On the Road Again

 

We are on the road again - well, the trail again.  The trip west, and the communities settled there were unique in the things they left behind.  Unlike their ancestors back east, the first thing they left behind was the ritual of burial in a churchyard cemetery.  Burial "according to the custom of the Prairies" was quick.  No funeral clothes, no casket and no tombstone.  The grave was filled with stones as a safeguard against wild animals.  The livestock were allowed to roam over the grave to trample it, then the wagons were driven across it to hide clues that the Indians might use to dig up the body.  Along the trail, there was left no evidence that anyone had died or had been buried there.

Secondly, any ancestoral bonds that remained were replaced by their latest companions and their surnames were lost.  They received names or nicknames that identified their personal characteristics, a way of speaking or even the food they ate.  You might have been known simply as "Honest Whiskey Joe", "Truthful James" or "The American-Pie Eater."  Women were known as the "wife of" or by their first names.  Surnames were rarely used once settled in the West.

Thirdly, the westward traveler learned to give up possessions.  James Abbey, who left New Albany, Indiana for California in 1849, recorded the property toll of a trip west by covered wagon...

    "August 2nd - started out at four in the morning, at six stopped to cook breakfast and lighten our wagons by throwing away heavier portions of our clothing and such articles we can spare.  We pushed forward today determined to reach the desert, but our cattle showed signs of exhaustion, We had to stop.  Being completely out of water, we bought two gallons from a trader for $1 a gallon.

    The desert is strewn with dead cattle, horses, mules and oxen.  In the distance of 15 miles I counted 350 dead horses, 280 oxen, and 120 mules.  We saw vast amounts of valuable property abandoned - leather trunks, clothing, wagons...at least a value of over $100,000 in just 20 miles.  In the last 10 miles I have counted 362 wagons left behind at a value of $120 a piece back home.  In order to save animals and reach the end of the journey, the loss of personal goods is a matter of small importance."

 The settlers gave up costly things to come west - traditions, people, names, and possessions.  All left behind to reach the dream of land in the West.

Next time... Not left behind - the women

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian Institute was created.  After a decade debate on how to best spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James Polk signs the Smithsonian Act into law.  James Smithsonian left in his will that the whole of his estate would go to the United States of America to found at Washington an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.  Thank you Mr. Smithsonian!"

Wagon Train Law

This "association club" law we have been discussing arose not to circumvent the court, but to provide them, not because the machinery of government was too complicated, but because there was none, and not to neutralize institutions already there but to fill the vacuum from lack of them.  

Not only did this "citizen law" exist in communities and mining towns, but also along the wagon trails going West.  One such story is of a member of a traveling party who made known his intentions to steal an Indian horse.  He had got the rope and had gone to do the deed.  This kind of act had serious consequences for the whole wagon train company.  

The whole company headed by Captain Hastings became the "legislative body" and set about deciding whether this man had violated criminal law in their eyes.  Prosecution and defense speeches were heard.  It was found that since he had as of yet not done any crime except state his intentions to do something, he was acquitted.

After the trial, however, it was clear they needed to establish a legal code of sorts.  What they adopted was stated as "in its opinion, no code of laws were required other than the moral code enacted by the Creator of the universe and what was recorded in the heart of every man."  Not all the company agreed.

Their first try at legislation on fundamentals was a decree against all dogs.  This law required "the immediate and indiscriminate extermination of the whole canine race, young and old, male and female wherever they were found within their jurisdiction."  A few dogs were killed before dog owners threatened to kill anyone who killed their dogs.  The decree was hastily repealed by an unanimous vote.  Captain Hastings said it was the first and last attempt at legislation. Probably a good thing...

Next time...Order in the West

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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 9, 1877 the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon.  Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the singles tournament (for men only).  The winner took home a 25 pound trophy.   The winner was William Marshall, a Cambridge tennis player.

The Strange Journey of Rebecca Ketcham

Rebecca Ketcham, single woman headed west in the 1850s with a party of mostly men, found the trip required more than just physical stamina.  Reassuring herself that "if one is prepared with a good stock of patience and cheerfulness" any difficulty could be overcome.  She was tough!  as she wrote in her journal:

"In jumping off the horse alone today, I caught my dress in the horn of the saddle and tore almost half of the skirt off.  That I must mend tonight.  I have had no dress on since the day we came to Westport  but my palm leaf muslin delaine.  I mean to stick to it as long as I can.  It is very dirty and has been torn nearly if not quite twenty times.  I don't care."

