Challenges
Travelers faced many hardships along the Santa Fe Trail. The trail was a challenging 900 miles (1,400 km) of arid plains, desert and mountains. On this trail unlike the Oregon trail, there was a serious danger of Native American attacks, for neither the Comanches nor the Apaches of southern high plains tolerated trespassers. In 1825, Congress voted federal protection for the Santa Fe Trail, even though much of it lay in the Mexican territory. Lack of food and water also made the trail very risky. Weather conditions, like huge lightning storms, gave the travelers even more difficulty. If a storm blew up, there was often no place to take shelter and the livestock could get spooked. Rattlesnakes often posed a threat as many people died due to snakebite. The caravan size increased later on to prevent Indian raids. The travelers also packed more oxen instead of mules because the Indians did not want to risk raiding the caravans for only some oxen.
The Republic of Texas had claimed Santa Fe as part of the eastern portion of Texas along the Rio Grande when it seceded from Mexico in 1836. In 1841, a small military and trading expedition left from Austin, Texas, with the aim of gaining control over the Santa Fe Trail. Known as the Texas Santa Fe Expedition the force encountered many difficulties and was captured by the Mexican army. In April 1843, the Republic of Texas Snively Expedition came to plunder Mexican merchant caravans on territory claimed by Texas, in retaliation for recent Texian executions and Mexican invasions, but were quickly arrested and disarmed by United States troops escorting caravans, although not before a member of the party performed the unsanctioned murdering of Antonio Jose Chavez in present day Rice County, Kansas, son of a former governor of Nuevo México.
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