Josiah Gregg and the Santa Fe Trail

Josiah Gregg was an effective mapmaker and skilled explorer; his maps were used by thousands as they settled the western United States. Public Domain

Explorer Josiah Gregg does not have the same level of name recognition as Daniel Boone, Zebulon Pike, or Hugh Glass. He fought no bears and killed no indigenous warriors. But in an age of great pioneers on the American frontier, he was among the most interesting. Gregg accomplished more in his relatively brief life than most people who live twice as long. His classic book, “Commerce of the Prairies,” was the first account to describe life along the Santa Fe Trail.

From Invalid to Adventurer

Gregg was an unlikely person to become an explorer. According to biographer Paul Horgan, Gregg was a “delicate” child who was “never asked to do the labor of the farm and family.” He excelled in school, though, and from a young age was fascinated by the frontier and the freedom it represented.

His poor health, ironically, became a stimulus to travel. Gregg began “Commerce of the Prairies” by describing how, at age 25, he suffered from “a morbid condition of my system” that began with “dyspepsia and its kindred infirmities”—what we would today call indigestion. When people suffer from debilitating ailments today, the doctors usually recommend bedrest and medication.

Gregg received the opposite advice. It was standard medical knowledge of the time that a “change of air” could cure certain illnesses, so Gregg set out to “re-establish my health ... joining a caravan heading across the Great Plains.” Gregg also cited another effect of his journey: “to beget a passion for Prairie life which I never expect to survive.”

This marker on the Santa Fe Trail is located at the Kansas-Colorado state line. Public Domain

Gregg traversed the Santa Fe Trail eight times over the next 10 years. He recorded his experiences in a journal “which I have been in the habit of keeping from my youth.” These observations became the basis for “Commerce of the Prairies.” Published in 1844, the book was an immediate success; undergoing five editions in a decade, it quickly became the standard guidebook for others traveling the region.

Josiah Gregg's book "Commerce of the Prairies" was an immediate hit among Americans looking to move west. Public Domain

The Santa Fe Trail

Unlike the more famous Oregon Trail, the original purpose of the Santa Fe Trail was trade rather than settlement. Beginning in Franklin, Missouri, the Santa Fe Trail wound for 1,200 miles through five states before reaching Santa Fe, New Mexico. While it had long been used by native peoples, the trail became a major commercial route after Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821.

As Gregg wrote: “Not even an attempt has before been made to present any full account of the origin of the Santa Fe Trade and modes of conducting it.” The book mixes travelogue with anthropology and natural science as Gregg recorded  not only the customs of the people of New Mexico and the regions’ tribes, but facts of geography and geology.

The scene is familiar from movies: caravans traveling in four parallel lines of march, making between 11 and 15 miles of progress per day. When Indians attacked, wagons maneuvered around to form a makeshift fort. For Gregg, the mundane events were as noteworthy as the exciting ones. He found entertainment in listening to the stories of legendary frontiersmen, those who merited “exalted seats in the Olympus of Prairie mythology.”

Gregg joined a wagon train, much like this one, headed down the Santa Fe Trail. Public Domain

After several weeks of arduous travel, Gregg described the excitement of arriving in Santa Fe: “I doubt … whether the first sight of the walls of Jerusalem were beheld by the crusaders with much more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy.” The dirty waggoneers prepared to greet their Mexican customers by “rubbing up”: cleaning their faces, combing their hair, donning fine suits, and tying new crackers to the end of their whips to heighten the effect of their entrance.

So what was traded? Americans brought manufactured products, including “dry goods, silks,” and “hardware” to exchange with the Mexicans. The product most in demand , however, was cotton. “At least one half of our stocks of merchandise is made up of them,” Gregg wrote, adding that “profits are reduced by their freight and heavy duty.” In return, the Mexicans offered raw materials. “Sheep may be reckoned the staple production of New Mexico, and the principle article of exportation,” said Gregg. Other livestock, such as mules, were also traded, along with furs and silver.

What makes “Commerce of the Prairies” a true classic, though, are the unexpected details. In chapter 4 of volume 2, Gregg reflects on “the ineptness of married men for the Sante Fe trade” after his brother leaves the caravan to return to his family: “The domestic hearth, with all its sacred and most endearing recollections, is sure to haunt them in the hour of trial, and almost every step of their journey is apt to be attended by melancholy reflections of home and domestic dependencies.”

Later Adventures

For a long time, not much was known about Gregg’s life outside of the details in his famous book. He left behind voluminous personal writings, however, including notebooks, diaries, and letters. After his death, these fell into the hands of family members. Eventually a grandnephew, Claude Hardwicke, made them available for publication in the 1940s. These “lost” writings provide valuable details about Gregg’s early life, as well as his later adventures.

Hardwicke documents how, after the success of Gregg’s book, the adventurer earned a degree in medicine. During the Mexican-American War, he served as a guide, interpreter, journalist, and botanist—discovering, in the latter role, a number of previously unknown plant species. When the California Gold Rush swept the nation, he embarked on his final adventure to find a new trail to northern California.

It was here in 1850 that Gregg met his end just before reaching his destination. He was as much the victim of his own character as he was of hardship. His curiosity and zeal for the scientific method turned out to be his undoing. In an open wilderness with numerous dangers and the threat of starvation, Gregg kept stopping to measure features of the landscape, take barometer readings, and record temperatures. His traveling companions, starving, understandably became exasperated with their snail’s-pace progress.

Once, while measuring the latitude of a river in present-day Trinity County, California, his party pushed off their canoes without him. According to one chronicler of the expedition, after Gregg caught up with them, he “opened upon us … the most withering and violent abuse.” To commemorate this difficulty, the party named this stream the Mad River.

“Living entirely upon acorns and herbs,” Gregg continued to become weaker along the journey until he fell from his horse and died. He was 43. Fittingly, he was “buried according to the custom of the prairies”: wrapped in a blanket, the grave topped with stones to prevent wolves from getting his body.

Josiah Gregg was an explorer and naturalist in the American West. Public Domain

Gregg played a significant role in the United States’s westward expansion. Unlike some of the rougher frontiersmen known for more violent exploits, he was armed only with his powers of the pen and observation. We are indebted to the sacrifice this brave intellect made for the sake of national growth and freedom.

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