What is the Oregon Trail?
In its earliest days, the Oregon Trail was a 2000mile long string of rivers and natural landmarks that could be followed fromMissouri to Oregon. It was easy to get lost without a guide who knew the way.In later years, after thousands of pioneers had followed the Oregon Trail tosettle in the Oregon Country, there were well-worn paths to follow. On theother hand, there were also local roads, military roads, and even shortcuts, sowhile it was harder to get really lost, it was still easy to take a wrong turn.
Where did the Oregon Trail begin and end?
Well, that depends on how you look at it.Officially, according to an act of Congress, it begins in Independence,Missouri, and ends in Oregon City, Oregon. To the settlers, though, the trailto the Oregon Country was a five-month trip from their old home in the East totheir new home in the West. It was different for every family. Some people gotready to leave the East, or “jump off” as they called it, in townslike St. Joseph or Council Bluffs, and others jumped off from their old homesin Illinois or Missouri and picked up the Oregon Trail in the countryside.Along the way, they could choose to take shortcuts or stick to the main trunkof the Trail, and the end of their journey didn’t really come until theysettled a claim somewhere in the vast Oregon Country.
What’s this “Oregon Country” youkeep mentioning?
The State of Oregon was established in 1859 withits present boundaries. In 1848, the Oregon Territory was declared, making theregion — the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, along with part ofwestern Montana — part of the United States. Before 1848, it was called theOregon Country because it was not claimed by the USA. The Oregon Country waseven bigger than the Oregon Territory, since it stretched north all the way toAlaska. It was also claimed by the British Empire, but so many Americansettlers arrived in the 1840s that the British only held on to control over thenorthern part of the Oregon Country. That part of the old Oregon Country is nowwestern Canada.
Why did people want to go there?
Lots of reasons. There were some families that justhad the habit of moving west every five or ten years to follow the frontier.They liked the extra freedom of life on the frontier, but civilization keptcatching up to them. It seemed to them like emigrating to Oregon would be thelast move they would ever have to make. Others were in search of opportunity —there were hard times back East, but in the 1840s married settlers could claima square mile of the Oregon Country, 640 acres, at no cost. Oregon had areputation not only for having good farmland and vast forests of huge, ancienttrees, but also for being free of disease. This made the Oregon Country evenmore attractive, since epidemics were common in the East and little was knownabout the causes of disease and infection. The idea of allowing such valuableland to fall into the hands of the British inspired patriotic Americans to headfor Oregon, and gold strikes in southern and eastern Oregon during the 1850sinspired other sorts of Americans.
Didn’t that make the Indians angry?
Some of them, yes — very angry. The PacificNorthwest had its share of theft, violence, and massacres as Europeans andAmericans arrived and took control of the land from the Indians. However, mostof the Indians in the Oregon Country welcomed the white settlers. Theirexperience with British and American traders led them to see the settlers as anew source of wealth, as tribes which traded with whites became rich andpowerful compared with their neighbors. When American settlers began arriving,Indians often guided them through the mountains or let them stake a claim ontribal lands in exchange for gunpowder, food, clothes, or horses.Unfortunately, the traders and settlers also brought new diseases to theIndians, diseases like smallpox and measles which killed whole tribes. A singlesick sailor on a trading ship killed almost the entire 800-member Multnomahtribe, and by the mid-1840s the Willamette Valley had been largely cleared ofIndians not by fighting, but by plagues.
Yikes! Why didn’t the Indians try to kickthe settlers out?
A lot of the credit for keeping the peace goes toDr. John McLoughlin of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose word was law for twenty yearsuntil Americans began arriving in great numbers. McLoughlin was a wise man andoften generous to those in need, even penniless American settlers. Lewis andClark — not to mention Sacajawea — also deserve credit for their skill andgood luck in dealing with the Indians. The good relations begun in 1805 betweenwhites and the Nez Perce tribe when the Lewis and Clark expedition passedthrough their lands lasted for 70 years. The Nez Perce did well during a timewhen their neighbors were decimated by disease, alcoholism, and skirmishes withthe settlers, and by the 1870s they were the last major tribe left intact inthe region. Sadly, that ended when the government decided that the Nez Percewould be better off on a reservation after gold was discovered on their land.
So Lewis and Clark paved the way for thesettlers?
