The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway

Inman, Henry, 1837-1899Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
875K words
Chapters
88

Tags

English Originals World History Human GeographyHistorical ReappraisalLegendary LivesDocumentary NarrativeSocial ObservationFolk Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway by Henry InmanAuthor: Inman, Henry, 1837-1899,Language: English, Class: F786: United States local history: New Southwest. Colorado River, Canyon, and Valley, Release Date: Apr 1, 2005

Editor's review

This book is a historical narrative about the Old Santa Fe Trail in the American Southwest. Drawing on personal experience and documentary sources, Henry Inman tells of the rise and decline in the nineteenth century of this trade route linking Missouri and Santa Fe. The book depicts the terrain, climate, and Indian tribes along the trail and records details of caravan trade, military operations, and pioneer life; it is an accessible introduction to the history of westward expansion and the local history of the Southwest. The prose has the flavor of late-nineteenth-century documentary literature, and the narrative pace is slow, but it conveys a strong sense of historical sources and firsthand presence. It is suitable as supplementary reading for the history of the American West, the history of transportation, and local history, and also for readers interested in the pioneer era to read in installments at leisure. Because it was written early, some statements carry the limitations of their time; readers should examine them in light of modern historical scholarship.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and preface first to grasp the geographical course and historical stages of the trail, then move into the main text.
  2. Read with a map of the American Southwest at hand, locating the towns, rivers, and stations mentioned in the book.
  3. When you meet old-fashioned expressions or unfamiliar place names, you may pass over them at first to keep the overall narrative pace, and return to them after finishing.
  4. If used to supplement a course, excerpt passages on trade, military affairs, and Indian relations by theme and take notes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a novel or a historical narrative? It is a work of historical narrative, centered on the trade route of the Santa Fe Trail, the scenery along it, and its people, written in the tone of late-nineteenth-century documentary literature; it is not an invented novel.
How difficult is the original English? Written in the late nineteenth century, it has long sentences and some older vocabulary and place names; it is of moderately advanced difficulty in English reading, and a certain foundation in English is recommended before reading.
Does the book contain the prejudices of its era? Because it was written early, its statements about Indians and pioneer activity may reflect the prevailing views of the time; readers should examine them in light of modern historical scholarship.

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About the author

Inman, Henry, 1837-1899 Author

Henry Inman (1837–1899) was a writer whose work centers on life on the American western frontier. Public information about his biography is limited, and details such as his nationality and exact dates are not clearly established in the available records; the four works listed here all deal with the western frontier. He wrote The Great Salt Lake Trail and The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway, which follow two famous western routes and record the landscapes and travels along them. Tales of the Trail: Short Stories of Western Life presents everyday frontier life in short stories, while The Ranche on the Oxhide: A Story of Boys' and Girls' Life on the Frontier addresses younger readers with a portrait of boys' and girls' lives on the frontier. Overall, his writing leans toward documentary road narrative and scenes of frontier life for a general readership, offering popular texts for understanding nineteenth-century narratives of western development.