Rebecca recorded the carelessness for her well-being by both men and women of the wagon party during a rainstorm:

"When the rainstorm came on, instead of taking me in the wagon, Mr. Gray let me have his rubber overcoat.  It covered my shoulders and arms.  My feet and almost the whole my lap were uncovered.  Mr. Gray told me I would get all wet and muddy and laughed at me when I came into the camp.  My feet and limbs cold as ice, and my face and head like fire."

Why Rebecca was excluded from the other women in the party is unknown.  Was she not of their class?  She was well-educated and the prominent Schuyler family financed her trip.  Another question - why had she traveled alone by carriage from New York to Missouri as stated in the first post about her journey?  If she had left a troublesome situation the women would certainly have been sympathetic...

From her journal she certainly expected better treatment, yet some entries show a feeling of desperation:

"Was very faint and sick at my stomach.  Oh how I thought of Cynthia and her dear mother.  If they had been with me I don't believe I would have sat there all this time without a word of care or sympathy.  Oh the loneliness I feel."

At times her journal tells the vivid accounts of her surroundings and details of her journey, but the attitude of the women  depressed her..."So many times I feel wronged, so illy treated that I hardly know how to restrain my feeling and the effort I make to say nothing depresses my spirits very much."


Rebecca seems to have traveled with an unhappy group of travelers.  By August, some of her resolve seems to have worn away.  "I begin to have some misgivings and fear I shall be in a strange land without one friend." 

Rebecca reached Oregon in spite of it all and became the school teacher as she intended.  Within two years she married Finnis E Mills, a member of the board of trustees for the First Presbyterian Society of Clatsop County, and a gentlemen.  They had 2 sons and in 1855 she and her family returned to her husband's home in Kentucky.  From there  Rebecca is heard of no more, but her journal is a testament to a plain spoken woman who went west alone...and survived. 

Next time...Celinda Hines Story

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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty in New York's Harbor. It arrived in the city on June 17, 1886, and over the next several months was reassembled while electricians worked to wire the torch to light up at night.

Parenting on the Wagon Trail

Women traveling with children on the Overland Trail discovered parenting was anything but easy.  Children fell out of wagons, got lost in the midst of many families and herds of animals, and suffered the usual childhood illnesses - measles, fever, toothaches, dysentery. Add to that days of heavy rains or hot sun and any child gets irritable and difficult.  Older children enjoyed freedom not experienced under normal circumstances. The constant fear of Indians kidnapping a child made a mother's job nothing short of heroic.

If a woman was expecting a child during the journey, labor could happen anytime - in Indian territory, in the mountains,  or in the drenching rain.  A woman might be alone with a simple birth or it might be complicated, but all births in the back of a rolling covered wagon would be difficult to us.  Birth was no reason to delay the western journey or to "stop the wagon train."  This was man's time to "better themselves in life" (a stage in a 19th century man's life) and no child was worth giving up free land for.

Certainly not seen as a life stage journey to a woman, one out of five women were in one stage of pregnancy or another in the wagon trail.  Virtually all married women traveled with small children.  Women's diaries on the subject of leaving homes with young children  were almost always full of anguish. 

The good old days, right?

Next time - the difference in men and women's journal and the enemies of the road.

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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On May 8, 1846,General Zachary Taylor defeats a superior Mexican force in the Battle of Palo Alto north of the Rio Grande River even before the United States declared war on Mexico.

1844 - Wagon Train Explosion

While Fremont was toting cannons across the West, Captain Walker was busy buying and selling horses.  In 1844 he sold his California horses either at Bent's Fork or Santa Fe.  The rest of that season he spent guiding wagon trains.  In 1844 alone, 1,475 overland trains made the trip to California and 53 trains to Oregon.  By the summer of 1845, 3,000 settlers were on the trail...and the West was becoming the pioneer dream destination.

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This Day in History: On November 6, 1528,  the Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked on a low sandy island off the coast of  Texas.. Starving, dehydrated, and desperate, he is the first European to set foot on the soil of the future Lone Star state.

Next time...Oil and Water

Inexperienced and Packin' Heat

Most members of wagon trains were so inexperienced they often got lost, set themselves and their wagons on fire, were kicked by mules, died from bad food or water, crushed under their wagons, or drowned in streams.  Actually drowning was the most common cause of accidental death on a wagon train.  In 20 years, 300 settlers lost their lives in streams and rivers by drowning.  As one traveler wrote, "to make an overland crossing, a man must be able to endure heat like a Salamander, mud and water like a muskrat, dust like a toad, and labor like a jackass."   Good quote!

