Soon after the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821, fur trappers from the East fanned out into New Mexico's northern mountains to catch beaver. Their rich harvest of pelts was shipped over the trail to St. Louis where it commanded a high price.

Among the cavalcade of trappers were many of French Canadian origin. A number of them took up residence in New Mexico, married, and became citizens of the Republic of Mexico.

Representative of this new element in New Mexican society was Antoine Robidoux, one of six brothers all involved in the fur trade. When Antoine first reached Santa Fe in 1823 at age 29, he scarcely looked the part of an outdoorsman. Tall, slender, with a sensitive face and a curling mass of black hair, he might have been mistaken for a French artist or composer of music.

Yet, his career in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains and beyond was to be filled with excitement, danger and high adventure.

Initially, Robidoux established himself in Santa Fe, using it as a base for the acquisition of furs. These he freighted back to his eldest brother, Joseph, a dealer in Missouri.

He also opened a store stocked with imported American goods, managing it at the same time he was sending out trapping parties.

Louis Robidoux, one of Antoine's younger brothers, set himself up independently as a businessman. He, too, had his hand in various enterprises, such as the fur trade, the operation of a gristmill on the Santa Fe River and a tannery next to his home on lower San Francisco Street.

Both brothers obtained Mexican citizenship in 1829. Each in turn was elected alcalde (mayor) of Santa Fe.

Sources tell us that Antoine attained a second store in Taos and that a teenage Kit Carson worked for him while he was in town. By this time Robidoux had a wife named Carmel Benavides, a Santa Fe native.

Over the years Antoine collected information on the best trapping grounds. Based on that, he decided to build a fur trading post on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. It became known as Fort Robidoux.

The facility was little more than several log cabins surrounded by a wooden palisade. Chief customers were the Utes, Shoshones and a small group of free trappers who found the post a convenient place to sell their furs and resupply.

The timing is not clear, but apparently soon after the opening of the first fort, Antoine constructed a second. This one was Fort Uintah, located on the river of that name in eastern Utah. It, too, prospered, at least for a while.

By now, though, Antoine was overextended. He suffered a heavy blow in 1844 when the newly hostile Utes burned both of his forts and killed most of the employees. Luckily for him, that occurred while he was away.

Seriously in debt, Robidoux liquidated his New Mexico properties and, taking his wife, departed for Missouri.

Brother Louis the previous year had packed up his wife, Guadalupe García, and their children and emigrated to California over the Old Spanish Trail.

Antoine himself was fated to return to the Southwest and it would cost him dearly.

With outbreak of the Mexican War in Ma, 1846, he hurried to Fort Leavenworth where Col. Stephen W. Kearny was organizing an army to invade New Mexico. He was accepted to serve as a guide and interpreter, being fluent in Spanish.

Upon the capture of Santa Fe in August, Antoine no doubt enjoyed visiting in-laws and his many friends. But the stay in the capital itself was brief, for shortly Kearny set out to conquer Mexican California.

At San Pasqual east of Los Angeles, the invading Americans ran into a large force of well-armed Californios. That included a unit of lancers on horseback.

Kearny in his official report of the battle described the foe as well-mounted and the best horsemen in the world. He suffered a severe lance wound — as did Robidoux, in the spine. That both survived was owing to the attention they received from Army surgeon Dr. John Griffin.

Later, Antoine was able to find his brother Louis who had developed a large ranch not far from San Bernardino. So he went there to recuperate.

Not until 1849, a year after the war's close, was he able to return to Missouri and his wife. Except for a short trip to New Mexico in 1855, Antoine made no more long journeys.

Owing to the lingering effects from his war wound, he spent his last years bedridden and in pain. And he went blind, dying in 1860.

As the couple had no children that might have kept Carmel Benavides de Robidoux in Missouri, she returned to her natal Santa Fe, where she lived for another 25 years.

So far as we know, nobody had the good sense to interview her on the subject of her husband's extraordinary career.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.