Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderklads 45

ernor Juan Bautista de Anza of New Mexico went from Santa F6
up the Rio Grande to the headwaters of the Arkansas, over the
mountains to the plains, where he routed some Comanchea, and
thence back to a safer home. These were the frontiersmen of New
Mexico; their reports help make the literature of the southwestern
borderlands.
 Upper Louisiana was little explored by its new masters. Desire
for a commercial lane had led to the establishment of the Santa
F6-to-San Antonio route by Pedro Vial between 1786 and 1789,
and three years later he made a successful trip to St Louis. But
it remained for ambitious "Anglo-Americans" to further the de-
velopment of the Mississippi-to-Rio Grande passage.
 They came in little-known groups of scouts or traders at first,
some staying in the Southwest. Such was the venture of Baptiste
Lalande, who was sent from St. Louis by a merchant in 1804. He
failed to return, and was later found in the New Mexico capital
by Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike. There also was James Pur-
cell, a Yankee trader who had been commissioned by Indian friends
in the Rockies as their agent to Santa F.
 Pike's famous expedition in 1806 and 1807 is now believed to
 have been motivated by a genuine desire to explore the country,
 rather than by the sinister purposes of General Wilkinson." The
 story of his trek through the Missouri and Arkansas river coun-
 tries, his capture by the Spaniards on the upper Rfo Grande, his
 visit to Santa F6 and later to Chihuahua as a prisoner, is a classic
 of the West. Because of its semioficial nature, and because he
 published an account of it, Pike's expedition was particularly
 significant at the time. Spain later claimed indemnity for losses
 caused by his intrusion. Meanwhile rumors of the invasion had
 given rise to one more important Spanish undertaking: Captain
 Facundo Melgares' advance with six hundred men into what is
 now Kansas, partly in an effort to head off the "Anglo-Americans."
 The attempt proved futile.
 Two later groups from east of the Mississippi entered New Mex-
 ico, only to run afoul of the Spanish authorities and to become
 later the cause of diplomatic discussions. In 1809 Spanish troops
 captured Reuben Smith and his party near the head of the Bed
 River, and imprisoned them at Santa F6. Before their release in
 1812 their absence had caused sufficient concern to prompt the