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D
The sun is lifting over the prairie as the wagons begin to move. Canvas tops catch the early light. Dew clings to the grasses. Oxen snort, leaning into their yokes, leather creaking, wood groaning under the weight of wagon passengers and possessions, the entirety of what each family owns. Most adults walk at this point of the day. Riding wastes the animals. A woman grips her shawl against the morning chill, her dress already dust stained. A man tightens a loose bolt on a wheel. Another checks the oxen's gimpy hoof. Gradually the wagons jockey onto the trail in a long, uneven line stretching forward to the horizon, towards nothing but grass and sky behind them. Exactly the same. By mid morning the sun burns hot. With every step and turn of the wheels, dust rises into a cloud, settling into mouths and eyes. Children complain. Mothers softly hush them. Near noon they pause by a creek for water to be collected, brown though it is hard. Bread is broken and passed along. No one lingers, noting the clouds gathered in the distant sky and the low, ominous thunder. Someone mutters a perfunctory prayer. Finally, by evening, they've circled the wagons and built small fires. Shirts washed, hung to dry, beans spooned onto pewter plates. The names of those who have died are spoken of quietly or more often, not at all. Because tomorrow they must all rise once more to meet the dawn and do it all Again, Glad to welcome you to another episode of American History hit. I'm Don Wildman, your host. And today we head out to the great American frontier, first in a series of episodes on the subject. Traveling west over the endless plains, teeming rivers, towering mountain passes. Today's episode tracks that most legendary of pioneering wagon routes, 2,000 miles from Missouri to the Pacific Northwest. Over the years, it carried hundreds of thousands of people to new lives in what is still one of the largest volunteer migrations in human history. We're talking about today, the Oregon Trail, why it happened, how it happened, and what a profound difference it made in a nation newly determined to manifest its destiny from sea to shining sea. We're accompanied on this journey by Stephen Aaron, the Calvin and Marilyn Gross, director, president and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American west in Los Angeles. Great place. Stephen is professor emeritus of history at ucla. His works include the American A Very Short Introduction and Peace and Friendship and An Alternative History of the American West. Greetings, Professor. Hello, Stephen. Thanks for joining us. Cue the banjo. We're out on the trail.
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E
It's a pleasure to be here. Let's head west.
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D
It is such a storied era of American history. The pioneer days, so many books written, the John Ford movies, even eventually a very famous video game we covered on another episode on this series. But putting the whole dramatized version aside, it is still such a foundational element of American expansion and American culture, isn't it?
- [04:47]
E
It absolutely. Americans had been heading west for generations before the Oregon Trail migrations commenced in the 1840s. What was different about the migration on the Oregon Trail from Missouri, jumping off points of Missouri or Iowa, 2,000 miles almost across the plains and mountains to reach the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Primarily was the distance and the duration of the journey, as I said, for generations. Americans mostly voluntary, but not entirely, because keep in mind that they were often accompanied by African Americans, enslaved African Americans, white Americans coming with enslaved African Americans who were not voluntary migrants on the journey, but for the most part, the journey westward. But in the earlier era prior to the Oregon Trail, most of the migrations had been relatively short error in distance. And the duration of the trip was a matter of days and weeks, not months and months, not scores of miles, maybe hundreds of miles, even not thousands of miles. People from New England heading to upstate New York during the American Revolution and its aftermath. People from Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina heading to adjacent states or adjacent territories, Kentucky and Tennessee in the era of the American Revolution, from Kentucky to Ohio. Consider, for example, Abraham Lincoln's family moving from Pennsylvania, the valley of Virginia or Pennsylvania, into Kentucky, where Abe Lincoln was born, then migrating into Indiana. Then Lincoln makes his way to Illinois. It's that movement to contiguous places that had characterized the earlier American experience. By Contrast, in the 1840s, they suddenly say, let's go to Oregon. All the way across the continent.
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D
What was going on at that particular time, 1830 to 1840, that sort of laid the groundwork for this decision for so many to go.
- [06:40]
E
Well, there factors going on, some the same ones as always. The hunger for land, demography and opportunity drive westward migration. Demography, because many of these American families were large. Lots of children. Trying to find land for lots of children in places where land wasn't available meant going west to find cheaper, more available land. And that sort of drives that migration. Oregon has this reputation by the 1840s as an unusually fertile and healthful place where good land is available for the taking and that becomes the private district. But in addition, you see the migrations in the 1830s to Texas, for example. People from the south heading into Texas, where cotton lands open up there. So it's not just Oregon that's a destination in these years. There's a number of destinations. And yet Oregon becomes the great beacon for American migrants.
- [07:33]
D
In the 1840s, there was a tremendous period of economic instability, A regular event in those days, more so than these days. The panic of 1837 led to a depression, which last lasted until the mid-1840s, resulting in, you know, the whole menu of things that happens. Loss of farms, foreclosures, shrinking opportunity. There was also a belief that America ought to encourage social mobility, land ownership. And there was a growing frustration when it didn't. These are issues that today, you know, have sort of been boiled out of our thought process because we think about making money and mobility that way. Land has everything to do with improving your lot in life.
