Today in history 5-22

[remrogers]

1843
A thousand pioneers head West on the Oregon Trail

The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had been living in the region for decades. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural potential, tweaking the interest of American farmers. The first overland immigrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River. In the years to come, pioneers came to call the route the Oregon Trail.

In 1842, a slightly larger group of 100 pioneers made the 2,000-mile journey to Oregon. The next year, however, the number of emigrants skyrocketed to 1,000. The sudden increase was a product of a severe depression in the Midwest combined with a flood of propaganda from fur traders, missionaries, and government officials extolling the virtues of the land. Farmers dissatisfied with their prospects in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, hoped to find better lives in the supposed paradise of Oregon.

On this day in 1843, some 1,000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their wagons and steered their horses west out of the small town of Elm Grove, Missouri. The train comprised more than 100 wagons with a herd of 5,000 oxen and cattle trailing behind. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip the year before, served as guide.

The first section of the Oregon Trail ran through the relatively flat country of the Great Plains. Obstacles were few, though the river crossings could be dangerous for wagons. The danger of Indian attacks was a small but genuine risk. To be on the safe side, the pioneers drew their wagons into a circle at night to create a makeshift stockade. If they feared Indians might raid their livestockâ€"the Plains tribes valued the horses, though generally ignored the oxenâ€"they would drive the animals into the enclosure.

Although many neophyte pioneers believed Indians were their greatest threat, they quickly learned that they were more likely to be injured or killed by a host of more mundane causes. Obstacles included accidental discharge of firearms, falling off mules or horses, drowning in river crossings, and disease. After entering the mountains, the trail also became much more difficult, with steep ascents and descents over rocky terrain. The pioneers risked injury from overturned and runaway wagons.

Yet, as with the 1,000-person party that made the journey in 1843, the vast majority of pioneers on the trail survived to reach their destination in the fertile, well-watered land of western Oregon. The migration of 1844 was smaller than that of the previous season, but in 1845 it jumped to nearly 3,000. Thereafter, migration on the Oregon Trail was an annual event, although the practice of traveling in giant convoys of wagons gave way to many smaller bands of one or two-dozen wagons. The trail was heavily traveled until 1884, when the Union Pacific constructed a railway along the route.

[Okanagan]

Interesting.  I grew up not far from the Oregon Trail, and just across the Columbia River from one of the major camp sites of Lewis and Clark.  Wife and I followed some of the old Oregon Trail route in our recent ramblings.  The wagon tire marks are still there in southeastern Oregon, going across the high sage flats where they left the Snake River and cut across the corner of high ground to the Columbia River and on down toward the Willamette Valley.

The small farm I grew up on had an odd groove in the land that ran down a long gentle slope of hill a mile away, continued across our place and on through the sage flats beyond.  When I was maybe 7 or 8 and we had just moved there, before we cleared the sage and planted, I found a long stone "arrowhead" lying in the middle of that groove.

I was nearly grown and off to college when I learned that the long groove was the wagon trail from somewhere up the valley (likely all the way from an early fort over on the coast near Seattle)  to Fort Walla Walla.  A stone point that big had to be  some kind of spear or atlatl point.  Wonder how it got in the road.  Shot at some army wagon teamster?  At some pilgrim or lone rider? At an animal in the road, or merely dropped and lost there?

Wish I'd known sooner that it was the first "road" in our part of the world and I would have examined and searched it.  As the years pass with farming, all trace of the road indentation has disappeared in most places.

Some dozen miles farther along the road, where it reached the Columbia across from the mouth of the Walla Walla River, in my teens we noticed beads, bone fragments etc. in the eroding bank of a shallow road cut.  It was an Indian grave.  It had some tiny glass beads, so was post contact with  Europeans.   I don't think anyone ever told anthropologists etc. about it.  Too bad.