WOMEN'S DUTIES ON THE OVERLAND TRAIL

Women Who Won The West Series

The division of work on the Overland Trail noted that women always did the cooking. But as the months dragged on, and the trip lengthened, women were expected to do much more. Writing in her journal, Martha Morrison recalls that the women helped pitch the tents, helped unload and helped yoke up the cattle. Some women did nearly all the yoking because many times the men were off.

She writes: “One time my father was away hunting cattle that had been driven off by the Indians and that left Mother and the children to attend to everything...”

Work, such as packing and unpacking was formidable and never ending. It had to be done at major river crossings, after heavy rains, and when wagons got stuck in the mud.

In her journal Esther Hanna wrote: “I am now sitting in our carriage in the middle of a slough. Our mules all fell down attempting to get through. I have never witnessed anything like it. We have put 14 yoke of oxen to the wagons to get them out...Our provisions got wet and they had to be unpacked to air and then packed again.”

According to various journal entries, though the children were called upon to share the heavy jobs, they kept of “good heart and good cheer.”

Many years after the crossing, Martha said: “We did not know the dangers we were going through. The idea of my Father was to get on the coast: no other place suited him, and he went right ahead until he got there; we settled on the Clatsop Plains close to the mouth of the Columbia River. We did not get there until the middle of January or the first of February. We went down the river Deschutes in an open canoe, including all the children; and when we got down there was no way to get to the place where my Father had determined to locate us, but to wade through the tremendous swamps. I knew some of the young men that were along laughed at us girls, my oldest sister and me, for holding up what dresses we had to keep from miring; but we did not think it was funny. We finally waded through and got all our goods. Mother was a very fleshy woman, and it was a terrible job for her to get through.”

Martha married within a year and a half of her arrival in Oregon. She was fifteen.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but after reading some of their adventures crossing the Rockies into the west, I’ll never again complain about moving my washing from the washer to the dryer; or from cooking meals over my electric stove. What amazes me is that more women didn’t play out than did. Many grew stronger and produced stronger children, and we have them to thank for our own stamina.

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