Santa Fe Trail Essay -- essays research papers

Santa Fe pass over Net "ALLS SET" FOR SFTNet"The Santa Fe Trail Lives On" Welcome to SFTNet, the latest manifestation of the Santa Fe Trail saga. This profit is designed for trail buffs, students, researchers, travelers on the trail--in short, anyone with an interest in historic or contemporary developments along the Santa Fe Trail. What Is The Santa Fe Trail? As many an(prenominal) who read this introduction will know, the Santa Fe Trail is an ancient discharge route of communication between the desert Southwest of what is now the united States and the prairies and plains of central North America. In the Southwest it was also part of a longer route that ran down the Rio Grande into what is now northern Mexico. American Indian peoples used the route to trade the agricultural produce of the Rio Grande Valley and the agio of the plains, such as jerked buffalo meat and buffalo hides. When the Spanish conquistador Onate came to b risk Mexico in 1598, he and his soldiers followed this ancient route as they explored the plains and traded with the peoples there. During the next 2 centuries the Spanish gained an intimate knowledge of the plains and the routes between the Mississippi-Missouri river systems and the Southwest. Then, in 1821, a bargainer from Missouri, William Becknell, came to Santa Fe along what was to become known as the historical route of the Santa Fe Trail. He opened the Santa Fe Trail as a commercial route between what was then ...