Eventually the returning survivors of this party told their stories, and those stories, far from chilling, only inflamed the ardor of other adventurous traders.
In 1821 more than one American trader reached Santa Fe; and, now that the Spanish yoke had been thrown off by the Mexicans, the goods, instead of being confiscated, were purchased eagerly.
It is to be remembered, of course, that trading of this sort to Mexico was not altogether a new thing.

Sutlers of the old fur traders and trappers already had found the way to New Spain from the valley of the Platte, south along the eastern edge of the Rockies, through Wyoming and Colorado.

By some such route as that at least one trader, a French creole, agent of the firm of Bryant & Morrison at Kaskaskia, had penetrated to the Spanish lands as early as 1804, while Lewis and Clark were still absent in the upper wilderness.

Each year the great mountain rendezvous of the trappers--now at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, now at Horse Creek in Wyoming, now on Green River in Utah, or even farther beyond the mountains--demanded supplies of food and traps and ammunition to enable the hunters to continue their work for another year.

Perhaps many of the pack-trains which regularly supplied this shifting mountain market already had traded in the Spanish country.
It is not necessary to go into further details regarding this primitive commerce of the prairies.