Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

In 1821, Missouri became the first state admitted to the Union whose borders were entirely west of the Mississippi River. At that time, rivers were important for the flow of goods and travelers. The new state of Missouri was located at the intersection of the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers. It developed bustling frontier towns, which became “jumping-off” points for westward travelers. The flood of travelers heading for new opportunities and new settlements were so great that they carved routes across the western frontier. Those routes—the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, and the Mormon Pioneer Trail—led thousands of settlers to Oregon, California, and Utah. But the first major westward trail—the Santa Fe Trail—was different. It was the nation’s first international commercial highway. Rather than emigrants, it mainly was used to…

Zebulon M. Pike came from an army family. His father, Zebulon Pike, was fighting in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) when he was born in New Jersey 1779. The younger Pike then grew up in a series of military posts in the Northwest Territory to which his father was assigned after the war. He joined the U.S. Army, too. He served in several military posts before receiving orders to explore the upper Mississippi River in 1805. Almost immediately upon Pike’s return in 1806, he was given orders to go on a second expedition. The mission involved exploring the unknown western frontier and to find the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers. Along the way, he was asked to return a group of Osage Indians to their villages and to…

In 1987, the Santa Fe Trail was designated a National Historic Trail in the National Park Service (NPS). The NPS and the nonprofit Santa Fe Trail Association (formed in 1986) work together to preserve and protect this unique historic trail. Today, the Santa Fe Trail extends across both public and private land. It is dotted with places and sites that continue to interpret the trail’s history. Among them is Council Grove, in eastern Kansas. Council Grove was an early gathering point for travelers before heading out for New Mexico. Another prominent spot on the trail is Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site in Colorado. The U.S. government also built military forts along the trail to offer protection. In 1827, Fort Leavenworth, located in eastern Kansas, became the first fort established.…

The oxen that pulled the wagons on the Santa Fe Trail weighed an average of 2,000 pounds. To guide the enormous creatures, drivers mostly relied on their voices and spoke familiar commands. They also carried a 15- to 20-foot-long whip, which they cracked in the air above the oxen. It sounded like a loud gunshot. The sound was created when the tip of the whip was snapped, moving so fast that it broke the sound barrier! The Santa Fe Trail was not a narrow path. In some places, it was several miles wide. Wagons were encouraged to spread out where there was space across the prairie to avoid getting caught in deep ruts. Some wagon ruts still are visible today. Traders making the trek to Santa Fe couldn’t stop for…

For almost 19 years—from October 1859 to July 1878—Fort Larned was an active military post. Today, Fort Larned National Historic Site (ABOVE), located in central Kansas, is one of the historic sites on the Santa Fe Trail that is open to the public. Park Ranger Celeste Dixon (LEFT) talked with COBBLESTONE about the fort’s history and its connection to the historic trail. Why was Fort Larned built? Fort Larned was established to protect mail deliveries on the Santa Fe Trail. Troops were originally sent to the area to protect construction crews building a new mail station. The station was to be used by the stagecoach company that had contracted to deliver mail on this section of the trail. The U.S. Army decided to keep troops in the area to protect…

The Santa Fe Trail opened up trade between Mexico and the United States. The trail also introduced people to different languages. Spanish is the most widespread language in Mexico. Here’s a look at some Spanish words that have been adopted into English. Pueblo has a couple of meanings in English. It can refer to “any of more than two dozen Indigenous people living in the American Southwest, such as the Hopi, Taos, and Zuni.” It also can mean “a permanent village or community of any Pueblo people, living in multilevel adobe dwellings clustered around a plaza.” The Spanish used pueblo generally to refer to “a town or a village” as well as “a nation or a people.” Adobe also has several meanings. It can be defined as “a sun-dried brick…

At first glance, the men who rode into Franklin, Missouri, appeared to be two dusty traders returning from an unsuccessful trip. But as they unloaded their bags, the story goes, one of the bags opened. Coins spilled onto the street. It was late January 1822. Franklin was a town with little hard currency of its own at the time. Whether or not coins literally spilled onto the street, the existence of coins was real. People wanted to know: Where had the traders been? What kind of coins were they? And were there more? FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND William Becknell was one of those two dusty travelers. Little is known about his early life. He was born in Virginia around 1788. He probably did not receive much formal education. By 1810, he…

The travelers cheered at the sight in the distance. They were thirsty and weary after 530 miles on the Santa Fe Trail. But they knew they were within reach of Bent’s Fort. It was the only place of real rest and recuperation to be found on the trail between Independence, Missouri, and New Mexico. Many travelers on the western prairie found the unfamiliar and desolate land unsettling. They had to deal with animal losses and wagon breakdowns. Sleepless nights and unfriendly interactions with Indigenous people caused additional stress. The sight of the fort’s 15-foot-high protective walls meant relief was at hand. Between 1833 and 1849, Bent’s Fort was the landmark trading post of Bent, St. Vrain & Company. The company built several trading posts, but Bent’s Fort on the north…