- [08:12]
E
The great dream for most white American men in the 19th century was to achieve what they called a competence, which was a standard of living that allowed them to basically feed their families, take care of themselves, not be dependent on others to work for wages or to be a tenant farmer, but to achieve an independence. And land ownership was fundamental to that independence. The yeoman ideal that Thomas Jefferson gives voice to is, I think, the driving factor here. And in those unstable times in the 1830s, in those economic turmoil of the 1830s, a lot of Americans find that opportunity, challenge, that possibility, challenge. And that certainly impels many to look westward.
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D
Me, I resent my mortgage. It's like so Much for my land, but that's because somebody else owns it, really. I mentioned Manifest Destiny in the intro. How aware were you average Americans, those who will be embarking on this trail, of this idea, and was it any kind of real factor in motivating people to move? Were they part of this sort of national mission?
- [09:22]
E
So the term Manifest Destiny, the term itself doesn't get coined until the mid-1840s, until John L O Sullivan, who's a New York newspaper man writing for essentially a Democratic paper associated with Andrew Jackson's party and the primary expansionist party at the time, puts the phrase in there that it is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent. But the idea, the idea of Manifest Destiny, of Americans opportunity laying and claiming lands to the west, in those lands to the west becoming the place on which Americans would achieve, would bring the blessings of liberty and democracy, at least for themselves. Nevermind what would happen to the indigenous peoples of those areas, was certainly deeply embedded in American culture going back generations.
- [10:11]
D
Yes, it's really something I'm much more aware of, having hosted this, this podcast for years now of this period of time, which is a mystery to a lot of Americans, this 1820s, 30s, 40s time period, which has a lot to do with this realization that we are a difference in the world, this sort of democratic answer to monarchism in Europe and all. That's what's just happening in Europe still. 1848, year of rev. And I'm always wondering how much though people really understood this on the ground, literally on the trail. It also of course becomes useful to political elites, to the politicians in Washington, this idea of this expansionism being grabbing land, essentially being part of this moving out there and growing this nation one family at a time. Right.
- [10:59]
E
So there's certainly, you know, the politics of expansionism is at the heart of a lot of what's going on in the 19th century and the contest over how that expansion would take place dating back to the earliest days of the American republic. But Certainly even the first party system that emerges in the 1790s, there's a profound division between the Federalists and Washington and Adams, who take a relatively go slow approach to how westward expansion should take place, versus Thomas Jefferson, who becomes a much more unbridled advocate for opening up western lands for white American farmers and often their African American slaves, and ejecting Indians from those lands. And that becomes the contest. And then you have a lot of battles over land law. On what terms would the federal government make available? Would land be available to people on relatively cheap terms, or as Washington originally thought, let's make it pretty expensive so only the right sort of people can go there, and that there'll be a more orderly settlement of western territories. By contrast, the vision of Thomas Jefferson really triumphs in the 19th century. And it is that vision that says, no, we want to make land more available. We want to diminish the price at which the federal government will sell it, diminish the minimum acreage required, allow people to pay it off in credit installments, ultimately allow what's called preemption rights, meaning people who had squatted on land would be able to take control and ownership of that land based on their occupancy and improvement, as opposed to having gained legal title in advance to their going. So all of those factors are in play.
- [12:39]
D
It's such a big factor in the beginnings of this nation. The foundation being laid about the middle class gaining power and being the foundation the country is built upon. These are the things that happen. Of course, this middle class is white males at this point, and one must recognize that. But it's an interesting sociological standpoint about America. And the Oregon Trail has everything to do with that. When you would walk down one of these wagon trains, who were these people? Who were these pioneers?
- [13:08]
E
As I said, in many respects they were the same as their parents and their grandparents. And their dream that impelled them west was very similar to what impelled their parents and grandparents to go west. Again, the desire for good, cheap land and the possibilities that came with that. In general, though, again, emphasizing what makes this Oregon migration different is the distance and duration is so much greater. And that makes it a little harder for people to just simply uproot and go. That the cost of going is much more considerable to go from Missouri to Oregon than it is to go from Ohio to Indiana, for example, as a move. And so already it takes certain kinds of. You have a certain kind of status to be able to go or be able to borrow the money to go. So that puts a certain limitation. Or to be able to go in some other way. But in general, the Oregon migration, like earlier migrations, is characterized by the migration of families moving west, as I say, often with multiple children, often with children being born along the way on the trail.
- [14:16]
D
But these were immigrant families in a lot of cases, weren't they?
- [14:19]
E
Sometimes. Sometimes. And that's a little later, to the Great Plains, where you see even more immigrant families heading to the Great Plains, as opposed to the Oregon migration, which is primarily native born Americans, people who had been born within the United States. Often in places like Iowa and Missouri or other parts of the what we now think of as the Midwest heading to the Pacific slope.
