In May of 1843 the Ohio Statesman
printed this short article: "The Oregon fever is raging in almost every
part of the Union. Companies are forming in the east and in several parts of
Ohio, which added to those of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, will make a pretty
formidable army. The largest portion will probably join companies at Fort
Independence, Missouri and proceed together across the mountains. It would be
reasonable to suppose that there will be at least five thousand Americans west
of the Rocky Mountains next autumn."
Lucy Hall Bennett was 13 when her
family joined the emigration to Oregon. She wrote:
"We came across Steve Meek,
(he) told us of a better road to Williamette Valley. Part of our train refused
to take this cut-off and went by the old immigrant road, but a good many of us
followed Meek on what has since been called Meek's Cut Off…The road we took had
been traveled by the Hudson Bay Fur traders, and while it mght have been
alright for pack horses, it was certainly not adapted to immigrants traveling
by ox train. The water was bad, so full of alkali you could hardly drink it.
There was little grass and before long our cattle all had sore feet from
traveling over the hard sharp rocks. After several of our party died, the men
discovered that Meek really knew nothing about the road.
Accidents occurred nearly every
day on these extended trains. During the long trips children lost all fear of
jumping off the wagons to keep from asking that they be stopped. One little
girl, Catherine Sager, caught the hem of her dress on an axle handle while
leaping out of the wagon. She was tossed under the wheels which passed over her
left leg before her father could stop the oxen. He leaped down and picked her
up, then saw her broken leg dangling unnaturally and cried out, "My dear
child, your leg is broken all to pieces."
Her father was later killed in a
buffalo stampede, but as he lingered he bitterly wept, wondering what would
happen to his frail wife and his child so recently crippled. Soon after
childbirth his wife came down with "camp fever" and she succumbed in
a few days, leaving their seven children orphans, the eldest was 14 and the
youngest only a few weeks old.
The Sager children traveled on
until they reached the missionary settlement of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in
Oregon. The Whitmans were Presbyterian missionaries who had established the
mission in 1836. Narcissa had lost a child earlier and when she saw the
orphaned children, it was the baby she wanted, and so all six remained there
with her and her husband.
As fate would have it, and such
things certainly make us wonder, Cayuse Indians attacked the mission in 1847,
killing the Whitmans and twelve others, among them both brothers of Catherine
Sager who survived to marry and raise a family.
Accidents were only one of the
horrible ways that the lives of these early emigrants could be threatened.
Cholera was the scurge of travelers in those days, and when it struck, young
and old alike were cut down.
But for every sad story there is
a happy one. Some young couples were filled with excitement and a spirit of
adventure. They yearned to see the new world. One young wife wrote that she and
her husband were "indifferent to fear," and she felt confident that
they could go almost anywhere.
An example of such
"adventure" can be found in the diary of Nancy Hembree Snow Bogart
who wrote of crossing the Deschutes River.
"The women took their places
in the boats, feeling they were facing death…the frail craft would get caught
in a whirlpool and the water dashing over and drenching them through and through.
The men would then plunge in the cold stream and draw the half-drowned women
and children ashore, build fires and partly dry them, and the bedding and start
on again."
And so did the women of those
days conquer the west with fortitude, courage and strength, much of which we
can't imagine today.
No comments:
Post a Comment