ADVENTURES IN THE SANTA FE TRADE 1844-1847
When New Mexico was still part of Mexico, some American traders found wealth by bringing much-needed American goods to Santa Fe from Missouri along the Santa Fe Trail (see “Santa Fe Trail Trade” in the August 1996 issue of Wild West). During that period (1821-1848), a man named Josiah Gregg made at least four trips to Santa Fe and wrote about his experiences in an 1844 book, Commerce of the Prairies, that has become a Western classic. But Gregg wasn’t the only one to write of the Santa Fe trade. In 1888, James Josiah Webb recorded his trail experiences–he had first gone to Santa Fe in the summer of 1844 , but had not found success as a trader until later. Webb’s memoirs did not appear in book form until1931, after historian Ralph Bieber (1894-1981) had transcribed and edited them. In the introduction to this Bison Book edition, Mark L. Gardner says Webb’s account is as valuable as Gregg’s work because “Webb is more candid in many respects than Gregg.” Webb, Gardner adds, “had the advantage of writing his account many years after the fact and, perhaps intending his memoirs only for friends and family, did not have to worry about its reception among his fellow traders and the public.” Webb, for instance, reveals that the American traders often smuggled goods or else bribed Mexican officials and that the trading could be cutthroat.
