La Lande, Baptiste.—Soon after the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States in 1803, a commercial expedition was organized by William Morrison of Kaskaskia, Ill., to open up a trade with the Spanish settlements in the southwest. Morrison employed as his agent a French creole named Baptiste La Lande, who reached Santa Fe sometime in the summer of 1804. It is believed that La Lande passed through Kansas closely following the route which afterward became known as the Santa Fe trail. Upon arriving in Santa Fe he found a ready market for his goods, but never made any return to his employer. Gregg, in his Commerce of the Prairies, says: "The kind and generous treatment of the natives overcame at once his patriotism and his probity. He neither returned to his employer nor accounted for the proceeds of his adventure. His expansive intellect readily conceived the advantages of setting up in business for himself upon this 'borrowed' capital; which he accordingly did, and remained there, not only unmolested, but honored and esteemed till his death, which occurred some fifteen or twenty years afterward—leaving a large family and sufficient property to entitle him to the fame of rico among his neighbors."

While in Santa Fe in March, 1807, Lieut. Pike saw La Lande, who claimed that he was held as a prisoner by the Spanish authorities. In his report of his expedition Pike says: "As he had been rather insolent in his inquiries, I ordered my men to shut and fasten the door. I then told him that I believed him to be an emissary sent on purpose by the governor, or some person, to endeavor to betray me, that all men of that description were scoundrels, and never should escape punishment whilst I possessed the power to chastise them, immediately ordering my men to seize him, and cautioning him at the same time, that if he cried out, or made the least resistance, I would be obliged to make use of the sabre which I had in my hand," etc.

This frightened La Lande to such an extent that he confessed he had been employed by the governor to ascertain Pike's intentions. The prompt and somewhat dramatic action of Lieut. Pike thwarted the design, and he suffered no further inconvenience from the interference of the delinquent creole. Such was the character of the pioneer of the Santa Fe trade, which in later years was conducted by honorable men and reached into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.