Commerce of the Prairies

Josiah A. Gregg, an experienced trader on the plains of western North America, details here the caravan networks and exchange of goods across the vast prairie lands in the 1830s and 1840s.

A detailed yet lively chronicle, Commerce of the Prairies takes the reader back to a bygone era. At a time before the automobile or interstate commerce ignited the dynamism of an industrialized United States, there were individual merchants, traders and citizens working toward making their own lives and societies more prosperous and comfortable.

To this end, settlers established trade routes and roads across what is now New Mexico, Texas, California and Nevada. One of the main trading partners was Mexico; it was often to Tijuana and other north Mexican towns that traders loaded their wagons and set off. One of the first cities to grow out of trading posts was Santa Fe, New Mexico - it is this locale that Josiah A. Gregg gained the most personal experience trafficking commodities.

The Great Western plains were vast and scarcely charted. Traders would encounter unusual creatures in the desert which they had never seen, such as lizards and rattlesnakes. Occasionally they would witness or even partake in the ancient ceremonies of the local Native American tribes, whose traditions were starkly different to those of the incipient European settlers. Several chapters of this book are devoted to the Indian tribes; Gregg notes the marked variations in culture and behavior between Native American groups, noting that each held a distinct identity and customs.

The trading roads crisscrossed around the Southwest United States; although their condition varied and dangers were many, they formed the genesis of a new, organized and mercantile society. It was this early trade, and the adventures so many merchants found themselves in, that laid the groundwork for cities to come, and by extension the modern United States and Mexico as we know them today.

This edition of Commerce of the Prairies contains all of the illustrations presented in the original publication, allowing readers to better visualize life upon the plains long ago. Also present are the original notes and tables appended by Gregg.

Max Moorehead was David Ross Boyd professor emeritus of history at the University of Oklahoma. He was the author of The Presidio:Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands and editor of Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Historian Marc Simmons is a founder and the first president of the Santa Fe Trail Association. His forty-nine books include six about the Trail and The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest.