The Lassitor Hay Road
Road Building has been around from the dawn of the wheel and the need to transport commerce between people and cultures. Some of the roads are long gone; some are in use still today. The Native Americans were not without networks of trails to transport goods between tribes. One of these trails for a moment in time became the link between San Diego and the country to the east.
Coming to San Diego from the east we think of as relatively easy today but for the early travelers this was a logistical and practically impossible journey if you didn't know your way. There are only a couple natural routes into San Diego. Coming from the north or south is easy but to the east is a mountain range that proved too steep to build a road up from the desert. You don’t realize how impassible most of the terrain is until you go over it on foot and you can’t really make it to the desert like that.
Before modern earth building there were animal trails and Indian trails that work their ways over hostile terrain. The most famous was what the San Diegans called the San Antonio to San Diego Mail. Our neighbors to the north made fun of this trail calling it the "Jackass Mail." The problem with this name is that the animals that we ran over the trail were mules, not donkeys, but the name has seemed to stick.
The San Antonio to San Diego Mail route was the first overland mail route to San Diego. Before that they would have to wait for the occasional ship to leave from New York, arrive in Panama, cross Panama, then come up to San Diego. This was a long and tedious route, with problems of malaria and other tropical diseases. The Panama canal wasn’t built until the 20th century. An alternative route would be to round the horn of South America and come back up. Neither route very desirable.
The mail trail wasn’t a natural route that you could run wagons or buggies up. If you try to go to San Diego you go against the grain of the mountains so it is almost impossible to find a descent route trying to avoid climbing as many mountains as possible. The Natural routes in the mountains run northwest toward Los Angeles. The Jackass Trail runs across the grain and is believed to start at the base of a canyon that today is called Oriflamme Canyon.
Farmers began to cultivate vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. Document D shows a picture of The Wheat Harvest in 1880, with men on earlier tractors and over 20-30 horses pulling the tractor along the long and wide fields of wheat. As farmers started to accumilate their goods, they needed to be able to transfer the goods across states, maybe from Illinios to Kansas, or Cheyenne to Ohmaha. Some farmers chose to use cattle trails to transport their goods. Document B demonstrates a good mapping of the major railroads in 1870 and 1890. Although cattle trails weren't used in 1890, this document shows the existent of several cattle trails leading into Chyenne, San Antonio, Kansas City and other towns nearby the named ones in 1870. So, farmers began to transport their goods by railroads, which were publically used in Germany by 1550 and migrated to the United States with the help of Colonel John Stevens in 1826. In 1890, railroads expanded not only from California, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, but up along to Washington, Montana, Michigan, down to New Mexico and Arizona as well. Eastern States such as New Jersey, Tennesse, Virginia and many others were filled with existing railroads prior to 1870, as Colonel John Stevens started out his railroad revolutionzing movement in New Jersey in 1815.
This had farmers in distress, for they were losing more money than they were making. Farmers’ incomes were low, and in order to make a profit on what they produced, they began to expand the regions in which they sold their products. This was facilitated through the railroads, by which through a series of grants from the government as contracted in the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, were made possible; which latter lead to the boom of rail roads in 1868-1873.... ... middle of paper ...
The notion of slavery, as unpleasant as it is, must nonetheless be examined to understand the hardships that were caused in the lives of enslaved African-Americans. Without a doubt, conditions that the slaves lived under could be easily described as intolerable and inhumane. As painful as the slave's treatment by the masters was, it proved to be more unbearable for the women who were enslaved. Why did the women suffer a grimmer fate as slaves? The answer lies in the readings, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative which both imply that sexual abuse, jealous mistresses', and loss of children caused the female slaves to endure a more dreadful and hard life in captivity.
Were women in the 1850s not valued more than to live life as concubines? Did black men not deserve equal rights just as white men? The Antebellum Era was a pre-Civil War time when white men were positioned as the head of the house, and women and wives below them at their husbands’ service, and inferior to all remained the Negro population. In Celia, A Slave, Celia’s story revealed many difficulties faced by female slaves. Her story conveyed the position of women in Missouri during the 1850s, along with the position of slaves in regards to the resistance of oppression. Her trial gave a strong idea of the rights between masters and slaves.
The challenges and difficulties slaves faced at the time of Celia’s trial left white Americans viewing them with little entitlements. Celia’s trial brought a new perspective into society in a time where slaves, especially females, were without hope. Her story was a beneficial challenge to the institution of slavery because it reached the thoughts of many involved in the controversy during the 1850s and left an effect on the standards of
"The Santa Fe Trail Lives On!" Welcome to SFTNet, the latest manifestation of the Santa Fe Trail saga. This service is designed for trail buffs, students, researchers, travelers on the trail--in short, anyone with an interest in historic or contemporary developments along the Santa Fe Trail. What Is The Santa Fe Trail? As many who read this introduction will know, the Santa Fe Trail is an ancient land route of communication between the desert Southwest of what is now the United States and the prairies and plains of central North America. In the Southwest it was also part of a longer route that ran down the Rio Grande into what is now northern Mexico. American Indian peoples used the route to trade the agricultural produce of the Rio Grande Valley and the bounty of the plains, such as jerked buffalo meat and buffalo hides. When the Spanish conquistador Onate came to New Mexico in 1598, he and his soldiers followed this ancient route as they explored the plains and traded with the peoples there. During the next two centuries the Spanish gained an intimate knowledge of the plains and the routes between the Mississippi-Missouri river systems and the Southwest. Then, in 1821, a trader from Missouri, William Becknell, came to Santa Fe along what was to become known as the historical route of the Santa Fe Trail. He opened the Santa Fe Trail as a commercial route between what was then ...
