Mathew Kinkead inherited the ambitious qualities required of a frontiersman. His family's name is recorded among the founders of Madison and Franklin Missouri. His contemporaries included notable trail blazers, among them Kit Carson. He became a distillery owner in Santa Fe, and farmed in Mora, New Mexico before becoming the first to raise cattle and buffalo on the northern banks of the Arkansas River in 1841. Primary among his business dealings was partial financing of El Pueblo Trading post in 1842. Kinkead was a successful trader, merchant, rancher and founder of Pueblo. By 1848 California beckoned him, where his varied experiences and adventurous spirit made him a wealthy man.