- [14:43]
D
I mean, it must have been a remarkable story in the world, in Europe in particular, that this vastness of the North American continent was suddenly opening up to migration to settlement and people in Scandinavia and nevermind Ireland, of course, Germans all had to be hearing about this as a kind of crazy phenomenon.
- [15:05]
E
Yeah. And that continues through the 19th century. Again, that just this opportunity, the availability of land doesn't have any parallel in Europe where most people were not going to achieve land ownership as a status. And that certainly is a great driver of immigration from across the Atlantic into the United States and ultimately pushing people to the western parts of the United States as well.
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D
When we come back after this break, we're going to get up close and personal and talk about what life was like out on the Oregon Trail. This episode brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. Ah, spring. Trees blossoming, flowers blooming, not having to defrost your fingers and toes when you get inside. Oh, yeah, and spring break freedom, warmer climbs and memories just waiting to be made. And at Best Western, spring break isn't just what it used to be. It's better this spring. Stay three nights and get a fifty dollar Best Western gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.
- [16:22]
A
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B
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- [17:30]
D
Hello. We're back discussing the Oregon Trail with Professor Steven Aaron from the Autry Museum in Los Angeles. Stephen, when we speak of the Oregon Trail, was it a singular thing or more of a general route what was the trail physically in geograph?
- [17:45]
E
There are many trails that go west, and sometimes they're grouped under the heading of the Oregon Trail. Sometimes they're called overland trails. There are a variety of them. The particular route to Oregon in particular, generally follows from those Midwest, dropping off points along the Mississippi or bend of the Missouri river, westward along the Platte river, and then across the Great South Pass, through the Rocky Mountains, then the Stake River Valley, and then ultimately into the Willamette Valley. There was California trails that diverted from that, especially after the discovery of gold in California. It shifts the migration, the mass migration from Oregon to California. And a very different group of people head to California than head to Oregon. Though in the 1840s, it was sometimes said that at the point in the trail. This was a joke that Mark Twain, I believe, made at the point in the trail where the Oregon and California trails diverge. The people who could read went to Oregon, and the people who couldn't went to California, of course, because the California Trail involved a much more harsh crossing across some of the most arid lands of North America. And so finding water in those places was a particularly testing. Even more so than in the parts of the trail to Oregon.
- [19:01]
D
Depending on which trail you were on, I guess generally speaking, they were all about 2,000 miles long. Right. And you would leave generally from the state of Missouri and then head northwest. As you say, there are various routes that you could take on that thing, but it would take about four to six months. Is that fair to say?
- [19:16]
E
Yeah. Four to six months is the average crossing again, to get to California. Especially during the Gold Rush, it's a little quicker because most of the people are not coming in wagon trains. They're often coming just with horses and pack mules and they're moving more quickly. But the migration to Oregon, generally four to six months. And you had a lot of choices to make before you headed west. What were you going to bring? When were you going to go? The experience in the 1840s is a little bit different from the 1850s. By the 1850s, guides and guidebooks are a little bit more well established. So people kind of know what they're doing more than they do in the 1840s, where there's a little bit more uncertainties or more uncertainties around what the route would be. What they often called pioneer parlance was called going to see the elephant. How they referred to go seeing these western lands and these fabulous and fantastic geographies, which to them were in some ways almost as foreign as the surface of the moon. Is to 20th and 21st century people. Because for one thing, the real question would be, if you're sitting in Missouri or Iowa, for example, why don't you just head to Kansas or Nebraska or the Dakotas? Those are the adjacent territories. And the prior generations would have headed to those lands. But those lands, especially as one heads further west onto the plains, had become in again in American understanding, going back to Stephen Long, the explorer in the 1820s, were all sort of lumped together as part of a great American desert. Because for many Americans who grew up in wooded, humid environments of the eastern United States, the treeless grasslands of the plains, the windswept grasslands of the Great Plains, were to them a desert trained to assess the fertility of land based on the number and types of trees it supported. The grasslands appeared inhospitable to agriculture and therefore needed to be jumped over to get to the greater agricultural potential that lay on the Pacific slope.
- [21:21]
D
And I suppose the further they went, the more confirmed they were in that feeling. I mean, it's hard life, those four or five months that you're in the middle there.
- [21:29]
E
And it's certainly for those who left too early, Sometimes you run into the challenge of the grasses haven't sprouted on the Great Plains. If you're bringing your cattle, if you're bringing your livestock with you, what are they going to be fed on? They need forage and they don't have it. If you leave too late, you run the risk of getting caught in one of the mountain snowstorms in the early fall. The most famous example in 1846, not to Oregon, but to California, being the Donner party, which becomes a cautionary tale for later migrants about the dangers about tarrying too long, not making good time on the trail.
