Review of Dangerous Passage: The Santa Fe Trail and the Mexican War By William Y. Chalfant

Authors

Duane A. Smith, Fort Lewis College

Date of this Version

1996

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 16:1 (Winter 1996). Copyright © 1996 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

William Chalfant, long time western historian and Hutchinson, Kansas, attorney, focuses on one period in the trail's history, the Mexican War phase of American "Manifest Destiny." His is the story of the military as it protects the trail and uses it as the invasion corridor to march to Santa Fe. The main story details the "troubled and often violent IndianWhite relations that plagued the trail during the war years" (p.xiii). Marc Simmons's foreword sets the scene and takes the reader into the narrative.

A wide variety of people will enjoy this study-those interested in military, Indian, transportation, and southwestern history in general, for example. Its focus is narrow in time and place, its significance broad to the history of the West and the United States.