The old Santa Fe trail The Story of a Great Highway by Inman, Henry, 1837-1899

In the distance, far eastwardly, a train of cars could be seen approaching; as far as the eye could reach, on either side of the track, the virgin sod had been turned to the sun; the "empire of the plough" was established, and the march of immigration in its hunger for the horizon had begun.

Half a mile away from the bridge spanning the Fork, under the grateful shade of the largest trees, about twenty skin lodges were irregularly grouped; on the brown sod of the sun-cured grass a herd of a hundred ponies were lazily feeding, while a troop of dusky little children were chasing the yellow butterflies from the dried and withered sunflower stalks which once so conspicuously marked the well-worn highway to the mountains. These Indians, the remnant of a tribe powerful in the years of savage sovereignty, were on their way, in charge of their agent, to their new homes, on the reservation just allotted to them by the government, a hundred miles south of the Arkansas.

Their primitive lodges contrasted strangely with the peaceful little sod-houses, dugouts, and white cottages of the incoming settlers on the public lands, with the villages struggling into existence, and above all with the rapidly moving cars; unmistakable evidences that the new civilization was soon to sweep the red men before it like chaff before the wind.

Farther to the west, a caravan of white-covered wagons loaded with supplies for some remote military post, the last that would ever travel the Old Trail, was slowly crawling toward the setting sun. I watched it until only a cloud of dust marked its place low down on the horizon, and it was soon lost sight of in the purple mist that was rapidly overspreading the far-reaching prairie.

It was the beginning of the end; on the 9th of February, 1880, the first train over the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Santa Fe and the Old Trail as a route of commerce was closed forever. The once great highway is now only a picture in the memory of the few who have travelled its weary course, following the windings of the silent Arkansas, on to the portals that guard the rugged pathway leading to the shores of the blue Pacific.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] The whole country watered by the Mississippi and Missouri was called Florida at that time.

[2] The celebrated Jesuit, author of _The History of New France_, _Journals of a Voyage to North America_, _Letters to the Duchess_, etc.

[3] Otoes.

[4] Iowas.

[5] Boulevard, Promenade.

[6] Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, including parts of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers. Brevet Major W. H. Emory, Corps of Topographical Engineers, United States Army, 1846.

[7] Hon. W. F. Arny, in his Centennial Celebration Address at Santa Fe, July 4, 1876.

[8] Edwards, _Conquest of New Mexico_.

[9] I think this is Bancroft's idea.

[10] _Historical Sketches of New Mexico_, L. Bradford Prince, late Chief Justice of New Mexico, 1883.

[11] D. H. Coyner, 1847.

[12] He was travelling parallel to the Old Santa Fe Trail all the time, but did not know it until he was overtaken by a band of Kaw Indians.

[13] McKnight was murdered south of the Arkansas by the Comanches in the winter of 1822.

[14] Chouteau's Island.

[15] _Hennepin's Journal_.