- [22:06]
D
The sweet spot, I guess, was March, April and May. That's when you would leave. So that you were getting there, as you say, not too late, not too early. These trains did not leave alone. You hired those handsome guides we saw in the movies, John Wayne and his.
- [22:22]
E
They were hands more handsome in movies, I think.
- [22:26]
D
Moral background. Yeah, they were courageous. But seriously, though, there must have been companies that serviced this opportunity. Right.
- [22:35]
E
I mean, certainly most people knew to band together, that doing it as a solo venture was not a wise idea. Yeah, that for a variety of reasons, people typically formed companies together, often signing various kinds of contracts and compacts about who would do what on the trail and how they would associate and what kinds of arrangements would prevail. Oftentimes, especially by the later 1840s into the 1850s, established guides who made a living basically shepherding these caravans of wagon trains across the plains, across the mountains, across the intermountain desert, and bringing them into the Pacific slope lands.
- [23:13]
D
But the organization is what I'm always curious about, you know, because this is a vast operation. You have how many wagons made up the average train.
- [23:23]
E
It got larger and larger, especially later and later. In the early days, you know, it would be handfuls of wagons. But by the 1840s, sometimes the trains, especially at the height of the California gold rush years when tens of thousands of people in hundreds of thousands in a few years, across the early 1850s, late 1840s, early 1850s, were headed west. Sometimes the wagon trains stretch miles and miles. These were huge caravans by at the height of the trail migration period. And you can imagine here, just imagine the dust that's kicked up by those kind of. And look, imagine what it was from the perspective of Native Americans on these lands, watching people cross through their territories. And that actually is a really important question about their relations with native peoples along the way.
- [24:17]
D
I do want to get to that, but I can understand the potential stench that's coming off of one of these wagon trails. Might be enough for Native Americans to say, yeah, go about your business. We're not anywhere close here. I'm kidding, of course.
- [24:28]
E
No, no, look, it's the same thing that cowboys who rode in the rear of cattle migrations up from Texas into Kansas, for example. The least attractive job was the cattle herder who was at the back of the herd. And likewise, riding in the back of these caravans was not necessarily the most pleasant experience in terms of dust and the other things that livestock emit.
- [24:50]
D
We don't want to get into the details of that. They would follow landmarks on this trail, signposts, I suppose you call them. And these would be sort of morale boosters, I understand. The Platte river, of course they'd follow. We didn't even mention the fact that this was largely kicked off in the earliest days of all by Lewis and Clark, you know, whose tales of going up the Missouri and so forth come back and sort of become the fodder for legend and mythology already. But as they're getting back, they're still following some of those same trails or that general lay of the land. Chimney rock, a 300 foot tall natural spire, would have been there. Scott's Bluff, perhaps the most famous, marked the end of the prairies, beginning of the Rocky Mountains. But by the mid-1840s, you had military forts along the way which had established these Outposts to aid travelers. Fort Laramie, Wyoming, for example. It really became quite organized that you could sort of measure out your route through these different destinations. Right.
- [25:44]
E
Well, first of all, I think it's really important to make clear, certainly Lewis and Clark's journals and their stories are important, but it's very also important that while fur traders follow the Missouri river up into the mountains to sort of trap beaver and the like in the 1820s and 1830s, by the 1840s, the principal trails do not follow the route that Lewis and Clark pioneered. That is, if those wagon trains had tried to go where Lewis and Clark had gone, up the Missouri and then the tributaries and across the bitter routes, they would not have made it. Those were not wagon friendly roads or trails. Instead, they went further south along the Platte across south pass, which was the critical way across the rocky mountains. A relatively gently sloped passage across the continental divide, that had that not been available to wagoneers, it would have been impossible for the wagons to make it across the plains. To make it across the plains and then make it across the rocky Mountains.
- [26:42]
D
What would the average day experience be like? Slow going for the most part. Take me through the morning, afternoon and evening of an average wagon trail traveler.
- [26:53]
E
Well, I think the first thing to emphasize is most people walked. So it was a great long walk. Yes, they had horses, yes, they had oxen, yes, they might have other livestock. But in order to lighten the loads of wagons and keep things moving, most people walked. So it was not just a wagon train. It was a great walk across half the continent. And that, of course, limits how far you could go. There were certain chores that had to be done before you set out. Keep in mind, these are often families with lots of children. So you had to sort of make sure that everything was ready and going, and then the great walk, and then sort of after a day's walking, make camp, cook food, mend clothes, et cetera. You know, it was often case that the divergence between the experiences of men and women were quite profound on the trail. And you see that when you read the diaries of men and women for men on the trail, they often write about this as the great adventure of their lives because here they're freed from the normal burdens of farm making and they're off seeing the elephant. Sometimes it includes their first time seeing bison, these great beasts that are in such great numbers still on the great plains, or seeing Indians for the first time. Both scary, but also exciting. Seeing landscapes and lands that are so unfamiliar and yet fascinating to them. So grand for women, though, when you look at women's diaries and journals, they rarely evince the same degree of excitement about this. The adventure lives in part because for women, and if you follow that old couplet, you know, men could work from son to son because women's work was never done. That was especially true on the trail where women's work sort of persisted all day long. All the normal things of taping households together in a sense, plus all of the difficulties of doing that under these most arduous conditions and continuing then into the evening and night. So I think that's really critical to sort of fasten on the difference between men's experiences of the Overland Trail and women's experiences.
