Reflections of a Pioneer Woman in Later Life

Nancy Hembree Snow Bogart...

In remembering the days of her journey on the Overland Trail, Nancy "Matilda" Bogart described family  life on the frontier:

"I've often been asked if we did not suffer with fear in those days but I've said no, we did not have
sense enough to realize our danger, we   others, I often wonder how they really made it through it all and retained their reason.

Crossing the Deschutes River, the women took their places in the boats, feeling they were facing death.  the frail craft would get caught in a whirlpool and the water dashing over and drenching them through and through.  The men would then plunge in the cold stream and draw the half drowned women and children ashore, build fires and partly dry them and the bedding and then start on again.  The women preferring to try it on foot, but that was no pleasure trip, carrying a small child in arms whilst another one or two clung to her skirts whilst they climbed over fallen trees and rocks.

There were both deaths and births on the way.  The dead were laid away in packing boxes but could not be covered so deep but prowling savage would exhume them to get the clothes they were buried in, then leave the body for hungry wolfe  that left bones to be gathered up and reintered by the next group that passed along.  All these things sorely taxes their powers of endurance."

Next time:  10 years after the first families went west, did it get easier? 

Today in Pioneer History:  On September 1, 1836,  Narcissa Whitman arrives in Walla Walla, Washington, becoming one of the first Anglo women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains.