(light airy music) - [Nicki] The legacy
of the Santa Fe Trail is our society today. This very rich, diverse
convergence of cultures would help shape
the American West. - [Katherine] It was bringing
the brink of settlement and development of not
just regions of Colorado, but regions of the
entire southwest. - [Nicki] Traditionally, the narrative has been
very male dominated. All of the high profile people who traveled along this
Santa Fe Trail have been men. - [Leah] If we're always
sharing the same story about the Santa Fe Trail or any other part
of American history, we're leaving half of
those perspectives out. - [Nicki] That history
could not have happened without the
contributions of women. They played pivotal roles, but their voices haven't
been really recorded. Part of what we're doing
today is we're trying to unearth those stories. - [Narrator] This
program was made possible by the History Colorado
State Historical Fund, supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect, and interpret
Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund, create the future, honor the past. With additional funding provided in memory of Deanna E. La Camera by Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter and by members like you. Thank you. With special thanks to
the Denver Public Library, History Colorado and
to these organizations. (inquisitive music) - The Santa Fe Trail was
critical to the operation and the settlement
of the southwest. In 1821, on the heels of
Mexican independence from Spain, it opened up and it
was basically the
highway of migrants, of goods from all over the globe into the American Southwest. - [Al] We do have this
trail connecting Missouri to New Mexico, but we also have trails that
go from Santa Fe to California, down to Mexico City, and small trails
mostly used for trade. - [Rebecca] The Santa Fe
trail was the only way that you were going
to get freight and trade goods to the forts. It was considered to be
business transportation trail. Generally, you will
see that it wasn't one that women were
supposed to be traveling but that is not true of course. There were always women
along the Santa Fe Trail and they're part
of the story too. They're just not recognized. - [Narrator 2] The
women who navigated the opportunities of the trail came from vastly
different backgrounds. Their experiences varied
widely depending on their race, social status, and reasons
for being in this place. The stories of three women who set foot on this
crossroads of time reveal the range of experiences for 19th century American women. A Cheyenne woman known variously
by the names Mestaa██hehe, Mistanta, and Owl Woman, negotiated the
complexity of trade between Western
settlers and her people. Julia Holmes was a white
woman who chose adventure and boldness on her journey, and Cathay Williams,
a black woman, also known as William Cathay, because she enlisted in the
famed all black Buffalo soldiers as a man. What unites their stories
is a wilderness trail scattered with female footsteps that have long thread in
the shadows of history. - So when we think about
this Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the confluence
of multiple cultures, and nations, and perspectives, we get a spectrum of different
attitudes toward gender. We have the indigenous cultures. We get the Mexican perspective where Mexican women
actually have more rights and more freedoms
than Anglo women who would come through
the Santa Fe Trail. 1821 represents kind
of the coming together of all of those different
attitudes about gender. - So what women bring to the
table are their experiences, their full bodied experiences
as people of their time and we can't really know the
past unless we consider them. - The women actually had
quite a bit of power, more so than there would've been on the East Coast at the time. Women were able to own
property for example. If they spoke
multiple languages, they served as translators. They could offer mediation
and negotiations. Women were usually the ones who were processing the furs
or deer skins for example. Ultimately, they were involved in
almost every facet of life. - [Nicki] We have to think about is how tough of
a journey it was. It took about 50 days to travel
from St. Louis to Santa Fe, and so you had
places along the way that served as way stations where people could
kind of refuel. They could rest their animals. They could stock
up on provisions because it was a very difficult. I mean you have an arid climate. You have a bitter climate
during the winters, and so places like Bents Fort would have tremendous
importance for those migrants along the way. - William Bent and
his brother Charles had come to this
region from St. Louis to establish a trading post and these people met each other. The Cheyenne-Arapahoe
met William Bent and they asked him to
build a trading post on the Arkansas River. - [Narrator 2] Completed
an 1833 Bent's Fort became the main supply stop
along the Santa Fe Trail, which connected St.
