Women's Diaries on the Trail...Diseases and Illnesses

Women wrote as ritual caretakers in their overland journals.  The real enemies to them were not Indians, but disease and accidents.  The heaviest westward migration was during the cholera epidemic.  Can you imagine a worst place to fall ill than an open and unmarked trail, left by the side of the road to either recover or die alone because you were a deterrent to the progress of the wagon train? No Antibiotics, no pain killers, no surgeries, no hospitals, no midwives...life was raw and untempered.

Women wrote of typhoid, mountain fever, measles, dysentery and drownings.  They knew that these killed more than Indians did.  Their job was to care for the dying and noted well the cost in human life.  The deaths were personal to these frontier women and they noted particulars of each grave site, age of person, new or old grave, disturbed...etc.  They prayed and tended over each one.  When a child's parents died, they took the children left into their own families. 

I would think that any woman who made it through the arduous journey would see it as a vicotry of her own life-stage.  Her test was whether or not she had held her family together against all odds.  Their pride was in keeping the integrity of the family life together in the names given to the children born on the overland journey: Gertrude Columbia, born on the shores of the raging Columbia River, Alice Nevada, born in the rocky Sierra Nevadas, and Gila Parrish, born along the Gila River in Arizona.  Two of the three survived - excellent odds in that unforgiving  wilderness.

The "New Country" was bittersweet - promises that took a toll on hope and optimism.  Through the eyes of the women we can better see history as the stuff of daily struggles.  Someday generations may look back on our blogs as records of history as well...


Next time:  Specifics Diaries of 1841-1850
____________________________

Today in Pioneer History:  On June 2, 1823, Arikara Indians attack William Ashley and his band of fur traders, igniting the most important of the early 19th century battles between Indians and mountain men.