The Kansas Historical Quarterly Vol 23 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 23 The overland trade to New Mexico was the most ancient and honorable of all ox-team freighting from Missouri river towns. Beginning in the eighteen twenties, it grew slowly until the Mexican War; then the necessity of supplying troops stationed in the area, as well as other Americans, created a new era in this traffic. Lower Missouri river towns outfitted this trade in its infancy. But when Kansas City came into existence in the forties it soon became the headquarters. Its fame lies in being the patron saint of the trade down the old Santa Fe trail. It enjoyed practically an unbroken monopoly on the private trade to New Mexico, but only a small proportion of the other western trade. Independence, Mo., located in the fat farming country ten miles east of the Kansas boundary, and four miles below the river, was the depot for the Santa Fe and Indian trade as early as 1832, favored because it was the westernmost point of settlement. This it enjoyed until a new settlement, farther to the west, at the bend of the river, grew up to steal the whole business. Thomas Hart Benton, spokesman for the West in this middle period, once prophesied: There, gentlemen, where that rocky bluff meets and turns aside the sweeping current of this mighty river there, where the Missouri, after running its southward course for nearly two thousand miles, turns eastward to the Mississippi, a large commercial and manufacturing community will congregate, and less than a generation will see a great city on those hills. Evidently other men, not necessarily shrewd men either, saw that there where the current ran close to the rock bank, making an excellent landing, should rise a frontier depot. Just below this ideal landing place, upon the trail from Independence, there was growing a settlement known as Westport, noted for its "truck and dicker" trade with the Indians and the sale of last-minute knickknacks to emigrants. Although goods were landed there at the bend after 1832, freighters still loaded in Independence until the middle of the forties. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.