The Changing Trail
by
Kelley Hewett Pounds
A fire blazed in the front yard while
members of the Kayser, Hewett and Autry families tuned up guitars, fiddles and banjos for
an impromptu "musical." Practice notes drifted on piņon smoke and the
vanilla-scented breeze that whispered through Ponderosa pines. On the front porch
the children gathered at the feet of Old Hans Kayser, who had agreed to tell stories of
the "olden days" when his parents had first settled in the Manzano Mountains.
That memory came to mind when a new e-mail friend, Laura Kayser, found
out I was writing a series of articles about women on the Santa Fe Trail. You see,
"Old Hans" was the son of Lucinda Wiseman Trieloff Kayser, the woman purported
to have been the last woman to cross the Santa Fe Trail by wagon. Laura told me she
and her husband (Lucinda's grandson) had a copy of her diary. Would I like to read
it and use it for an article?
"Yes!" I replied, stunned by my good fortune, especially
since I had grown up in a mountain community homesteaded by Lucinda's family and mine.
I attended school with her great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, and
my sister married one of her great-grandsons.
Now, because of those childhood memories, stories told by firelight,
and an e-mail message from a new friend, I finally realize how quickly industry and
technology can change our world. I understand how people must have first felt about
the telegraph and the telephone.
Change. Progress. It was inevitable, even for the Santa Fe
Trail. When William Becknell opened commerce with Mexico in 1821, there were no
American settlements in Kansas. Even after the Civil War, the only way to ship
merchandise and "manpower" across the plains was by wagon train. But by
1877, Lucinda Wiseman Trieloff, her new husband Carl Trieloff, and his ten-year-old
daughter Emma, traveled the trail alone. Their single wagon no longer needed the
protection of others, and their trail was no longer scouted by a wagon master, but by
steel rails and locomotive engines.
In her diary entry dated July 10, 1877, Lucinda herself noted the
changes that had occurred in a short period of time. " . . . Our road is still
across the almost level prairie or what was once called the plains. Eight years ago
there could hardly a house be found along the road. Only once in a while a stock
ranch. Now it is settled all along. I don't think we traveled more than a mile
anywhere without passing a house. . . ."
Another clue to the degree of change that had taken place was the
number of miles Lucinda often recorded traveling per day. Twenty-six miles.
Twenty-eight miles. Thirty. Such distances indicate a vast improvement in
travel conditions from a time when fifteen miles was considered a good day's
journey. Their relatively easy progress might also have been due to the fact that
they weren't hauling 5000 pounds of goods for trade in Santa Fe as those before them had
done.
It seems the only things about the trail experience that didn't change
were the swarms of mosquitoes and the everlasting frustration a woman feels when having to
deal with the stubborn man in her life. This last bit of understanding came with a
knowing smile when I read this: "While in Great Bend Carl saw a man who told him
there was a little town down below . . . so Carl concluded to go and see it and, if it
suited him, he thought to buy a house lot, build a house and go to work. So in the
morning we came back across Walnut Creek and stop[ped] for dinner. Now I guess he
has concluded to go on again. I wish he knew what he was going to do. . . . O Carl,
it seems to me you do not think how much you dislike to wait when you are ready to go. . .
."
Today, with our progressive ideas about sexual politics and gender
equality, some might think women like Lucinda meek and weak-willed for leaving behind
friends, family and an established home to relocate at the whims of their husbands.
But even though Lucinda left Manhattan, Kansas in tears, she soon adjusted to her new
adventure.
How many of us today would be willing to cook over an open fire under
threat of an impending rainstorm, trek across miles of prairie in long skirts without hope
of finding a rest stop with indoor plumbing, ride a donkey for the first time down a steep
mountain pass, or settle in a land where we might not see our nearest neighbor for weeks
or months at a time? Never mind the prospect of finding rattlesnakes curled up in
our beds or giving birth alone in the dead of winter.
When Lucinda and Carl arrived at Watrous, also known as La Junta, in
the New Mexico Territory, they camped beside a lake near the home of William Kronig, a
friend of Carl's. Carl then left Lucinda and Emma behind in order to beat the
deadline for purchasing a wagon yard, saloon, and mercantile business in a place called La
Joya. After a tearful farewell, afraid she might never see Carl again, Lucinda
resigned herself to wait for his return. He soon did, and the Trieloffs traveled
south to La Joya to begin their new life.
Before long they had a son, Frederick, who entered the world roughly
the same time the railroad reached New Mexico. And by 1880 the Santa Fe Trail as
people had known it ceased to exist, while its descendant, the Santa Fe Railroad, gave
birth to a new era.
In 1884, Carl became ill and died. Lucinda continued to operate
their business alone, but when her store began to suffer outlaw raids, John Becker, the
Belen merchant who supplied her with merchandise, sent his employee, Paul Frederick August
Kayser VI, to help and protect her.
August Kayser--known today by many as P.F.A.K. in order to distinguish
him from the many Pauls and Augusts that have followed--also had an interesting
history. Originally from Kiel, Germany, he spoke seven languages fluently.
Among his many adventures, including a stint on a boat owned by a Russian nobleman and a
trek through the Amazon jungle, he was at one time a resident of Isleta Pueblo and was
married temporarily to an Isleta woman. As a result of his talent with languages he
developed a written version of the Tiwa language, and on several occasions he escorted
delegates from Isleta Pueblo to Washington, D.C.
Lucinda and August married in October 1886, and a year later Paul
Frederick August Kayser VII (Hans) was born. In 1890, August was offered a job by a
well-known Estancia Valley sheepherder whom August had met aboard the ship that had
brought them both to America. But when Lucinda and August arrived in the Estancia
Valley, they were astounded to find out their employer and his partner had been
murdered. Having traveled thus far, they decided to claim a homestead in the
foothills of the Manzano Mountains. August was soon operating a sawmill, and during
the winter he and Lucinda taught school in the area's small Hispanic villages.
All told, Lucinda and August had seven children of their own, all of
whom lived to adulthood. And Hans, the avid storyteller of the Kayser brood, put
his own stamp on the course of progress in New Mexico. With a team of mules and a
fresno, he proved instrumental in the construction of the rail bed between Belen and
Mountainair, a town named for the fresh breezes blowing down from the Manzano Mountains.
In 1981, eight years after the death of Old Hans, a railroad station
sign bearing the name "Kayser" was erected to commemorate his decades of loyal
service to the Santa Fe Railroad. It seems fitting that "Old Hans," son of
the last woman to cross the Santa Fe Trail by wagon, son of the German immigrant who
walked that same trail before rows of white canvas bonnets gave way to ribbons of steel
stretching into the horizon, should earn such an honor from a railroad born on the Santa
Fe Trail.
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This article first appeared in the July/August/September 1998 issue of Calico Trails