The unsung heroes of the Santa Fe Trail were the mules and oxen that hauled goods over the prairies and mountains. Those beasts of burden were the workers that made the Santa Fe trade profitable. Mules are a hybrid animal, the offspring of a female horse and a male donkey. After the first mules were introduced in Missouri in the early 1820s, traders quickly recognized their value. Missouri mules worked longer and harder than horses. They were strung together in a train of about 20 animals. Each mule carried up to 300 pounds of goods. A mule train could travel about 15 miles a day. Packs were unloaded each night to allow the animals to rest and then were reloaded each morning. Packs were carefully balanced and tied so the…

Hundreds of thousands of people traveling in wagons, on horseback, and on foot pushing handcarts headed into the American West in the 1800s. Until the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, different routes brought emigrants to different destinations. The Oregon Trail In the early 1800s, fur trappers and fur traders were the first to explore the unmapped territory west of the Mississippi River. In their search for beavers, they followed the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers. They became familiar with routes through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Northwest. They created the path that would become the Oregon Trail. By the mid-1830s, the first wagon train used the path, which slowly was improved and widened into a trail. Ferry services were added to help emigrants navigate the…

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are the southernmost section of the Rocky Mountains. They run from southern Colorado to northern New Mexico. The range ends southeast of Santa Fe. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for “Blood of Christ.” The name might be a reference to the effects of alpenglow. Alpenglow is a phenomenon that appears on the horizon across from the sun during a sunrise or a sunset. It leaves an appearance of distant features awash in a reddish glow, kind of like this view of Santa Fe! Early Indigenous people called the Santa Fe area “Dancing Ground of the Sun.”…

This month’s mystery hero never forgot his past. His exact birthdate is not known, but he was born into slavery in 1812 in Tennessee. As an enslaved person, he was viewed as property and his life was controlled by his owner. Our hero knew he did not want to spend his life enslaved. He worked out a deal with his owner to buy his freedom. But how could an enslaved young man earn money? Enslaved people were not paid for their labor, but this month’s mystery hero made an arrangement with his owner: The owner paid him for extra work done during his spare time. Our hero was a skilled carpenter. He knew how to make farm equipment, such as yokes for teams of oxen. The cost for our hero’s…

After spending 800 years trying to end the rule of the Moors, the people of Spain succeeded in the early 1500s. Spain’s many military veterans were then eager to conquer new lands. They sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, looking for possessions and riches to claim for their king. In 1521, conquistador Hernán Cortés defeated the Aztec Indians of Mexico. He sent the gold he discovered back to Spain. In 1534, Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire in South America, seizing more gold. Those finds prompted fantastic stories about the Seven Cities of Gold to the north. Yet several expeditions failed to find any cities or gold. In the meantime, Spain claimed the land it had conquered in the Americas as New Spain. In 1595, Don Juan de Oñate received permission…

Nearly 200 years have passed since the first wagons made the trip to Santa Fe. But the many wagons that followed the route have left permanent marks on the land. Today, historic wagon ruts are visible at different points on the Santa Fe Trail. They don’t all look the same. Some look like parallel grooves in the land. Others look more like swales or ditches. The condition of the ruts today depends on the ground in which they were cut. There is not much that can be done to keep the weathering forces of nature from erasing wagon wheel ruts. But one of the best ways to preserve them is to allow vegetation to grow on them. The roots help keep the land from eroding.…

Wits, courage, determination, and a reliable wagon. Those are the things that travelers on the Santa Fe Trail needed. When it came to reliable wagons, Joseph Murphy delivered. Murphy was born in 1805 in Ireland. He immigrated to the United States when he was 13 years old. His journey from Dublin Bay to the frontier town of St. Louis, Missouri, took nine months. He had hoped to work on his grandfather’s farm. But shortly before he arrived, the farm was sold. He instead found work as an apprentice to a local wagon maker, Daniel Caster. Life as an apprentice meant long, exhausting days. Murphy was up before dawn to get the shop ready. He carried water from the Mississippi River. He stacked loads of lumber. He ran errands. He watched,…

For centuries before wagons cut ruts into the Santa Fe Trail, the vast grasslands split by the route were home to tribes of Plains Indians. The Plains Indians were any of about 30 different Indigenous peoples who lived on the Great Plains of central North America. The trail brought different cultures into contact—and eventually into conflict. A few of the Plains Indians followed a semisedentary lifestyle. Two such groups, the Osage and the Kansa, inhabited permanent villages in eastern Kansas. They raised corn, beans, and squash. Like the nearby Pawnee, they ventured south and west once or twice a year to hunt American bison. Westward along the trail lived other Plains Indians with a different lifestyle. The Comanche, the Kiowa, the Southern Cheyenne, the Southern Arapaho, and the Plains Apache…

About the Civil War Harriet Tubman The Yukon Gold Rush Draw a picture or write a poem or short essay that connects to one of the above COBBLESTONE themes on which we currently are working. All contributions must be your original work. Include a note from a parent or a legal guardian clearly stating: “This is my child’s original work, and COBBLESTONE has permission to publish it with my child’s name, age, and hometown, in print and online.” We will include as many as we can in the upcoming issue to which your work relates. Mail it to the address shown here, or email it to cobblestone@cricketmedia.com.…