COMMERCE

After Mexico became independent, trade in northern Mexico shifted from a north—south axis to an east-west axis. A trade route developed between New Mexico and California. Each year, roughly 200 men on horseback, plus mules laden with sarapes and blankets, would depart from New Mexico. In California, they exchanged these goods for California mules, pelts, Asian silks, and various Chinese goods. New Mexican Hispanics carried on most of this trade, although a few U. S. citizens took part.12

Another trade route became known as the Santa Fe Trail. Before Mexican independence, Spanish authorities had prohibited trade between New Mexico and the United States. Under Spanish rule, authorities jailed traders from the United States and confiscated their goods. With independence, this trade was welcomed.13

In the fall of 1821, William Becknell and five associates set out from Missouri to trade with Indians. They unexpectedly met a detachment of soldiers from New Mexico, who guided them to Santa Fe. There Governor Facundo Melgares welcomed them and encouraged further commercial ventures. Becknell and his companions sold their merchandise and returned to Missouri with handsome profits, giving birth to the Santa Fe Trail.14

The next year, three more expeditions, including one led by Becknell, arrived in Santa Fe. Soon traders introduced wagons on the Santa Fe Trail, which stretched from Missouri to New Mexico. In 1824, twenty-five wagons left Missouri, carrying $35,000 worth of merchandise that was exchanged for $190,000 of gold, silver, and furs. By 1825, New Mexico was buying more from Missouri than from the rest of Mexico. Independence, Missouri, had a customs house, and as a result of this trade, Mexican silver coins dominated the currency circulating in that state.15

By 1825, due to the saturation of the New Mexico market, many U. S. traders were venturing south to Chihuahua. This wagon-borne trade converted Chihuahua’s capital into a major trade center. Mexicans bought imported goods with the some of the 500,000 pesos of coins minted there each year from locally produced silver. Poinsett even reported having seen in Mexico City four wagons that Americans had driven south from Santa Fe through Chihuahua.16

The early trading expeditions that arrived in Santa Fe reported profits of as high as 2,000 percent. Later, as the market became saturated, profits declined to 40 to 50 percent. To keep profit margins high, traders would evade customs duties by engaging in the time-honored practice of bribery or by placing high-value goods on mules and bringing them in through back-country trails. Much of the merchandise, of course, was declared at customs offices, and surviving declarations provide a wealth of information on what was shipped, who shipped it, and its destination.17

Since the United States had little industry, U. S. traders imported much of the merchandise and then shipped it to New Mexico. Such reexported goods included French cotton shawls, German linens, silk stockings, and handkerchiefs from India. The main items the caravans transported were cotton goods. In addition, they brought a wide range of manufactured goods—everything from jewelry to mirrors, from writing paper to champagne. New Mexicans eagerly sought these goods due to their variety, their higher quality, and their prices, which were up to two-thirds less than those charged by Mexican merchants.18

In Santa Fe, traders would retail goods themselves, sell to Hispanic and Anglo wholesale merchants, or proceed on to Chihuahua. Traders returned home with specie, livestock, and beaver and otter pelts. This trade, worth nearly $1 million a year, converted New Mexico into a virtual economic satellite of the United States even before the Mexican-American War.19

The Santa Fe Trial stimulated job creation in New Mexico. Since the importation of ready-made clothes was prohibited, the cloth brought into New Mexico produced a dramatic increase in the number of tailors and seamstresses. New Mexicans enjoyed a reputation for being excellent muleteers and horsemen and were frequently recruited to work in the caravans that traveled from Missouri to interior Mexico. Even Anglos, who so often found fault with Hispanics, acknowledged their superlative skills in packing and handling beasts of burden.20

By the end of the 1830s, New Mexican Hispanics were venturing east along the trail to buy goods in places as far removed as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, where wholesale houses sought their business. The 1843 caravan of New Mexicans that left Santa Fe for the east indicates the magnitude of Hispanic participation on the Santa Fe Trail. The caravan included 180 men, forty-two wagons, 1,200 mules and carried between $250,000 and $300,000 in bullion and a substantial amount of furs. Eleven of the traders continued on to New York to make purchases. New Mexican traders not only traveled east but continued on west to California and south to Chihuahua with the goods they had acquired in the United States. They often formed partnerships with Anglo traders, resulting in firms bearing names such as Browne and Manzanares. Hispanic traders also employed Anglos as mayordomos (wagon bosses).21

Trade on the Santa Fe Trail soon became institutionalized. Steamboats brought goods up the Missouri River. From Missouri, caravans of as many as 175 wagons traveled to Santa Fe, making the 770-mile trip in about eight or nine weeks. Wagon trains remained as cohesive units so they could defend themselves against Indian attack. Within a decade, control of trade shifted from individual traders to wealthy merchants with hired workers. As the size of the shipments grew, it became necessary to search for additional capital and make credit arrangements, tap new sources of merchandise, seek competitive prices for goods, and insure shipments.22

The U. S. government supported the Santa Fe Trail by appointing consuls in Santa Fe and Chihuahua and providing cavalry escorts to protect traders from Indian attack. As one of his last public acts, U. S. President James Monroe signed a bill providing $10,000 to survey and mark the trail and $20,000 to pay Indians to allow peaceful passage of traders. Finally, the U. S. government refunded customs duties paid on goods that had been imported into the United States and then subsequently reexported on the Santa Fe Trail.23

New Mexico’s residents welcomed commerce on the Santa Fe Trail since it ended the commercial monopoly of Chihuahua, something that had vexed them for generations. One trader noted, “In all their principal towns, the arrival of Americans is a source of pleasure, and the evening is dedicated to dancing and festivity.”24

Given its relative proximity to the United States, Americans influenced New Mexico more than areas further west. In 1832 an American commented, “Santa Fe may be considered, in some sense, an American town, the stores being filled with American goods and the streets with American people.” Some of the Americans who arrived via the Santa Fe Trail settled and took Hispanic wives. These settlers formed a strong pro-American block in New Mexico. As historian Warren Beck noted, “The Americans entered New Mexico to trade, but ultimately remained to take over.”25

As soon as Spanish trade restrictions were lifted, a flotilla of U. S. traders arrived in California, furnishing desired goods that never arrived from Mexico, including cloth, axes, shoes, fishing lines, and even Boston rum. In exchange, traders accepted products from the burgeoning ranching industry. Between 1826 and 1848, Boston traders alone purchased more than 6 million hides and

7,000 tons of tallow. In 1843, California exported 2,000 barrels of wine and brandy. In 1846, a British resident of Monterey commented on the U. S. domination of California’s commerce, “There is not a yard of tape, a pin, or a piece of domestic cotton or even thread that does not come from the United States.”26

For a short period, New Englanders purchased California sea otter pelts, which were ten to twenty times more valuable than cow hides. The number of sea otter hunters soared, as the easy money attracted Aleuts, Kodiaks, Mexicans, and Americans. The hunters’ effectiveness also increased as they began to employ guns rather than spears. By the early 1840s, the animals had been hunted nearly to extinction.27

Between 1835 and 1845, four-fifths of the boats arriving in California were foreign. Data on trade during this period are spotty since much of the exchange was carried on clandestinely to avoid import taxes, which totaled roughly 80 percent of the value of the merchandise.28