The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Santa Fe Trail, by Henry Inman

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Title: The Old Santa Fe Trail
The Story of a Great Highway

Author: Henry Inman

Commentator: W. F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7984]
Posting Date: August 7, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL ***

Produced by Michael S. Overton

THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL

THE STORY OF A GREAT HIGHWAY

By Colonel Henry Inman

Late Assistant Quartermaster, United States Army

With a Preface by W. F. "BUFFALO BILL" CODY

PREFACE.

As we look into the open fire for our fancies, so we are apt to study
the dim past for the wonderful and sublime, forgetful of the fact that
the present is a constant romance, and that the happenings of to-day
which we count of little importance are sure to startle somebody in the
future, and engage the pen of the historian, philosopher, and poet.

Accustomed as we are to think of the vast steppes of Russia and Siberia
as alike strange and boundless, and to deal with the unknown interior of
Africa as an impenetrable mystery, we lose sight of a locality in
our own country that once surpassed all these in virgin grandeur, in
majestic solitude, and in all the attributes of a tremendous wilderness.

The story of the Old Santa Fe Trail, so truthfully recalled by Colonel
Henry Inman, ex-officer of the old Regular Army, in these pages, is a
most thrilling one. The vast area through which the famous highway ran
is still imperfectly known to most people as "The West"; a designation
once appropriate, but hardly applicable now; for in these days of easy
communication the real trail region is not so far removed from New York
as Buffalo was seventy years ago.

At the commencement of the "commerce of the prairies," in the early
portion of the century, the Old Trail was the arena of almost constant
sanguinary struggles between the wily nomads of the desert and the hardy
white pioneers, whose eventful lives made the civilization of the vast
interior region of our continent possible. Their daring compelled its
development, which has resulted in the