In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin set out from Independence, Missouri, on the Santa Fe Trail. With her husband, Samuel Magoffin, a veteran Santa Fe trader, she crossed the plains and mountains to Santa Fe, then traveled along the Rio Grande to El Paso Norte, and finally south into Chihuahua. Published in 1926, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico is the earliest narrative about the Santa Fe Trail by an Anglo-American woman. Magoffin recorded a crucial time in the history of the trans-Mississippi West. As a member of her husband's merchant caravan, she saw the trail in one of its busiest years of trade, when more than $1 million worth of goods was hauled more than a thousand miles into the northern provinces of Mexico. She entered Santa Fe only two weeks after the Americans occupied New Mexico during the Mexican War (1846-1848). An eyewitness to General Stephen W...