Louis and Santa Fe. In a place where
trees can be scarce, they built with the Mexican
construction technique of Adobe bricks made of
mud, straw, and water. The fort's location on the north
side of the Arkansas River, put it on the United States
then border with Mexico. It became a place that partially
transcended the cultural and social barriers amongst
European fur traders, Mexican laborers, and Native
American buffalo hunters, the three main groups
that traded here. - [Nicki] So if this
enterprise was going to work, and especially somewhere like
Bent's Fort along the trail, if people were going to succeed in trading furs or other
goods along the trail, they had to cooperate. If you were new to this region
like the white Americans, you had to cooperate
with indigenous peoples. And so, one group that there
is documented cooperation is the Cheyenne and a good example
of sort of a figure who kind of bridged those
worlds was Owl Woman, who in Cheyenne is Mestaa██hehe. She would become the
wife of William Bent, who founded Bent's Fort. - Owl Woman was
the oldest daughter of one of the most important men in the southern Cheyenne
Tribe, White Thunder. He and Bent became friends. There was a night where there were comets
in a meteor shower. They thought the world
was coming to an end but not Owl Woman's father. He thought it was
a new beginning. - [Joseph] She was probably
the very first Cheyenne woman that married an Anglo. It was a time where it change and White Thunder knew
that there was one coming. She was a daughter
of the Arrow Keep and his daughter married Bent. - [Rebecca] This young man,
because of his prospects, seemed like a very
good economic match, and she was excellent
match for him because she had connections. - [Joseph] Well, most of 'em were probably her relatives too. By having a lot of relatives
in all different bands, she had more control,
goods, products to share, and she knew which ones
were looking for which. So she kind of like
controlled the monopoly of what was being sold away. - [Narrator 2] White Thunder, a high priest of the Cheyenne, arranged his daughter's marriage to the very important
William Bent. with as many as 20,000
native Americans camped outside of Bent's Fort, many wanting to trade
buffalo robes for goods. Owl Woman was positioned to
be a power broker of sorts. - She was unique because she
was really a culture bridger, Native American and
European-Anglo culture, but also with the Mexican
traders and the other tribes. - [Dee] Owl Woman was
involved in everything. She was somewhat of
a business partner. She was a vital part
of all of these things that were going on: economic, political, social. It was Owl Woman. - [Nicki] She is known to have
been kind of a bridge builder or a peacemaker
between the two peoples and represented this
sort of connection, and also represented
on William Bents' side, the need for these American men to marry into or to assimilate
into native cultures. - [Rebecca] They
produced four children. Mary was the oldest,
Robert, George, and Julia. She died at the birth
of her last child Julia. The Cheyenne custom for burial was that the person
would be put into a tree, a platform and a tall
tree with their goods. Everything they would
need for the next life. The air and the birds,
nature would take you back. (sad music) - [Narrator 2] It is
not known for certain, but Owl Woman was probably
only 37 when she died. She had nurtured peace
on the Colorado plains at a time when the United
States was increasingly at war with Native Americans
and with itself. The so-called American
Indian wars started. Indigenous people were targeted
for forced assimilation, erasure of their
cultures, and genocide. With the Civil War looming, it was a dangerous time
to be a Native American or African American woman
on the Santa Fe Trail. A young black woman
named Cathay Williams would one day find herself
on the Santa Fe Trail. And like Owl Woman, the color of her skin
would determine much of what she would experience
in life and on this trail. Born to a mother in
slavery and a free father, Cathay was legally a slave. - So she was taken as
contraband by the Union Army and as a young person,
she was a support person. - [Narrator 3] When
the war broke out and the United States soldiers
came to Jefferson City, they took me and other
color folks with them at Little Rock. Colonel Benton of
the 13 Army Corps was the officer
that carried us off. I did not want to go. He wanted me to cook
for the officers, but I always been a house girl
and did not know how to cook. - [Stephen] She was a cook but eventually she was
taught how to fire a weapon. And then, one day they decided that wearing a dress around
the campfire was dangerous. So they gave her a pair of pants and she decided at that point, I will never put
on a dress again. - [Narrator 2]
This may have been when Cathay Williams decided she would have more choices
as a man than as a woman. Even once freed after the
Emancipation Proclamation, what job could she hold? The army was all she'd
known her adult life. So she did what a woman
was not legally able to do. She enlisted as a man in the
now famed all black regiment known as the Buffalo Soldiers. - [Stephen] Now, Cathay
Williams had pretty good size. In fact, she was taller
than most of the men, so didn't have to go
through a physical. The recruiting officer said, "Sure, we'll sign you up." Her approach was to
