Looking for a buffalo skin robe or one of Kit Carson’s knives?  Look no further as the Mountain Man Trade Fair takes place this weekend on The Palace of the Governors courtyard.Check out the article in today’s New Mexican for information and stories regarding the event:

ARTICLE:

Mountain Man Trade Fair offers trip back in time

Twenty-first century getting you down? Step back to the 19th at the 26th annual Santa Fe Mountain Man Trade Fair that continues through the weekend in the Palace of the Governors courtyard.

You’ll find buffalo, elk and cow pelts, beaded leatherwork, moccasins, antique guns, knives in leather scabbards, tomahawks, hand-forged ironwork, Hudson Bay-style blankets, period campware and cups made of animal horns.

Mark and Sandi Wilkie’s hobby for the last seven years has been trading such merchandise at the Santa Fe rendezvous — one of several mountain-man events around the West.

The rest of the time, they run a cattle ranch near Carlsbad.

Among the items they laid out on a blanket in the far corner of the Palace courtyard Thursday was a tri-cornered hat that seemed oddly out of sync with typical mountain-man attire.

“You’ve got to realize Lewis and Clark went west in 1804,” said Mark Wilkie. “That’s still right on the tail end of the Revolutionary War. That was a common headwear. In fact, you can see a lot of them, even up to the War of 1812, when you start looking at pencil sketches from that time.”

Prices range from $25 for the hat to $800 for a buffalo robe to $1,600 for an antique rifle to $7,000 for a “smoked brain tanned” buckskin gun case with fringe and four beaded U.S. flags with 13 stars in a circle.

But the highest asking price of any item at the fair was $500,000 for a knife that its owner, W. Smith of Polvodero, near Socorro, says once belonged to Kit Carson.

“We’ve been able to trace it all the way back to Kit Carson’s daughter,” he said. “This is the knife he carried when he was guiding the Army here in New Mexico.”

Just out of Smith’s hearing range, Jack Hill of Richmond, Calif., joked that he wouldn’t consider paying “a half million dollars for a rusty old iron knife.”

“Dear, you shouldn’t say so loud ‘rusty old knife,’ ” said his wife, Jean Marie Hill. “These people really honor what they have.”

Kathy Kershaw and Gary Schluter of Madison, Wis., have been coming to the Santa Fe rendezvous since 1990 to show their wares — Kershaw’s beaded, painted leatherwork and Schluter’s decorative, functional ironwork.

The beads sewn onto the hand-painted horses represents hailstones “so they’re blessed by the thunder beings,” Kershaw said. “Crazy Horse used to paint hail on his horse when he went into battle because the thunder beings are thought to be very, very powerful.”

By: Tom Sharpe for The New Mexican

Link to Original Article Here

Contact Ryan Bolton and Matt Desmond

Tags: homes in santa fe, matt desmond, Ryan Bolton, Santa Fe Markets, Santa Fe Mountain Man Trade Fair, Visiting Santa Fe