SANTA FE TRAIL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 20

SANTA FE TRAIL

How It Got It's" Name

A Spanish king leading his army to battle in wild impassable ~ mountains found himself hemmed in by the enemy, who outnumbered his men five to one. He would have perished with: all his troops had not a private soldier discovered , a narrow, unguarded pass at the entrance of which lay the bleached skull of a cow. He led the king and his army to safety, and the grateful monarch not only rewarded him with wealth and honours, but bestowed on him a new name—Cabeza do Vaca, ''cow's head."

De Vaca, says a writer in the New York "Times," sailed from Spain for tho Florida coast about three and a half centuries ago with the Narvaes expedition and was wrecked in the Gulf; but de Vaca survived with'three others, who clung to him when the ship went down. Though his ship was at the bottom of the sea, the ocean behind him, an untrodden wilderness before, and hostile Indians all around, de Vaca's purpose, was unshaken. Wisely he told his companions that a settlement of their countrymen was ahead and their only hope was to reach it.

Ho led them from somewhere near the Mississippi's mouth, across an unknown continent to : the Pacific. At tho Seven Cities of Cibola there lived a people, peaceful and industrious, worshipping strange heathen gods, and possessing- treasures of gold and- silver, and plenty of food. At least this was tho story which de Vaca later told Corohado, the Governor of Mow Galieia, inducing him to send an expedition under Marcos de Niza, in 1540 to colonise tho Seven Cities of the Pueblos. De Niza invaded New Mexico, conquered the native towns with his soldiery and found everything as de Vae'a had reported—except the treasure. ■ , Thus, about 1000 was founded the city of Santa Fe. The famous Santa Fc Trailf traversed by pack ■ mules, prairie schooners, and the present railroad line, was known to (he Spanish conquerors as the' Cow's Head Trail, first blazed for hundreds of 'miles across nil unexplored continent by dv Vaca and his three men.