- [28:57]
D
I guess the ultimate bonding experience for all these travelers. I mean, if they hadn't already gone out together as a group signing on to one of these trains, I'm sure many of these people created communities among themselves by the time they reached their destination.
- [29:12]
E
You know, obviously like all communities, there's some, or like all extended families even, there are certain times when relations become quite fraught. There's certainly conflict that has, that occurs on the trail between different people. But at the same time, oftentimes these contracts and companies and just the shared experience does create bonds between people, sometimes who went in company of their relatives, sometimes you see extended families going together. So it's already some bonding going on. But certainly the experience of the journey, the shared challenges of the journey, the ardors of that six month crossing create deeper bonds between people. And oftentimes people get together, you get marriages coming out of between young people who meet on the trail.
- [30:00]
D
For example, you mentioned these diaries. There must be tons of, tons of things to read from people going across. Right.
- [30:06]
E
The Oregon Trail diaries are really fascinating because it's one time where we get a rare glimpse into the lives of kind of ordinary rural people who in their normal experience really rarely had time or inclination to keep these kind of accounts of their lives. And oftentimes when you read diaries, sometimes they're quite spare, especially rural diaries. You know, today's weather very cold, or this is how many acres I plowed today, or something like that. Whereas on the trail you get a chance to look at these thousands of diaries that have been preserved and get a rare glimpse into people's experiences and expectations in a way that gives us an opportunity to see more of the inner workings of 19th century rural folk.
- [30:49]
D
Interesting. Yeah, it's a tremendously dangerous experience as well. There are a lot of negatives here. I mean, the disease Factor you had cholera, dysentery, of course. Never fun. Contaminated water sources. The source of that dysentery, I'm sure. Lots of accidents, river crossings, heavy wagons. There are accidents all the time, I suppose. I mean, probably not as much as the movies would. You know, it doesn't happen as often as we think, but certainly a big factor. You mentioned these diaries. I want to read an excerpt from one of those diaries. Her name is Eliza Ann McAuley, dated May 11, 1852, which is towards the later part of this of the story and the Oregon Trail. So bear with me as I read a little bit of what she has written. Got up early and took the wagons down a little nearer the ferry so as to take advantage of the first opportunity to cross. A dreadful accident happened here today. A boat manned by green hands was taking a boat of cattle across. The cattle rushed to one end of the boat, causing it to tip. And in a moment, there was a mass of struggling men and animals in the water. One man drowned. Another who was a good swimmer, remembering that he had left his whip, coolly turned around and swam back for it. Okay, it's, you know, one can assume this sort of thing happened often enough to really, at least, you know, a few times during these trips to leave quite an impression on these. On these folks.
- [32:10]
E
Well, that's actually. It's a wonderful entry because I'd like to unpack its elements a little bit because it actually highlights a number of really interesting and critical parts sometimes that we misunderstand about the trail. First of all, it's interesting. Certainly disease was the most common killer on the Oregon Trail. You mentioned typhoid, cholera. Cholera epidemics in 1850, 1851, swept away large numbers. Look, they came often from places in the Midwest where the. What they called the ague was often a killer. And so obviously, people were used to having people die in various ways. But what's different here is obviously disease remains the principal cause of death on the trail, but drowning is actually way up there on the list. And that's sort of ironic because one of the persistent complaints about people on the trail is sometimes the difficulty of finding good water, good drinkable water, and yet drowning. People get swept away in these various river crossing points. Now, a lot of times, especially by the later period, those crossing points are more well established. Where to ford a river is better known than in other times. But sudden storms and other factors like that can lead to catastrophe and disaster. The ferry oftentimes, again, by 1852, there were people who were established ferriers who would take people across. Earlier, it was often Native Americans who were acting as the farriers and often charging trading for services. And oftentimes the guidance from Native Americans was crucial to people making their way across. Indeed, I would argue that one of the principal misconceptions about the trail, especially in the 1840s, what we are so used to, probably the most staple cinematic image, besides the wagons crossing the prairies or the plains, is circling the wagons to prevent against Indian attacks. And for some reason, the Indians riding in circles around the wagon trade. That's the most familiar cinematic image during the 1840s. People certainly circled wagons sometimes to pen stock in and the like, but it was not done as a protection against Native Americans. Indeed, there were a couple of significant incidents of violence between native peoples and immigrant travelers during the 1840s, but the numbers were relatively small. Yes, there was a great deal of suspicion. Yes, people brought a great deal of bias and prejudice. But during the 1840s and 50s, so long as Americans in limited numbers were primarily passing through these native countries, there were generally peaceful relations in which people traded with one another rather than fought one another. This changes in the 1850s as greater numbers move across the plains and start using up vital resources on the plains. That creates greater resentment. And also then into the 1850s and 1860s, as people not only pass across the plains, but begin to settle on the plains, and that then becomes the precipitant for the most famous of wars, the Plains Indian wars of the 1860s and 1870s.