not be outstanding or not be less than average, but just to be an
average soldier. - [Rebecca] She joined the
very first infantry unit, the 38th Company A at
Jefferson's Barracks in 1866. She just flipped her
name from Cathay Williams to William Cathay. Didn't really say she was a man, they just assumed she was a man and that was how she
became a Buffalo soldier. She probably walked
close to a thousand miles along the Santa Fe
Trail in her first year. - The Buffalo Soldiers
actually were not formed as a formal
organization until 1866. The job itself was
not any more dangerous than being any other soldier. The danger was being
a black soldier. They did face some opposition. So many times a discipline
was just so much more harsh than it was for other soldiers. And then at that time, there were the Indian Wars and Native Americans nationally were defending
their native land. There was a conflict because
their duty was to guard and protect wagon trains, but they were also fighting
another minority group, Native Americans. - Cathay Williams and
other Buffalo soldiers travel along the Santa Fe Trail. They didn't necessarily
all go on horseback. Their stories about Cathay
walking along the trail and as a result she had
a lot of foot injuries because the terrain is harsh. - She was able to do
that for two years until she became very ill, and they discovered
that she was a female and that's when she
was mustered out. - So she got an
honorable discharge and from there she
went to Port Union, up in New Mexico for a while, and then she moved to Pueblo. That's where she got married and her husband took
her horses and her money and she wound up coming
into Trinidad, Colorado. - [Rebecca] She was checked
into the Catholic hospital there and they amputated all of her
toes and part of one foot. So she asked the
military for help. Some people did receive
a military pension. But as a Buffalo soldier
and now as a woman, she applied for military
pension and she did not get it. Well, she thought she
could get benefits or help was because she had
an honorable discharge from the United States Military. Cathay Williams died of
complications of diabetes in Trinidad about 1892. - Cathay is significant
for a number of reasons. We have a woman of color who was not only able to
enlist in the army as a man and get away with it for years, but she was also the first, and as far as I know the only
known female Buffalo soldier. - I respect and honor her. I look at her as if
she was my sister. - [Stephen] She, at that time, that was the only route
that she had to survive and to be on her own. - [Narrator 2]
There was precedent for a woman disguising
herself as a man. In the Revolutionary
War, like Cathay, Deborah Sampson
evaded detection. Like Cathay, she received
an honorable discharge. But unlike the black female
slave turned soldier, Deborah received a
full military pension. Race played a role
for every woman who set foot on
the Santa Fe Trail. For white women,
it meant choices. For Julia Archibald Holmes, it meant the freedom
of her convictions. - [Katherine] Her
family went to church to hear Reverend
Henry Ward Beecher talk not only about very strong New England
religious beliefs, but also the evils of slavery. So for Julia, fighting slavery and
having all sorts of causes, social causes. And so, everything that
she does is connected to all of those ideas
of her day and place. John Brown is the most
famous anti-slavery or abolitionist leader
who's willing to do whatever it takes. One of John Brown's lieutenants
is a man named James Holmes. They got married and one of
the things he wanted to do was go west on the
Santa Fe Trail. So off goes our hero
on the Santa Fe Trail. One thing you need to know about
Julia on the Santa Fe Trail is you need to understand
what the Bloomer Costume is. The Bloomer Costume of
Julia's day was reform dress. It was meant to be an outfit that said women can
be equal to men. This will be a campaign
for women's equality and the point was
having both legs show. She decided she was
going to wear this on the journey along
the Santa Fe trail, so that she would be
making a statement about women's equality. She also has decided she's
going to keep a diary of sorts by writing letters
to her mother, and she is not only
wearing this costume that probably looked
really strange, not just because other
women on this trail are not wearing it but also because
she made her own with different calico fabrics. So I sort of imagined
this brightly colored, patchwork outfit. She also decides along the way that not only is her costume
going to make a statement, but that she should be treated
equally along the trail. She writes that the men are
expected in this wagon train to do guard duty every night on the expectation
perhaps an Indian attack, although that never happened. So she decides that
she is going to insist that she alternate or have similar shared
duty with her husband. So she's doing
that kind of effort all along the way to
keep insisting about
women's equality. - She actually walked
of her own free will, 10 or more miles a
day beside the wagon because she wanted to. She could explore, look
for flowers and things. She was very interested
in everything around her. And then when they got
to Garden of the Gods, two men decided
