Over this Royal Road between Santa Fe and Chihuahua lumbered the caravans of the Santa Fe traders, who exchanged American dry goods and hardware for Mexican silver and mules. Over it, too, traveled Colonel Doniphan's Missouri Volunteers, bent on establishing the boundary of Texas at the R?o Grande. Indeed, without this main artery of travel, the history of both the United States and Mexico might have been vastly different. This book tells the exciting story of the Chihuahua Trail, of the volume and value of the frontier commerce, its peculiar trade practices, the risks of the road, and the government controls exercised by both countries. But, more than that, it tells of the traders themselves and their influence on the government and citizenry of New Mexico, an influence strong enough to destroy that province's will to resist when the Mexican War broke out in 1846, and of their role in the war and their importance in making New Mexico into an American territory.

Max L. Moorhead was professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the Santa Fe trader Josiah Gregg's classic account COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Mark L. Gardner is the editor of BROTHERS ON THE SANTA FE AND CHIHUAHUA
TRAILS: EDWARD JAMES GLASGOW AND WILLIAM HENRY GLASGOW, 1846-1848.]]>