- [35:23]
D
Yeah, as long as they're heading out of town, you know, you're just here for the day. Go move on.
- [35:27]
E
Well, as long as you also trade with us, and we'll trade you some food or moccasins, you give us some goods we want, things remain relatively quiet or peaceful.
- [35:39]
D
Yeah, never mind the pile of trash you left behind. Thank you very much.
- [35:43]
E
And that pile of trash, by the way, is a really important factor, how much people leave behind along the way in order to make their wagons move more quickly.
- [35:52]
D
Yes, I'm sure. Here's another diary entry. I want to read this one. This is a year later than the last one, 1853, by a girl named Amelia Stuart Knight. And it just mentions the weather factor that you. That you brought up. Saturday, April 23rd. Still in camp. It rained hard all night and blew a hurricane. Almost all the tents were blown down. Some of the wagons capsized. Evening. It has been raining here all day. Everything is wet and muddy. One of the oxen missing. The boys have Been hunting for him all day. Dreary times. Wet and muddy and crowded in the tent, cold and wet and uncomfortable in the wagon. No place for the poor children. I have been busy cooking, roasting, coffee, etc. Today I have come into the wagon to write this and make our bed. Oh my God, it sounds like the worst day of camping in my life.
- [36:44]
E
Yeah, I think when you read the trail diaries, sometimes you see the romance of the journey, as I emphasize, men going and shooting the first buffalo they had ever killed or something often leads to this sense of great excitement and adventure. But oftentimes the drudgery and the misery also comes across quite profoundly, especially as you look at sort of just the way in which the elements seem to conspire against you. Not just the pouring rain and the deluge that they sometimes suffered, endured, but also sometimes the blazing heat of summer days on the plains or even in the deserts, the true deserts made. Certainly these were not easy experiences.
- [37:30]
D
Yes, you mentioned before, I was going to bring it up the Native American tribes. This is a largely feel good episode about what these pioneers encountered and the whole adventure of all of this settlement of the West. Of course, there's elephants in the room when we're talking about this. You've already mentioned Native Americans were sort of okay with this idea, or more so than we might think. Often they worked as guides, as you say, ferrying off over rivers and so forth. But the whole image of this thing, I just want to know, was that boiled into the John Wayne movies later on, or was this even popularized earlier in the Western media that was coming back later in this period? Were they scared about this idea or did they kind of understand it better than we think?
- [38:16]
E
Well, there are a number of incidents Even in the 1840s, a couple of significant massacres or combats that get a great deal of attention. So certainly already in the 1840s, even though in quantitative terms, death at the hands of Native Americans or even killing Native Americans, even though we don't get the numbers or something, it's hard to really gauge, but the numbers are relatively small. During the 1840s, maybe 300 Native Americans get killed in accounts that we have, and similar numbers of pioneers killed by Indians during those earlier years on the crossings. But there are a number of famous incidents that happen and these get a great deal of attention and help to sort of create an image of danger and hostility. Outsized at the time, during the 1850s, it becomes more prevalent, those sort of dangerous encounters and those hostile encounters still, though much, much less numerous than We've been led to believe by Hollywood movies and even by dime novels of the 19th century, which tended to accent them or Wild west show reenactments of the earlier era.
- [39:24]
D
Death was a big thing. I have in my notes roughly one out of 10 people who undertook this journey died each year. Is that a fair fraction?
- [39:33]
E
I think the numbers I've seen are a little less than that. But again, keep in mind that this was an era in which when you add in infant mortality and a lot of people are giving birth on the trail and a lot of babies are not necessarily surviving that experience and sometimes mothers die in childbirth. So this is an era, of course, when death stalks lots of people. But certainly the experience of the trail makes it even more challenging and even more deadly. And there's a recent book by Sarah Kise that actually tries to chronicle not just how many people die on the trail or what they die of, but its impact on American culture and on the memories of trail goers. Just the ubiquity of seeing or knowing someone who died along the way and what kind of markers they would leave for those who they left behind, you know, on shallow graves trying to keep them from wolves who died along the journey from disease or drowning or accidental discharge of firearms. We shouldn't leave that out as a cause of death too. People shooting themselves sometimes or shooting one another by mistake, at least allegedly.
- [40:38]
D
Stephen, let's take another break. When we come back, we'll discuss the legacies of the trail, the mythology surrounding it and how it's been remembered in popular culture.
