Introduction to the Bison Books Edition

Glenda Riley

During the past few years the concept of “western trail” has become increasingly complicated. Scholars have pointed out that numerous trails led to the American West, including a variety of overland routes, the trek across Panama, roads heading north from Mexico, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. These not only brought Anglo-Americans and African Americans westward, but Mexicans northward, and Europeans and Asians to the West.

This volume represents one of the most common routes: the one motion pictures and television have drawn upon for thousands of stories. The women who traversed the Oregon Trail, and offer their accounts here, were stock characters as well. They were largely Anglo-American and had a modicum of education, which allowed them to record their observations and experiences for posterity.

Because these women lacked exposure to television, especially the nightly news, they had little knowledge of other migrants taking different trails to a similar destination. In twentieth-century terms, they suffered from a want of global and cultural awareness. But, in nineteenth-century parlance, they had purpose.

For them, “the trail” was the Oregon Trail, invested with the demands, hardships, and adjustments they had to face to reach the far West. Despite the difficulties, thousands were willing to challenge the obstacles to finding new homes. In 1852, the number of migrants on the Oregon Trail increased notably over the previous year. The Missouri Republican of July 1, 1852, claimed that by May alone, 8,174 men, 1,286 women, and 1,776 children had departed for points west. The newspaper also commented that the migration included a marked increase in the number of women.

In the selections that follow, some of these women relate their reluctance to leave kin and friends behind, express their dread or curiosity about meeting their “first” Indian, wonder how they will survive striking climatic changes, and question their abilities to deal with natural and other disasters. They clearly anticipate the transformation of their known world.

Oregon Trail women were right to worry. Besides forsaking kin, friends, and others, they could expect to encounter peoples of vastly different cultures from their own. Moreover, before leaving home women absorbed confusing and conflicting images of Native Americans from the press and popular literature. On the one hand, Indians were seen as friendly, kind, and courageous; on the other, native peoples were described as bad, hostile, and vicious. Because the likeness of the “bad” Indian dominated during the l850s, however, women's initial expectations tended to be negative rather than positive.

Too, embellishments abounded at every turn. These included family stories about “murderous savages,” myths involving “barbarians,” and inflated rumors about Indian “atrocities” and “uprisings.” Along the trail, women encountered additional horror stories about Indian “depredations” and alarms of various sorts, including printed circulars and bleached skull bones inscribed “danger—Indian troubles” or “Indian uprising,” sometimes accompanied by a crude drawing of a skull and crossbones.

Presumably, Indians also heard rumors and gossip about the oncoming immigrants. Consequently, both sides were, at best, uninformed—and, at worst, horribly misinformed—about the other. As Francis Sawyer put it, “We are now in the Indian country, and we suspect that it will not be many days before we see some of these wild natives” (89).

When they finally met, migrants and natives alike were primed for trouble. In addition, because meetings were unplanned and feared, no protocol for proper behavior existed. Both Anglos and Indians asked invasive questions, picked up and laughed at other peoples' possessions, and were curious to the point of rudeness. In some cases, anxiety and suspicion caused an encounter to turn into an armed confrontation. In other cases, people met—and even liked—each other. Inevitably, however, some amount of conflict ensued, for settlers seemed intent on imposing their ways on American Indians. For example, even though most Indian cultures believed in sharing, Anglos tried to convince Native Americans that resources existed to be exploited. Women travelers had their own criticisms of Indians. They especially lamented the Indians' lack of clothing, inability to speak English, and practice of plural marriage.

Native peoples who resisted Anglo invasion and expressed their opinions about the changes occurring became, in Anglo eyes, “savage,” “hostile,” and “barbaric.” In one way, Indians were victims of encroaching settlers who tricked, cheated, and relied on the military to clear their way. In another, however, American Indians retained their dignity, if not their lands. In their own quiet fashion, Indians often expressed their wills. For instance, one traveler liked to tell the story of naive, childlike Indians who showed off by shooting arrows at nickels and other coins. Since the Indians kept the nickels—and spent them later—one has to wonder who was the gullible party.

