The Generation Gap on the Overland Trail

There was a feeling among women that the conditions on the trail were those which would have been intolerable back home in "civilization".  Each day on the trail seemed to turn women more into hired hands than Christian housewives.

Miriam Davis,, who settled in Kansas with her husband and children in 1855 said "I have cooked so much out in the sun and smoke that I hardly know who I am and when I look into the little looking glass I ask, 'Can this be me?'  Put a blanket over my head I would pass for an Osage squaw." Many women developed rheumatism by exposure to the weather.  In the midst of all this, women tried to hold together fragments of their accustomed life.  They attempted to maintain a circle of female companionship.

Older women journeying west felt the open country left them feeling unprotected and vulnerable.  Younger women had a different perspective...unmarried girls found opportunities to share with young men and boys for a brief period of free companionship.  Young girls sang together by the campfires and played mouth organs, guitars and fiddles.

In the diaries of the younger women you find the willing - sometimes eager - acceptance of the new roles and what woman could do.  Lydia Milner Waters wrote: "I learned to drive on ox team on the Platte River and my driving was admired by an officer and his wife...I heard them laughing at the thought of a woman driving oxen."  She wrote of  climbing hills with the boys "sometimes my feet would slip off the tree limbs and I would be hanging by my arms. You may be sure my skirts were not where they ought to have been...there were many things to laugh about."

Mary Ellen Todd wrote that she had learned to crack the whip while driving the team of oxen and that there was a "secret joy in being able to have a power that set things going."  Mary Eliza Warner, who was fifteen, wrote: "I drove four horses nearly all day...Aunt Celia and I played chess which Mrs. Lord thought was the first step to gambling." 

Mothers worried that the journey would lead their young girls into "loose" behavior.  They tried to

impose Victorian proprieties and diaries tell of many "discussions" on the matter as Adrietta Hixon wrote: "While traveling mother was particular about Louvina and me wearing sunbonnets and long mitts in order to protect our complexions, hair and hands.  Much of the time I should like to have gone without that long bonnet poking out over my face, but mother pointed out to me some girls who did not wear bonnets and as I did not want to look as they did, I stuck to my bonnet finally growing used to it."

Want to make your own Sunbonnet?  Here is a Do-It-Yourself Pattern from Mother Earth News
Make Your Own Sunbonnet
Ready Made Bonnets


Without bows, ribbons and starched white aprons and petticoats, the frontier threatened the women's sense of social rule and sexual identity.  Even though the Indian woman's dress was practical and chaste, most women rejected Indian clothing as "disgusting".

Something tells me that the younger women were glad to be rid of starched petticoats and aprons!

Next time...John and Annie Stewart family's journey
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Today in Pioneer History: On September 28 in 1542, the Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovers San Diego Bay while searching for the Strait of Anian, a mythical all-water route across North America.