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- [42:02]
D
Okay, we're back with Professor Steven Aaron. We're finally nearing our destination. Steven, I'm curious. How did they know that they'd reached the end of the trail, other than these milestones that I've mentioned here? And when they got there, was there an office? How did they set themselves up? Or had all that been already done for them back at the beginning?
- [42:20]
E
Well, as I say, the hope is that you find good land, then you can sit on it, occupy it, gain title to it. And that's the dream. You know, keep in mind that Oregon in the early years of this migration remains contested territory. It's not until after the United States reaches its agreement with Great Britain about how to divide the larger Oregon Territory, which includes what is the state of Washington and Oregon as well as parts. There's the Polk administration. President James K. Polk runs in 1844 on the platform 5440 or fight, referring to the 5440 latitudinal line reaching way up into British Columbia. That's where the Americans, the United States, are trying to claim. Now, ultimately, that dispute gets settled with Britain. The variety of reasons why Britain is willing to settle for the 49th parallel as what becomes the border between British Canada and what United States territory? And then Polk switches his attention, of course, to the annexation of Texas and then the war with Mexico to acquire territories to the Southwest. But at least initially, Oregon is contested ground. It also remains contested ground with native peoples who continue to live on those lands who are just willing to ceded away to Americans. And yet by the later 1840s, land offices are established, and there are ways then for Americans to get legal title on very good terms to very fertile land in the Willamette Valley, which is
- [43:48]
D
the principal destination, gigantic region as well.
- [43:52]
E
I just want to come back to. Because you mentioned Lewis and Clark a moment ago, and I would say, you know, with Lewis and Clark, they know when they've reached the end of their journey because they reach the Pacific Ocean. In this case, they're not getting quite to the Pacific. They're settling. You know, they're looking for the Willamette Valley, but they know when they get there.
- [44:07]
D
How did the Oregon Trail affect the shaping of the American west and the nation at large? I mean, as far as it. It's a very specific thing we're talking about. It's one route into a massive territory. How much was that responsible for the story of the west down the road?
- [44:25]
E
It is without question, a very important migration. Many, many people, Thousands, tens of thousands of people. And yet in raw numbers, by the 1850s, the numbers who are going to Oregon is dwarfed by the numbers who are going to California. The lure of gold in California transforms the destination and transforms the demography of the migrations. Whereas the Oregon migrations had been made up by family farmers, farmers and their families looking for land, looking to replicate their. The lives of their parents and grandparents in these new lands. By contrast, California often young or single men heading to California looking to strike it rich, to escape from the lifetime of drudgery and hard labor that farm work required. And a complete new American dream gets born in California gold fields. But the Oregon one still holds a great place in the American imagination because it is so central to an American ideal that through hard work and determination, through your grit, and you can make it, at least in this more limited way that Oregon opens up. And that sort of becomes, I think, foundational to the way in which the American dream continues to be understood well into the 20th century, long after most Americans no longer worked on farms or lived on farms.
- [45:51]
D
Of course, this journey becomes curtailed eventually by the arrival of the railroad. Right. I mean, that's basically the major factor in why people no longer get into wagons and go west. What other factors mitigated this form of settlement?
- [46:07]
E
Well, I think the key one you've just mentioned, people continue to go west across the country in great, great numbers. But the railroad makes it a lot easier and a lot quicker to move across hundreds and thousands of miles than going overland and walking your way across the continent or moving in a caravan. So the railroad is the principle, but it's not that people don't continue to move to new lands, but instead of going all the way to California and Oregon, they discover that maybe the great American desert isn't so much a desert after all, that maybe the Great Plains can be homesteading. And indeed, the Homestead act of 1862 and subsequent land acts does create new encouragements for people to try to settle on the great plates. First, it's ranchers who are looking to use the grasslands for forage lands for free. Forage free, you know, places to feed their cattle. And then later, farmers try to make a go of it on the. On the Great Plains, oftentimes failing, however, because they do discover that, in fact, rainfall is not sufficient on the Great Plains, absent significant irrigation, to make it a go.
- [47:13]
D
I want to circle back to the impact this had on Native Americans. This is one of the big takeaways for me in this episode, is that for a long time it wasn't having as much effect as I would have assumed for those 1830s, 1840s, coming up into the settlement of the interior of the country, the western interior, the establishment of states and territories. That's when really the impact is felt, isn't it?
- [47:35]
E
Certainly on the Great Plains, as you've said it earlier, as long as you're getting through and getting out, resentments are. There's tensions, but they're limited in general, and they're mitigated by trade relations. But when Americans start, first of all to cross in even greater numbers, when it's a matter of thousands of people crossing your territory, that's a concern. When it's a matter of tens of thousands of people crossing your territory every year, that becomes far worse, because then those people are using up vital resources. They're killing bison, they're using up what scarce timber there is. They're creating all sorts of turbulence and tribulation. Then things are not so happy. But what really triggers the problems, the greatest of problems, is when Americans aren't, as you said earlier, just passing through, but they're settling down. And once they start to settle down, as they had been in California or Oregon, so too then in the Great Plains, does that become the point where warfare becomes much more general and where the United States army gets called in to try to resolve matters?