Because of such cultural differences, the women in this volume sometimes demonstrate what are today termed imperialist or colonialist attitudes. Often, women not only censured American Indians but hoped to “civilize” (that is, bring white customs to) the native peoples they met. Although some cared more about their own problems than those of Native Americans, others dreamed of the ways in which their religions, laws, policies, and culture would improve the Indians' way of life. In this, they were unfortunately products of their era and thus created problems that later generations still have to solve.

As they progressed along the trail, however, women often altered their views of Indians. Because women traded with Indians, visited with Indian women and children, and borrowed such helpful knowledge as which roots to dig and what herbal medicines to use, women often grew sympathetic with Indians. As trail women came to know and appreciate American Indians, many lamented the natives' deteriorating situations and questioned why a once proud, self-sufficient people increasingly lived in poverty and begged scraps of food from migrants.

Besides relationships with native peoples, climate also posed a huge problem for travelers. The mountains the settlers climbed, the rivers they forded, and the storms they survived accounted for many trail disasters, which in themselves became commonplace. Drowning, accidental shootings, and getting lost were a usual part of trail life. When her party reached Starvation Camp and Donner Lake, Eliza Ann McAuley recalled the 1846 tragedy that occurred on that spot. “It is,” McAuley wrote, “the most desolate, gloomy looking place I ever saw” (78-79).

Because of the high drama and sometimes low chicanery along the trail, the journey has been mythologized. For most migrants the trip was neither as harsh nor as happy as legend portrayed it. Generally, trail women made the crossing with hope, energy, and even grace. Also, they coped with their problems in myriad ways, four of which were so universal that they beg notice.

First, women served as transitional forces on the westward journey. The importance of this time on the trail has been overlooked. The trip provided a time for people to adjust from the known to the new, to learn fresh skills, and to develop ways of managing unexpected situations.

As wives and mothers, trail women especially played a crucial role by providing moral guidance in a situation that involved drinking, swearing, missed Sabbath observances, loose sexual practices, polygamy, and near nudity on the part of some natives. Typically, women's magazines urged women to act as “correctives of what is wrong.” Serving as moral guides on the trail could convince women of their importance and give them a reason to endure.

Women also led the way in testing new behaviors along the trail. For instance, they visited Native American women and regularly gained entrance to Indian homes. Such friendly occurrences not only eased female migrants' anxieties regarding Indians, but frequently led to an exchange of important information. On other occasions, such meetings provided social contact or what one woman called “quite a dish of conversation.”

Second, women survived the trail because they had the tenets of women's culture to guide them. Women's customary roles and domestic ideologies in chaotic circumstances gave women a sense of meaning and purpose. For example, women kept “standards” in place. Despite exhaustion and the difficulty of laundering clothes, women often donned clean dresses to attend an often hastily improvised Sabbath meeting.

Clearly, the care needed by children offered women a larger purpose than simply reaching the end of the trail. Lucy Rutledge Cooke touched on the importance of motherly care when she wrote “my little babe is so sick I was up all night with her she takes little or no nourishment & what she does she throws up directly.”

In addition, trail women contributed medical and apothecary skills. Long taught they were “gifted to excel” at nursing and doctoring, women served as the medical practitioners for many overland trains. They knew how, or learned how, to manage everything from trail accidents to ague, poison ivy, and poison oak.

Another part of nineteenth-century women's culture involved the formation of reciprocal relationships with other women. Encouraged to practice “union and cooperation,” trail women often joined with their counterparts to get a job done, whether it be laundry, cooking, or childcare. Childbirth provided yet another opportunity for women to help one another. When women were “confined” or “in a poor fix to travel,” midwives or other women usually delivered babies and even cared for mother and child afterwards.

Such collaboration between trail women provided stability for them and their families. It also created a common bond, so that a woman did not feel alone or lost. From exchanging recipes to assisting at childbirth, women felt they had mothers, sisters, and friends to take the place of the ones they left behind.

Third, Oregon Trail women served as dispensers of food. Although men occasionally took over culinary tasks, it was not the norm. Francis Sawyer noted that “the men do all the cooking in bad weather” but that she cooked otherwise (88-89).

