Mexico and ensuring free trade by sea and by land. The Missouri–Santa Fe–Chihuahua trading network also necessitated government action in the form of drawback and debenture measures that relieved American capitalists from excessive foreign fees and double taxation, further invigorating the commercial system.
As Lieutenant Pike and others had already proven, a wagon trail across the south plains would be the only practicable trade route connecting the western United States with northern Mexico. Neither the Arkansas River nor the Rio Grande could be navigated far enough inland for freighting purposes, eliminating any possibility for the use of steamboats. For New Mexico the nearest major seaportwas Vera Cruz, located more than 1,600 miles from Santa Fe and almost twice as far away as Missouri. Thus, when William Becknell placed an advertisement in a St. Louis newspaper on June 25, 1821 — two months before the Treaty of Córdoba officially recognized Mexican independence — seeking men to accompany him on a maiden voyage to New Mexico, he was pursuing what seemed to be a logical course of action. Although the inaugural journey to Santa Fe carried only $15,000 worth of goods and did not produce the astronomical profits that later caravans enjoyed — U.S. Consul Manuel Alvarez downplayed Becknell's venture as "merely an experiment" by a handful of "enterprising individuals"— the expedition succeeded in "awakening the attention of speculators" and ensured continued American interest. According to Augustus Storrs, Becknell and subsequent U.S. merchants (extranjeros) encountered a New Mexican population that seemed largely amenable to foreign trade. "The door of hospitality is opened with a cheerful welcome," he observed after traveling to Santa Fe in 1825, "and in all their principal towns the arrival of the Americans is a source of pleasure, and the evening is dedicated to dancing and festivity." As late as June 1846, just two months before General Stephen W. Kearny's arrival in New Mexico, Donaciano Vigil gave a speech to the legislative assembly praising the American trade for spreading "the spirit of mercantile enterprises" throughout the country.
As Becknell and his teamsters worked to establish commerce with New Mexico, others began eyeing the region for beaver trapping and fur trading, an extractive undertaking that, unlike the merchant trade over the Santa Fe Trail, entailed little to no benefit for the Mexican economy. Prior to their arrest in 1817, Chouteau and Demun had petitioned Spanish authorities for permission to trap beaver along the northern tributaries of the Rio Grande, but that request was denied and they instead wound up in prison. In 1822 William H. Ashley led the first organized expedition of American trappers into the southern ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Similar excursions, sometimes including up to one hundred men, occurred annually until the mid-1830s, when the combination of overhunting and insufficient natural increase began to take a heavy toll on beaver populations. Southwestern trapping and the Santa Fe trade began and grew contemporaneously throughout the 1820s, and both activities had a complementary commercial impact within New Mexico.
Men like Charles Beaubien, Jim Beckwourth, William and Charles Bent, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Antoine Leroux, Robert McKnight, Antoine Robidoux, Jedediah Smith, Ceran St. Vrain, William Sublette, and Bill Williams became household names in northern New Mexico during their own lifetimes. Many trappers of either American or French Canadian origin dabbled in peltries as well as mercantilism over the course of their lives, which in many cases spanned the Mexican national and American territorial periods. Most of them married Hispanic or Indian wives, learned Spanish and even some Indian languages, and became naturalized Mexican citizens as strategies for commercial success and social stature. Matt Field, a journalist for the New Orleans Picayune in the 1840s, observed in Santa Fe that any American who became fluent in Spanish and resided in New Mexico for an extended period "becomes a man of great importance." He specifically mentioned Robidoux as one foreigner whose local influence rivaled that of the Hispanic priests and governors. With men like these as intermediaries, the early American West became inextricably linked to the Mexican north, not only commercially but also culturally and ideologically, through processes of acculturation and mutual accommodation. Senator Thomas Hart Benton once referred to these assimilative strategies during a congressional speech about race and American expansion: "Commerce is a great civilizer — social intercourse as great — and marriage greater."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Coast-To-Coast Empire"
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