Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail | Reviewed by Bill Schwab

Dr. Frances Levine, former Chief Executive Officer of the Missouri Historical Society and the Missouri History Museum, has spent her career uncovering stories about underrepresented people. In "Crossings," she sheds light on the lives of women who traveled between Missouri and New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail. Levine shares accounts of enslaved woman Aunt Sukey, suffragist Julia Anna Archibald Holmes, Jewish pioneers Betty and Flora Spiegelberger, and others.

The Santa Fe Trail is frequently referred to as America's first great international commercial highway. Beginning in Kansas City, the route was a conduit for profitable commerce, military expansion, and the promise of a new way of life. The Trail officially opened in 1821, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain, and remained in use until the late 1870s with the advent of rail travel.

The Trail was the crossroads of Spanish, Mexican, U.S., and indigenous cultures. It was the interconnection of newly established Mexico (1821), the departure of Spain, the rapid expansion of the United States, and the subduing of Native Americans.

The author devotes a lengthy chapter to enslaved women, noting that it was challenging to find any specific details about them. Finding no firsthand accounts, the information she compiled came from footnotes, official records, and diaries written by others. Susan Shelby Magoffin's diary includes entries about Jane, the woman she enslaved. Magoffin "writes about Jane misbehaving at the same time that she's writing about her own fears about being on the trail, but she's not recognizing that Jane may have had her own sort of fears." Many owners of enslaved people considered the enslaved less than human. Consequently, Magoffin did not think about Jane's emotions, Levine explains.

The author asserts that examining women's roles in history often discloses a failure to recognize families as carriers of culture. She emphasizes that it was the family-making that women bore that shaped American culture, especially in the center of the new nation. Dr. Levine maintains, "What we need to do is to teach history in a slightly different way, from a different perspective, sometimes taking a more community perspective, ... looking at the way in which people moved with their cultures, the way in which they brought their own cultural practices, their own food ways, their own heritage with them along the trails."

Levine adds a critical examination of the role of women in early American history. In her academic writing style, which incorporates long, distracting quotes, she details the untold contributions women made as the United States expanded into the Southwest. The many images she includes enhance the book's impact. Those interested in early American history and learning more about the underrepresented in American literature will especially find this book compelling.

The University Press of Kansas is the publisher of this 252-page book, which is thoroughly indexed, contains an extensive bibliography, and is well documented.

About the author

Francis Levine is the former president and Chief Executive Officer of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis. She also served as director of the New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. She resides in St. Louis.

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