they wanted to climb so she and her husband went too. Took them five days. They got snowed on despite the fact it was
the first week of August and she climbed all
the way up there and nothing could stop her. - [From Julia's Journal]
Soon after leaving Bent's, we caught the first
view of Pikes Peak. We stopped and took
a good long look. We stood upon the mountain and
gazed upon his promise land. It was to us everything. It stood for the whole country, from Mexico to
our northern line. It represented gold
and plenty of it. It spoke of influence,
power, and position. The scene becomes one
of solemn grandeur. - [Katherine] So what Julia sees is all of this
spectacular scenery and feels very, very proud of
being the first white woman to climb Pikes Peak. We don't know how
many indigenous women
might have climbed at the top of Pikes Peak. We also don't know how
many Hispanic women might have climbed at
the top of Pikes Peak. - Then after that, her
family went to Taos. She ended up having four kids. She picked up Spanish and became a correspondent
for papers back east and eventually ended up
divorcing her husband. Two of the children died, moved to Washington, D.C. In the sixties and seventies,
she became a suffragette. She was a secretary for the
National Women's Organization to get the vote, and a
friend of Susan B. Anthony. A free thinker, a journalist,
a mountaineer, you name it. This woman wasn't
afraid to try things. She's quite extraordinary and I'm glad that
she's been recognized for her unusual approach to life because she was very
unusual for her day, brave lady. (solemn music) - [Narrator 2] The
Santa Fe Trail's heyday was coming to an end. Railroads sped up the
colonization of the west by white settlers, choking off the
natural migration paths of Native Americans
and the buffalo. - [Joseph] It was
a time for change. Everybody was being pushed
to the west from the east. So when they did the railroads, buffalo won't cross
a railroad track. He just stopped. So he stop, we stop. - [Al] The Santa
Fe Trail does exist as a national scenic byway. There are numerous
historic sites along the trail
that you can visit. Bent's Old Fort is a
national historic site. Trinidad History Museum is
also a stop along the byway. These places are important because they're
historically significant. But by being able to visit them, you get a tactile way
to experience history, to learn about
everyone's stories and learn how they
still impact us today. - [Nicki] So it is absolutely
vital for us to preserve the memory of the Santa Fe Trail and as much as we can to
preserve physical parts of the Santa Fe trail
because that instructs us. Seeing the wheel ruts, seeing the pathways
that people traveled and really encouraging, especially youth to understand
what it took to travel from St. Louis to Santa Fe. - [Narrator 2] The
fort standing along the historic Santa
Fe trail today is a painstaking reconstruction
of the original Adobe castle that beckoned people of all
backgrounds to come to trade. Valuable garbage deposits
have been excavated and reveal much
about the daily life of Bent's Fort residents. Archeologists have scoured
through thousands of artifacts to determine everything from
the thickness of the walls to some highly valued pipes, to the seemingly
incongruous English ceramics used for dining. - Bent's Fort, I think is one of
the gems in Colorado as far as preservation go. What did Bent's For
represent at a time when there were no cell phones, there were no cars, there were no highways, we just had this trail right? And so, Bent's Fort is
such an instructive piece of our history. And in preserving that, we are preserving for future
generations who we are. - [Al] The legacy of
the Santa Fe Trail and the women who
interacted and worked on it is their descendants, the culture in
which they lived in, it's all still here. People are still deeply
connected to the Santa Fe Trail and their roots. One of the amazing initiatives
that we have in Trinidad is the local Buffalo
soldiers are working to get a statue of Cathay
Williams placed within the city. - [Haskell] When I located this
plaque and I was just like, "Okay, overwhelmed." Well, during the
times and the seasons that the history
museum is not open, she's not visible. It was her that inspired me. - [Al] It's important
for us to have a statue for a woman of color, for an incredible
historical figure, accessible to
everyone year round. - Despite the obstacles
over the years and the struggles that
these indigenous people had to overcome, this particular group of people, descendants of White Thunder,
descendants of Owl Woman, their descendants live today. They're artists,
they're storytellers, they still maintain that
Cheyenne traditional culture and their sharing
it with people. It's no surprise that her
name, her Cheyenne name, was chosen to replace the name of a mountain in
Colorado in 2021, that was a derogatory
term for indigenous women, and they changed that to
Owl Woman's Cheyenne name. And so 200 years
after her birth, she still has some
influence today. - Oh, renaming it after her, like it brought
her back to life, brought her story, her people alive. - [Nicki] You could argue
that a Santa Fe Trail, it was a foundational
phenomenon or period or process. I mean it was all
of those things and you see this very rich, diverse convergence of cultures that would help shape
the American West. (spirited uplifting music)
