Fort Union and the Santa Fe Trail

• The wagon master's office at Fort Union.

• Kiowa ledger art showing combat with U.S. Army.

• Navajo Scouts serving with U.S. Army in 1880s.

• Overhunting bison on the Great Plains.

• Buffalo Soldiers on escort duty in Kansas.

• The Fort Union post trader sold goods to all.

• A towering symbol of both security and coercion.

 

When Fort Union opened in 1851, traders on the Santa Fe Trail had already been traveling that route for 30 years. The thriving and profitable trade between the Hispanic Southwest and the eastern United States began knitting together the Anglo world of the United States and the northern frontier of Hispanic Mexico. The international highway extended 800-900 miles, depending on the route taken. It had a huge impact on the Indian tribes that controlled the vast sea of grass in between Missouri and New Mexico--an impact that has often been overlooked by Trail historians.

Hispanic and American traders shared the profitable trade that brought fabrics, tools and other manufactured goods west from Missouri and ferried silver, furs, and mules east from Santa Fe. By the time of the Mexican-American War (1846-48), there were strong economic ties between northern New Mexico and Missouri, and some of the Anglo traders had even married into the local New Mexico families.

A dozen tribes held sway over different parts of the prairie that extended from Missouri to New Mexico. The threat of armed conflict with the ruling Indian tribes hung over every wagon caravan traveling the Trail. Even though the tribes generally viewed the wagon trains as trespassers, outright fighting between the tribes and Trail travelers was relatively rare considering the volume of traffic. But the fear of such fighting weighed heavily on the wagoneers.

 

Troops assembled beneath Fort Union's flagstaff.

Fort Union National Monument

So Fort Union and the American flag flying atop its 120-foot-high flagstaff were a welcome sign of civilization for traders heading west. The cluster of wooden buildings near Wolf Creek were the first structures to be seen since leaving Council Grove, Kansas, 500 miles to the east. Hispano traders heading east would be facing the lonely 500-mile trip to Council Grove after leaving Fort Union. For the Jicarilla Apaches, who lived and hunted on the same prairie, the cluster of buildings and their American flag represented something far more ominous.

The garrison at Fort Union represented security for Santa Fe traders, even though military escorts of trading caravans were infrequent. For the most part, well armed trading caravans provided for their own protection. Army escorts for U.S. Mail stagecoaches were more common, even though the army wagons (which carried the soldiers) were hard pressed to keep up with the speedy mail coaches.

In an effort to reduce the vast distance of empty prairie for Trail travelers, the army established Fort Larned in 1859 in central Kansas and Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado in 1860. Both forts were on the Santa Fe Trail, but there were still long streches of lonely grasslands between Fort Union and the other forts--400 miles between Fort Larned and Fort Union and 200 miles between Fort Lyon and Fort Union.

 

Safe havens were few and far between for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, which crossed the home territories of numerous Indian tribes. Bent's Old Fort trading post, the well-known Santa Fe Trail landmark on the Mountain Branch in eastern Colorado, was closed two years before Fort Union opened. The trading post ruins remained on the Trail for many years. The Cimarron Cutoff was about 100 miles shorter than the Mountain Branch, but it lacked water and was considered more dangerous.

NPS

 

Buffalo soldiers providing escort duty in Kansas.

Library of Congress

A Tense Decade

The 1860s were a tumultuous decade on the Santa Fe Trail. Angered by rising Trail traffic, the Sand Creek Massacre and assaults on their prime buffalo hunting grounds, the tribes pushed back, recognizing that the United States was distracted by the Civil War. Indian attacks increased. The combination of Indian uprisings and raids by Texas-based Confederates forced the army into a new regime of patrols, escorts, and temporary posts to protect travelers, commerce and the military supply line to the Southwest.

When the Civil War ended, the Kansas Pacific Railroad began building west across the tribal territories of Kansas. Railroad construction further aggravated tensions with the tribes, and the onslaught on their buffalo hunting grounds continued. So Fort Union's resources were heavily devoted to the strife on the southern Plains.

 

A Busy Depot

After Fort Union opened in 1851, shipments to its large supply depot swelled the volume of military freight being carried on the Santa Fe Trail. During and through the end of the Civil War, as the number of army posts increased, the Santa Fe Trail was the lifeline for military supply in the Southwest.

The volume of wagon traffic traveling through Fort Union is a little difficult to pin down for certain. Wagon trains usually traveled in convoys of 20-30 wagons for safety, but they could be much larger. (During the Civil War, when Confederate forces seized Santa Fe, 120 wagons loaded with provisions left the territorial capital for Fort Union.) Wagon trains may have arrived several times per week at the fort, but less frequently during the winter.

 

The wagon master's office, the only two-story building at Fort Union, gave the wagon master a good view of incoming wagon traffic. By the time Santa Fe-bound wagons reached the fort, the wagon master had put them into a single file. The single-file ruts are visible on right, with fort ruins in rear.

NPS

The fort wagon master directed wagons with military supplies on arrival were directed to the appropriate storehouse at the Fort Union Depot. Private merchants and stagecoach passengers would have found themselves at the post sutler. The sutler was a privately owned business, operating with a license from the Army, that included a hotel, restaurant, tavern, bowling alley and general store.

When shipping supplies westward over the Trail, the army preferred the mountain route. In 1866, frontiersman Dick Wooten constructed a toll road over boulder-strewn Raton Pass on the mountain route. So much of the Trail traffic shifted to the longer, but better-watered mountain route.

At the same time, as the railroad was building westward, the wagon route got shorter and shorter, since the wagons departed from the western end of the railroad. By 1870, the railhead reached the town of Kit Carson, Colorado, and the wagon route from there to Santa Fe was about 360 miles. When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad finally reached nearby Watrous, New Mexico, in 1879, long-distance wagon traffic to Fort Union vanished overnight.

 

Ute camp on the Plains, 1874.

William Henry Jackson, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, #01509A

The Impact on the Natives

The Trail crossed a wide diversity of native cultures. At the eastern end of the trail, the Osages, Kaws and Pawnees lived in towns along waterways and combined agricultural and hunting lifestyles. In the central portion of the Trail, the famous Plains tribes such as the Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes and Arapahos relied on their horsemanship and the abundant bison supply on the prairie for their livelihoods. The Utes and Jicarilla Apaches lived in the southern Rocky Mountains that bordered the western portion of the Trail. The pueblo in Pecos, New Mexico, at the western end of the trail, was a settled community and long-time trading center.

While these tribes had different cultures and lifestyles, they all maintained a spiritual and subsistence relationship with their lands that provided them with food and shelter. "The land that sustained them, along with their place on it, occupied a place of preeminence in their respective spiritual lives, ceremonialism, and worldviews," observed James Riding In, a historian and Pawnee tribal member. "In their separate ways, each of them communicated with the earth, flora, fauna, and universe through prayers, songs, dances, symbolic offerings and ceremonies."

 

Jicarilla Apache Nation

The impact on native societies of the Trail and westward expansion by Anglo society was severe. New diseases decimated native populations, their buffalo food supply was annihilated by overly aggressive Anglo hunters and most of their traditional lands were taken for white settlement. "U.S. expansion brought white settlers into intense conflict with Indian nations over lands and resources. Out of the ensuing chaos, turmoil, and violence a federal response emerged that was genocidal for Inidans. Those Indigenous peoples who survived the mass deaths through diseases, warfare, and forced imgration faced lives under repressive colonial rule, " wrote Riding In.

Many natives incorporated Euro-American clothing, housing and food into what became for many tribal members a new lifestyle.