- [48:39]
D
Exactly. That's where you get the displacement, the relocation to reservations, hunting grounds disrupted, and these wagon trails really impact the migration of buffalo. I mean, it's all kinds of effects that this has. Eventually. Disease is a huge factor as well. What is introduced to these communities and a complete disruption of language and tradition, et cetera, eventually gets. Gets made. But so interesting that it isn't the more immediate thing that happens, but rather later on. Let's talk about the legacy factor of all of this. How has the Oregon Trail and migration in general at that time lived on in American culture? So much of what your museum is about, isn't it?
- [49:19]
E
So certainly, as I mentioned earlier, I think some of the most familiar images we have, both in paintings of the American west, so. And then in Hollywood, depictions of the American west are of these caravans of wagons moving across the plains or across the mountains, that that has become such a stock staple image, as has been the notion of, you know, conflict circling the wagons becoming a phrase that we all know, even if we don't quite know when and where these things happened. I think for my students, the generations of students that I raised, oftentimes their images were forged less by Western movies than by the Oregon Trail game that you mentioned. And there, I think it's Actually interesting. I once took a look at how the Oregon Trail game has, through its multiple additions. Because this game is 50 plus years old now, it really dates from almost the beginnings of where we think of computers getting their start. We all know these little stick figure versions in the earliest version game where you die of dysentery or you. The game actually brings up some very fascinating points about when do you go, where do you go with, who do you trust, et cetera, who do you trade with, what do you need, what do you need to get rid of in order to go faster, when do you get cholera, what do you do, et cetera? All those things are in the game. What's most interesting, though, to me, as I looked at the game as it evolved through various iterations, is in the initial game, Native Americans are one of the great dangers to the Overland Trail migrants. To the Oregon Trail migrants. In later editions, relatively early on even, that drops away. Instead of being killed often by Native Americans and suffering a blow by a tomahawk, it's often robbers or bandits who are a danger to you. And Native Americans are vital trading partners. And I would argue in that regard, some people argued, well, this was just a bow to political correctness, to sort of trying to be a feel good frontier being created here, or a wishtory, as I sometimes call it. But in fact, I think they actually got it right, that in switching away from the notion that there was always and ever hostility between Native tribes on the plains and Euro American migrants crossing over the plains, and instead picking up on this, the role that Native peoples played as guides, as trading partners and so forth, they actually have highlighted something really important that historians have now also tended to emphasize.
- [51:51]
D
You know, I think it's really important to underscore how much this pioneering period, these wagon trains in early America, still have to do with the American psyche. I mean, culturally, politically, personally, even some of it's just simple geography. It's a big country we made happen triumphantly, tragically, but here it is. And so much of it had to do with the symbolism of that migration. And in America, there is always that sense, you know, it's true or it's not. Perhaps it's a myth, but there's always this feeling of opportunity, at least baked into our national story. And so much of that came from the Oregon Trail, didn't it?
- [52:32]
E
Yeah. And I think just even more generally, the idea of frontier, the association of frontier with possibility and with promise and promised land, and certainly Oregon comes to exemplify those notions about promise and promised land. And possibility that continue long after those lands are filled up, relatively speaking. And you get this notion of Americans searching ever for new frontiers to settle wherever they might be, or even to move beyond older notions of frontier associated exclusively with land to new sources of opportunity and possibility. And I think again, it traces back to these westward migrations as the founding creed.
- [53:20]
D
Yes. And it's the consequences of those actions as well that we have to take into consideration as a society. And that's the ongoing American experiment is, you know, go out and get it, but then think of who you're affecting along the way and what it really means in the bigger picture. That's the maturation of the culture as well.
- [53:38]
E
And I think one of the things that I just would add here on that point because I think it's a really important one. In recent decades, historians certainly and more broadly, I hope Americans have come to grapple with not just the possibilities and the promise, but also the broken promises and the costs, both environmental and cultural, that came with this expansion, obviously most profoundly felt by native peoples whose numbers were decimated and whose lands from whom which they were displaced and deported, essentially.
- [54:10]
D
Stephen Aaron is the director and president of the Autry Museum in Los Angeles. One of my favorite places to visit when I go to Los Angeles. Go have a look. You won't be sorry. It's a really neat place right in the middle of Griffith Park. Professor Aaron's books I mentioned are the American A Very Short Introduction and Peace and An Alternative History of the American West. Have a look at The Autry's website, theautry.org but better yet, as I say, pay a visit yourself. Thank you so much, Stephen. Nice to meet you.
- [54:37]
E
It is a pleasure and as I said, let me echo please everyone, come visit the Autry Museum of the American west and learn about the American West.
- [54:51]
D
Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American history hit with me, Don Wildman.
- [55:21]
E
So grateful for your support.
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A
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