Yet the Santa Fé trade was national in its importance. Its romance contained a constant appeal to a public that was reading the Indian tales of James Fenimore Cooper, and that loved stories of hardship and adventure. New Mexico was a foreign country with quaint people and strange habitations. The American desert, not much more than a chartless sea, framed and emphasized the traffic. If one must have confirmation of the truth that frontier causes have produced results far beyond their normal measure, such confirmation may be found here. The traders to Santa Fé commonly travelled together in a single caravan for safety. In the earlier years they started overland from some Missouri town--Franklin most often--to a rendezvous at Council Grove. The erection of Fort Leavenworth and an increasing navigation of the Missouri River made possible a starting-point further west than Franklin; hence when this town was washed into the Missouri in 1828 its place was taken by the new settlement of Independence, further up the river and only twelve miles from the Missouri border. Here at Independence was done most of the general outfitting in the thirties. For the greater part of the year the town was dead, but for a few weeks in the spring it throbbed with the rough-and-ready life of the frontier. Landing of traders and cargoes, bartering for mules and oxen, building and repairing wagons and ox-yokes, and in the evening drinking and gambling among the hard men soon to leave port for the Southwest,--all these gave to Independence its name and place. From Independence to Council Grove, some one hundred and fifty miles, across the border, the wagons went singly or in groups. At the Grove they halted, waiting for an escort, or to organize in a general company for self-defence. Here in ordinary years the assembled traders elected a captain whose responsibility was complete, and whose authority was as great as he could make it by his own force. Under him were lieutenants, and under the command of these the whole company was organized in guards and watches, for once beyond the Grove the company was in dangerous Indian Country in which eternal vigilance was the price of safety. The unit of the caravan was the wagon,--the same Pittsburg or Conestoga wagon that moved frontiersmen whenever and wherever they had to travel on land. It was drawn by from eight to twelve mules or oxen, and carried from three to five thousand pounds of cargo. Over the wagon were large arches covered with Osnaburg sheetings to turn water and protect the contents. The careful freighter used two thicknesses of sheetings, while the canny one slipped in between them a pair of blankets, which might thus increase his comfort outward bound, and be in an inconspicuous place to elude the vigilance of the customs officials at Santa Fé. Arms, mounts, and general equipment were innumerable in variation, but the prairie schooner, as its white canopy soon named it, survived through its own superiority.