Heretofore the swarthy Mexicans, folk of the dry plains and hills around the head of the Rio Grande and the Red, had carried their cotton goods and many other small and needful things all the way from Vera Cruz on the seacoast, over trails that were long, tedious, uncertain, and expensive.

A far shorter and more natural trade route went west along the Arkansas, which would bring the American goods to the doors of the Spanish settlements.

After Pike and one or two others had returned with reports of the country, the possibilities of this trade were clear to any one with the merchant's imagination.
There is rivalry for the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail." As early as 1812, when the United States was at war with England, a party of men on horseback trading into the West, commonly called the McKnight, Baird, and Chambers party, made their way west to Santa Fe.

There, however, they met with disaster.

All their goods were confiscated and they themselves lay in Mexican jails for nine years.