Trade, Trails, and Tales

Among the American Indians over the centuries there have been many great trading systems. I think we took a look at a trail that was part of such a system. That is the 7000 year old trail north from the Gulf of California sea route at where it passes near Organ Pipe Nation Monument. Over these routes goods and certain people traveled over many hundreds of miles. My tale of 'the little bells may have suggested to you such a system.

The Hopewell system is one that you might enjoy learning about yourself. Perhaps you will tell us tales of its trails. Perhaps the story of the young time wanderer we left in New Mexico will aid your real imagination.

What we can call the Hopewell Exchange System had probably already passed its peak before the earliest European visitors had begun to move in. It had extended through the Mississippi, Arkansaw, Missouri river systems and into the Great Lakes and probably well beyond to include the tributaries of these great rivers and to even Beyond the mouths of the Mississippi and the St. Laurence.

The great days of that system were probably the centuries between 200 BC and 500 AD.

The Hopewell System may be seen as an extension and continuation of the Adena culture and systems, which seems to have been strongly active from about 2000 BC to about 200 BC. The Adena culture was probably centered in the Ohio valley, but extended into what is now Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, New York and beyond.
Still, it probably covered and area smaller than did the Hopewell system.

Adena people as did Hopewell people after them cultivated pumpkin and other squash, sunflower seeds, and pittseed gooseberries which are, they tell me, much like quinoa.
They were also, of course hunters of wild game. Their ancestors had hunted very large game indeed.

From Dream to Dream

Stephen W. Kearny may not have been a sweetheart but he was the top pre-Civil War Army officer of his time. He is import for reasons other than his part in the conquest of California, but it is that conquest that interests me at the moment.
The Kearny Code for governing government behavior towards Californios may not have been great, but it was much better than that behavior actually became. What it became may not have been as bad as Federal behavior became during Reconstruction, but there are comparisons.

Kearny (pronounced "Kar-ney" sounds Irish) was born in 1794 in New Jersey and died in Missouri in 1848. Remember the "'49ers?" He was of a 'good family' being able to trace his roots back through General William Alexander and Sara(Lady Stirling)Livingston.
In 1826 he was appointed the first commander of the new Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. While there he married Mary Radford, the step-daughter of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
While at Jefferson Barracks, Kearny organized a regiment of dragoons on the lines of a cavalry unit. The U. S. Cavalry eventually grew out of that unit.

Kearny left for California with a fighting force of 300. They arrived tired in California and were stopped in their tracks by Captain Leonardo Cota of the Californio-Mexican cavalry under Andres Pico at the Battle of San Pasqual where Kearney was wounded. Even after Kearny was helped by Commodore Stockton's navel force at San Diego it remained a "Mexican stand-off for some time. After the Battles of San Gabriel and La Mesa with subsequent control of Los Angeles the Anglos gained the upper hand. They were helped some by a lack of trust for the Mexicans which had grown among the Californios.

Still for a short time, a bit like Camelot, 'the days of the dons' had been a bit like the dreams of the Caliphs.