More Trials on the Trail

Discipline on the trail was difficult to enforce but constantly needed - individuals quarreled over leadership, choice of routes, place in line and guard duty to name a few. 

The covered wagons were in constant need of repair.  Heavily laden, cumbersome and difficult to maneuver, they met all kinds of accidents of nature.  Windstorms blew over the canvas covers, wooden wheels splintered in the alkali deserts or got stuck in the mud.  Wagons often just fell apart all together coming down the steep grades because most early models had no brakes.  Yikes!

Livestock, vital to the pioneers were another problem.  Food and water were ample enough through the grasslands except during the dry years.  Once on the High Prairie (photo left minus the fence), food became scarce and poisonous alkali springs took a heavy toll on the livestock.  Cattle, mule, oxen and horses often drowned in the river crossings, were run off by Indians or terrified into stampedes by sudden thunderstorms.  The loss of a milk cow was food lost, but the lost of a mule or an ox team could leave a wagon stranded.

The search for water, firewood and fresh meat was endless.  Alonzo Delano noted after two days on the trail "the bacon brought in St. Louis has begun to exhibit more signs of life that we had bargained for, having a tendency to walk in insect form."  The lack of water, or the glut of it,  ruled the travelers lives on the trail.  Crossing the Kansas prairie in a wet spring caused serious delays when the wagons sank into the boggy grasses.  Sudden thunderstorms in open country were dangerous with lighting striking the tallest objects - man and wagon. But those weren't the worst of the trip...

Next time...Disease and Monotony on the Journey
________________________________________

Today in Pioneer History:  "On February 23, 1868, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A brilliant scholar, DuBois was an influential proponent of civil rights.