The settler's fears about Indians were about as bad as the Indians themselves.  To protect themselves, 

they left Missouri armed with 135 rifles, 104 pistols, 1672 pounds of lead, 1100 pounds of powder - when all they really needed was a couple of knives per person.  The rifles, say historians did little to win the West, in fact a dozen or so lost their lives every year because of rifle shots.  Compare that with 34 total settlers died from Indian attacks in 7 years between 1840-47...

More deaths were due to the traveling settlers not being able to get along - they didn't listen to reason so they took out their rifles and talked later. It was even said that the Donner party's tragedy had more to do with their constant bickering and tempers than it had to do with the weather!

Next time...Missed Connections

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On this Day in History:  On October 22,  1903,  the infamous hired killer, Tom Horn, is hanged for having allegedly murdered Willie Nickell, the 14-year-old son of a southern Wyoming sheep rancher.
Some historians suggest that Horn may have murdered Willie Nickell by accident, having mistaken the boy for his father. Others, though, argue that it is more likely that Horn was deliberately convicted for a crime he did not commit by Wyoming citizens seeing an opportunity to take revenge.

Wagon Train Captains and Pilots

Wagon Trains had 2  principal officers - the captain and the pilot.  Captains were men who organized the caravan initially, or were elected once the train was formed.  He was the administrator and also the judge.  He established the order, drew up the roster for duty and settled quarrels which were many and bitter.

Pilots,  or guides like Walker, actually led the train once it started westward and made the day to day
tactical decisions.  Pilots were responsible for where they traveled, how they traveled, where they made camp, as well as how they guarded livestock, forded creeks, made and mended equipment, dealt with the Indians, and survived the trip in general.  Pilots were usually veterans and the ones to soothe fears and boost morales.

A perfect role for Captain Walker...

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This Day in History:  On October 16,  1815, the sadistic and murderous western gunman,  William Preston Longley, later known as Wild Bill,  is born in Austin County, Texas.

Next time...Inexperienced and Packin' Heat

Jumping Off Points

Captain Walker and his wife arrived
in Missouri and spent the winter of 1841-42 in Jackson County.  Much of his extended family still lived there, some so young he had never seen them before.  The migration fever had reached epidemic proportions by then in Missouri where supplies had even made Independence and St. Joseph "jumping off points" - places where wagon trains would make final preparations, dispose of unnecessary item, and buy supplies they had forgotten.  Local merchants bought at rock bottom prices from travelers to sell again at high profit.

Outfitters, invested trader, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, life insurance salesmen, and guidebook salesmen - it was a bustling and hustling time for Missouri!

Next time - California or Bust!

Due to Technical Issues with Blogger - I can not update "On this Day in History"...so I will add one to each day a post is made.  Sorry :(

On October 7  1816 in Old West History:  
A steamboat with a design that will soon prove ideal for western rivers arrives at the docks in New Orleans. The Washington was the work of a shipbuilder named Henry M. Shreve, who had launched the steamboat earlier that year on the Monongahela River just above Pittsburgh

The Oregon Trail

One of the greatest emigrant trails to the Northwest was the Oregon Trail which ran from Independence, Missouri to the Columbia River in Oregon. It crossed 2000 miles of rugged terrain, including some of the fiercest Indian territory in the West.

The trail was first used by fur trappers, traders and missionaries, but in the 1840s the trail became jammed with emigrants moving west - wagon trains of 12,000 settlers in 10 years during the early settlement of the West.

The first overland settlers started on the Oregon Trail in 1841 with 70 emigrants from Independence, MO, following the route west along the Platte River, through the Rocky Mountains via the South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River.  From then on, it was called the Oregon Trail.


In 1842 a larger group of 100 pioneers made the 2000 mile journey and the next year the number soared to 1000. The wagon train which left from Elm Grove, MO, included 100 wagons and a herd of 5000 oxen and cattle.  Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip the year before served as the guide. During that year, 1843, a severe depression was hitting the Midwest and farmers in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee hoped to find better lives in the reported paradise of Oregon.

The Oregon Trail was used the longest, even after railroads replaced much of the wagon routes in 1884, cattle and sheep drives found the trail a good path. Today there are still places that you can visit the deep ruts in the trail where wagon carried settlers west to a better life.

Next time...the Great Oregon Flood

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