[Gutenberg 62018] • The Journal of Jacob Fowler / Narrating an Adventure from Arkansas Through the Indian / Territory, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, to / the Sources of Rio Grande del Norte, 1821-22

The Glenn-Fowler Expedition was an expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico led by Hugh Glenn and Jacob Fowler to see if trading with the Spanish in that region was feasible. The expedition was made up of 21 men. They left their establishment on the Verdigris River in present day Oklahoma on September 25, 1821 and arrived in Santa Fe in January 1822 and found that the Spanish authority in the region had been ended by the Mexican War of Independence. They returned home successfully, proving that trade with the Santa Fe area was feasible. The profitable trip, along with those of William Becknell, led to the establishment of the Santa Fe trail. The author of this journal, "Major Fowler, was born in New York, in 1765, and came to Kentucky in early life, a fine specimen of physical manhood, fully equipped for the office and duties of a surveyor. His surveying instruments were the best of their day, and elicited no little envy from those who used the common Jacob's staff and compass, and chain of the times. He had the reputation of being an accomplished surveyor, and did much in this line for the United States government. His surveying extended to the great plains and mountains of the far West, before civilization had reached these distant wilds" His journal " ...is a novel and notable contribution to our knowledge of early commercial venture and pioneering adventure in the Great West. It is simply a story of the trader and trapper, unsupported by the soldier, unimpeded by the priest, and in no danger from the politician. The scene is set in the wilderness; the time is when pack-animals are driven across the stage, before the first wheels rolled over the plains from the States to Santa Fe. ...I know of no record, earlier in date than Fowler's, of continuous ascent of the river from Fort Smith to the present position of Pueblo in Colorado. He meandered the whole course of the Arkansaw between the points named, except his cut-off of a small portion by the Verdigris trail. ...Whose was the first habitable and inhabited house on the spot where Pueblo now stands? Fowler's, probably; for Pike's stockade was hardly a house, and Jim Beckwourth came twenty years after Fowler. The Taos Trail from Santa Fe through the Sangre de Cristo Pass to the Arkansaw at Pueblo was well known to the Spaniards when Fowler's party traversed it in the opposite direction; but we have no American itinerary of that passage at an earlier date than his. When Fowler ascended the Rio Grande to Hot Spring creek in the San Juan range, he followed a Spanish road; but never before had an American expedition been so near the sources of that great river Del Norte, and not till many years afterward did any such prolong Fowler's traces upward. The greater part of Fowler's homeward journey from Taos to Fort Osage will doubtless prove as novel to his readers."

This book published in 1898 contain the original grammar and misspellings of the author and may contain formatting defect from the original publication or from the reformatting for the Kindle.