Reluctant Frontiersman: James Ross Larkin on the Sante Fe Trail, 1856-57

Reluctant Frontiersman: James Ross Larkin on the Santa Fe Trail, 1856 – 57. Edited and Annotated by Barton H. Barbour. Foreword by Marc Simmons. Published in cooperation with the Historical Society of New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, 1990. First Edition. Among the travelers in William Bent's Santa Fe Trail caravan in the fall of 1856 was the wealthy St. Louis-bred Ross Larkin (1831 – 1875). Larkin, a perennial dyspeptic, had heard about other sickly young men for whom a journey over the Santa Fe Trail produced a "prairie cure." He, too, set out in the hope of bettering his health, but lasting improvement eluded him. The trip nevertheless engaged his interest, and in this hitherto unknown diary we have the detailed record of a health-seeker and tourist on the Trail. Larkin's impressions of Plains Indians and New Mexican life, which to him seemed novel and occasionally inexplicable, are those of a taid urban businessman suddenly transported to a rough-and-tumble frontier where Anglo-Americans were relative newcomers. Larkin gaely accepted the conditions of his trip, and his experiences and comments make illuminating reading. The five-chapter introduction and careful annotation of the diary furnish historical perspective and interpretation to a volume of interest to all who read Santa Fe Trail literature.