The Santa Fe Trail [Hardcover] [SOLD]

THE SANTA FE TRAIL

By R. L. Duffus

Publisher: Tudor Publishing Co., New York 1934, second printing

Hardback, 283 pages, illustrated with historic photographs and a map

Condition: text pages in very good condition with exception of water stain on page 152 and one photo plate has a tear on the page and it is loose from spine.  Cover spine damaged.

SUMMARY

This is a comprehensive history of the Santa Fe Trail, starting at its point of inception at Kansas City and ending at Santa Fe when it was part of Mexico.

If you traveled, behind you were settlements still raw from the hands of the builders, and in front of you were opportunity and romance. When you jumped off from the west bank of the Missouri River into the plains country you said goodbye to the best and worst of civilization and entered a region in which the life lived and the people who lived it did not belong at all in the nineteenth century or the Occidental world. You passed from the lush prairies to the short grass country, from that to burning deserts. You saw mountains glistening like polished silver in the remote distances, or hanging like faint clouds above the horizon.

Day after day, as you traveled your fifteen or twenty miles between sunrise and sunset, the horizon slowly altered. You slept under the bright stars, or huddled in your tent, or under the shelter of your wagons, while thunderstorms beat down with dreadful violence. You shot elk and deer. The wild fowl rose in clouds from the watercourses. The buffalo crossed your path in uncounted hordes, swathed in moving clouds of dust. Indians hovered on all sides, some friendly, some hostile, some only bold enough to steal your horses in the dead of night, some ready to pour your heart.

CONTENTS

I.     “Catch Up! Catch Up!”

II.    Dawn on the Trail

III.   France Finds the Way

IV.    “El Viagero Piake”

V.     Deserts and Dungeons

VI.    The Trail Makers

VII.   Benton’s “Road”

VIII.  The Prairie Ports

IX.    The Red Brother

X.     On the March

XI.    A Caravan Enters Santa Fe

XII.   War Drums

XIII.  Path of Empire

XIV.   Aftermath of Conquest

XV.    The Dust Thickens

XVI.   The Great Divide

XVII.  Trails of Steel

XVIII. Recessional

       A Selected Bibliography

       Index