BOOK REVIEW: Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail

In 1839, a former actor named Matt Field decided to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico to regain his health. Although he failed to recover his physical well-being, Field did collect impressions and notes throughout his journey. After he returned to the U.S., he got a job at what is now the Time-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate and converted his jottings into a series of newspaper articles. The pieces were popular and were reprinted in papers as far away as London. I believe their positive reception inspired Picayune editor George Wilkins Kendall to make his own attempt to reach Santa Fe, a journey he would record in his Narrative of an Expedition Across the Great Southwestern Prairies from Texas to Santa Fé, which I discussed in June.

Over a hundred years after his trip, Matt Field’s articles were collected and published as Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail. The young actor turned reporter definitely reflected the attitudes of his day, and some readers may find those biases upsetting, but there is also much to enjoy and to learn from this book. Field’s views of Santa Fe specifically and New Mexico in general are excellent examples of how Americans viewed the land and people that blocked their access to the Pacific Ocean. The book is a mixture of admiration for the women’s beauty, fascination with everything from Taos Lightning (wheat-based whiskey) to the New Mexican custom of community dances, and shock at the idea of priests and women who gamble and make money at it.

Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail can be an exasperating book. His description of Governor Manuel Armijo’s wife as an elephant dancing is just rude and his misunderstanding of the role of Gertrudes Barceló as a business woman is a clear example of one society’s gender expectations being loaded onto another culture. However, these and other passages are precisely why I keep this book in my library. Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail reminds me that we do not always see ourselves and our biases as clearly as we think we do. Even when we believe we’re open to new experiences, our unexpanded frames of references can still distort our perceptions.

And that is why I recommend Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail to anyone interested in history in general and New Mexico in particular. It’s a fascinating historical document in itself and can also help keep us honest about our own take on the world around us and remind us that we may also possess attitudes we haven’t completely examined. And may not want others to know about a hundred years from now.