Even though food preparation may sound commonplace, it played a critical role. In various ways, food sustained pioneers as they crossed the Oregon Trail: besides supplying physical and psychological nourishment, it established a pattern of success.*

Because the outcome of migration depended on the health and strength of the migrants, meals had to be plentiful and nourishing. Women carried food supplies in wagons, such as the “dried fruits and vegetables, also a quantity of light bread cut in slices and dried” that Eliza Ann McAuley described (37). Also, men hunted and fished along the way. Francis Sawyer rejoiced when her husband killed a deer: “This was very acceptable to all of us, as fresh meat is quite a treat on a trip like this” (89). Women and children also fished and gathered berries.

Not only did food provide nutrition but it could boost morale as well. Meals supplied warmth and comfort when the migrants grew tired, wet, cold, discouraged, or ill. Food could also be a reward—for a stream forded, a hill ascended, or a long day completed. Or food might suggest a connection to something known and familiar. To provide structure amid upheaval, many women continued pre-migration mealtime routines. They prepared favorite foods, Sunday dinners, and holiday dinners along the trail.

Trail women also kept spirits up by supplying unexpected mealtime treats. These included wild strawberries, currants, and huckleberries, as well as pies and soda fritters. To an exhausted and downhearted traveler such delicacies represented a tie with home, a fact that encouraged some women to stay up stewing apples rather than get much-needed sleep.

Tasty, regular meals also suggested success to emigrants. If they ate, they survived. If they survived, they could not only expect to reach their goal—their own particular promised land—but to eat and survive there as well. Women proved incredibly adaptable and creative in this realm. Frequently, they even turned obstacles into advantages. Instead of riding in the back of bumping wagons, women placed butter chums inside them. Because of the swaying, mixing motion of the wagon, by the end of the day women had fresh butter for dinner. They might even have enough to sell to local farmers, the cash paying for bridge tolls and incidental expenses. Other women dug trenches in the ground and lit open fires in them. Balancing the pots and pans across the trenches on their edges, women made bread, bean soup, boiled bacon, mush, and tea.

Clearly, women's ability to endure boded well for the years ahead. If they could feed their families on the trail, and even earn extra money, they could do so in their new homes. Also, filling the crucial role of cook gave more than one woman enough purpose and determination to hurdle all obstacles.

Finally, many trail women possessed hardy spirits and cheery personalities. They could glory in a sunrise, laugh at a mishap, and appreciate the beauties of the landscape. Mariett Foster Cummings wrote: “Arose early and passed over two of the most beautiful prairies I ever saw” (123). Later, although she was a more seasoned traveler, Cummings still reveled in “the wildest and most magnificent scenery, surpassing anything I ever dreamed of” (149). Even teenager Elizabeth Keegan, who found the overland journey to Sacramento “tedious in the extreme,” waxed lyrical about “rolling praries … covered with verdure” (24).

Light-hearted, optimistic women further leavened their trips by joining in the fun that marked many camps. They sang spirituals and other songs, celebrated such holidays as the Fourth of July, and danced to the music of fiddles, banjos, and bones in the light of the campfire. Sarah Pratt punctuated her diary with such notations as “circus expected here tomorrow,” “music in the evening,” and “good company—lively times” (178-79) while Lucy Rutledge Cook noted “dancing” and “considerable merriment” (240).

Of course, women's efforts to cope with the hazards of the Oregon Trail demanded great energy, stamina, and fortitude. Traversing the Oregon Trail was a twenty-four-hour, every-day-of-the-week undertaking. Thus, in all likelihood, even if Oregon Trail women had been aware of travelers on other trails they would have continued to focus on their own travails. While they might have had sympathy for the migrants who streamed from all parts of the world across a wide variety of trails, they had little energy to spare. They had mountains to climb, rivers to ford, and thousands of miles to cross before they could unload their baggage and begin the work of building new homes.

 

* N. Jill Howard and Glenda Riley, “Thus You See I Have Not Much Rest,” Idaho Yesterdays 37 (fall 1993): 27-35.