Celia, a Slave was a factual interpretation of one isolated incident that depicted common slave fear during the antebellum period of the United States. Melton A. McLaurin, the author, used this account of a young slave woman's struggle through the undeserved hardships of rape and injustice to explain to today's naive society a better depiction of what slavery could have been like. The story of Celia illustrates the root of racial problems Americans still face in their society. Although not nearly as extreme, they continue to live in a white-male dominated culture that looks down upon African-Americans, especially females. McLaurin looks at the views of the time, and speculates the probabilities of this pre - Civil War era, the values of which still pierce daily life in the United States.
Newsom purchased Celia as the household cook but used her as his concubine. On the day Celia was purchased, she was raped by Newsom. “Life for Celia would entail continual sexual exploitation by her master” (McLaurin, 22). For 5 years, Celia was denied of her dignity and humanity as were many female slaves in the 19th century. In Missouri, sexual assault of a slave woman by a white male was not considered rape but was considered trespass. Slave women were considered property so an owner could not be charged with trespassing on his own property. “Female slaves were clearly viewed by slaveholders as an economic asset over which they had controlled” (McLaurin, 108). A master had complete and total access to and control over the bodies of his female slaves. Many slaveholders’ demanded
Railroads first appeared around the 1830’s, and helped the ideas of Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion; however, these were weak and didn’t connect as far as people needed, thus causing them to be forced to take more dangerous routes. On January 17th, 1848, a proposal was sent to Congress by Asa Whitney to approve and provide federal funding...
Slaves are aware of their positions in society and have the choice to comply with their masters’ demands in order to gain a greater benefit to themselves often in the form of physical protection from abuse. Within the plantation hierarchy, the house slave was considered higher up than field slaves due to their close proximity to the master (Hall 566). The house slave’s position in the plantation microcosm evoked not only favor from the master, but jealousy from the field slaves. The fair-skinned, house slave woman and her master’s control over her mental psyche is a defining factor of her identity in relation to the other slaves on the plantation. Linda Brent in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an excellent model of the mental bondage endured by light-skinned house slave women because she makes a conscious choice to continue her mental bondage in order to gain physical freedoms. Although many house slaves, like Linda, were granted physical freedoms, they experienced an unfathomable level of mental bondage that defined their character and prompted them to pick their own place in society.
Women slaves were subject to unusually cruel treatment such as rape and mental abuse from their master’s, their unique experience must have been different from the experience men slaves had. While it is no secret that the horrors of the institution of slavery were terrible and unimaginable; those same horrors were no big deal for southern plantation owners. Many engaged in cruelty towards their slaves. Some slave owners took particular interest in their young female slaves. Once caught in the grips of a master’s desire it would have been next to impossible to escape. In terms of actual escape from a plantation most women slaves had no reason to travel and consequentially had no knowledge of the land. Women slaves had the most unfortunate of situations; there were no laws that would protect them against rape or any injustices. Often the slave that became the object of the master’s desires would also become a victim of the mistress of the household. Jealousy played a detrimental role in the dynamic the enslaved women were placed within. Regardless of how the slave felt she could have done little to nothing to ease her suffering.
From among these four architectural achievements of the Romans, the best remembered is their road network (McCarty 120). The Romans designed their roads to last and, at the same time, to withstand both military and civilian traffic. They succeeded so well that some of these roads still function today, such as the Via Appia or Appian Way (see fig 1), which leads from Southern Italy to Rome (Boatwright 86). Most Roman roads started out as simple well-used tracks and paved much later. The Romans paved their roads by first adding a layer of crushed rock and rubble to the flat surface. This layer of debris was useful in providing a sturdy foundation and providing drainage for rainwater. Next, the Romans added a thick layer of sand and clay to the layer of debris. The final layer consisted of cut stone slabs (Giovanni). The Romans always wanted their roads to follow the shortest and straightest route. Sometimes this desire to build a straight and short road warranted extreme measures such as when the roads cut across swamps or through hills. Remarkably, the Romans could build tunnels to
Travel by land and water was both tedious and expensive. Transporting one ton of goods across states would cost around 100 dollars or 1,265 dollars in today’s money. In the 1790s, land routes connecting the east coast and the farther western regions of the United States were undeveloped. Along with this, when weather conditions were poor land routes could not support any sort of dependable shipping by wagon, or even travel by horseback. Natural waterways provided the most dependable method of transport west of Albany. Even travel by waterway in this time period was inconvenient because these water routes were unreliable due to shallow water and raging rapids.
Female slaves were beneficial in terms of economic productivity, family structure, and in some cases sexual pleasures. They were subjected to harsh treatment based not just on their skin color but gender as well. In the book, Celia was bought by Robert Newsom and on the first night on the way back to his farm he wasted no time in raping her. However, it was not just female slaves as alone, Roberts oldest daughter lived with her father and her kids and depended on him to survive. If she did want to confront her father on Celia’s behalf and tell her father what he was doing was wrong. It would not have been in her best interest, given the fact that she had no husband her father could have thrown her out. These two women are prime examples of how women during this time period were oppressed and did not have much say. It is one thing to be a female but in Celia’s case a black woman did not play in her
At last, we had arrived! It had taken us about four days to reach Los Angeles, four long treacherous days. There my aunt Yolanda and her husband came to pick us up. I recounted the events of my journey at a meal. Without asking for it, I had learned that crossing the border was the most difficult task that I would ever endure. That night my child and I slept soundly. The next morning, Pedro, my husband, came to pick us up. After about six hours we arrived to Hayward, which has been my home for almost 18 years.