Hmm… yes and no. Remember that Lewis and Clarkmade their trip about 35 years before the Oregon Trail came into use, and theytook a completely different route through the Rocky Mountains — South Pass,where the Oregon Trail crossed the Continental Divide, was named “SouthPass” because it’s south of the pass used by Lewis and Clark. Really,Lewis and Clark paved the way for the fur trappers who explored the West, thetrappers paved the way for missionaries who tried to convert the Indians toChristianity, and the missionaries paved the way for the settlers who broke theBritish claim to the Pacific Northwest.
What were the British doing there, anyway?
Mostly, they were trapping beavers. Fur was worthbig money to the British because of a fad among the wealthy for beaver tophats, and through the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company, theBritish fielded a small army of French Canadian and half-Indian trappers. Therewere so many skilled trappers that they could quickly “trap out”entire valleys, forcing them to push farther and farther afield to find thefurs they needed to make a living. After conflicts over territory turnedviolent in the 1810s, the British government restored the peace in 1821 byallowing the Hudson’s Bay Company to take over the North West Company. The NWChad arrived in the Oregon Country as far back as 1807, so the Hudson’s BayCompany inherited its forts there in 1821. By the 1840s, when the Oregon Trailcame into use, the beaver were mostly trapped out and the HBC was shifting itsgoals to settling the prairies in the Willamette Valley and around Puget Sound.Most of the British settlers were former trappers who had married Indian womenand decided to settle down in Oregon, and they were soon outnumbered byAmericans. For a short time, the British Empire thought about going to waragainst the United States over the question of who ruled the Oregon Country.They even sent spies into Oregon to scout the land for the army and find out ifthe settlers would raise a militia. The spies reported that the terrain wouldmake for hard marching and the American settlers were not only patriotic enoughto resist a British invasion, but they had enough guns to put up a real fight,as well. That was the end of any talk about another war.
So the British were trappers and theAmericans were farmers?
Yeah, that’s about the size of it. The British sawthe Oregon Country as just another territory in their empire, a land to beexploited for whatever resources were worth the most money. In India, it wastea; in Oregon, it happened to be fur. The Americans, on the other hand, werein it for the long haul: Oregon wasn’t a colony to them, it was going to becomepart of the United States (there were some people who wanted to make Oregon anindependent country, but most of the settlers considered themselves Americansand were proud of it — even some of the Brits who had to apply for citizenshipafter Oregon was declared a federal Territory in 1848 became flag-waving,fireworks-shooting Americans). Of course, California beat them to it, but onlybecause of the Gold Rush.
Now that you mention it, isn’t there aCalifornia Trail, too?
There are lots of trails out here in the West.Offhand, there’s the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the CaliforniaTrail, the Mormon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, the Bozeman Trail, the SouthernRoute (or Applegate Trail), the Free Emigrant Road, the Cherokee Trail, thePony Express Trail(s), the Nez Perce Trail, and too many shortcuts and militaryroads to even try to list here. Still, the California Trail is one of the bigones: it followed the Oregon Trail across the Great Plains and over theContinental Divide, and then cut off from the Oregon Trail near Fort Hall tofollow two or three major routes to the gold fields. Tens of thousands ofprospectors, miners, and carpetbaggers followed the California Trail west aftergold was found at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. However, this Web site belongs toClackamas Heritage Partners.
It followed the Oregon Trail…so theOregon Trail came first?
Actually, as an emigrant road, the Oregon Trail isexactly as old as the California Trail. A party of about a hundred families washeaded for California in 1841, but they split at Fort Hall when half of themdecided to settle in Oregon, instead. Before gold was discovered in California,most settlers were Oregon bound, so the entire length of the trail is generallycalled the Oregon Trail, not just the leg that led to Oregon. On the otherhand, the route across the plains, which followed the Platte River for most ofits length, was used by thousands of Mormons headed for Utah as well asoverlanders headed for Oregon and California, so it’s sometimes called“the Great Platte River Road” to avoid any confusion about who wasfollowing it.
How long did it take to get to Oregon?
At least four months. Emigrants who finished thetrip in five months were thought to have made good time. Stragglers who neededsix or seven months to reach Oregon risked running into winter weather in themountains — and after the 1846 ordeal of the Donner-Reed Party, the thought ofbeing that slow was enough to frighten anyone into action.
What was the trip like?
Exhausting, boring, dangerous, frightening, and exciting— probably in about that order. It was exhausting because the emigrants had towalk almost the entire way, though a few of them rode horses. They didn’t ridein their wagons because they wanted to spare the oxen pulling the wagons, butsometimes the women and children would pile into the wagons when the weather wasfoul. Even without the extra weight of people in the wagons, the trip was solong that even the sturdiest ox could die from exhaustion or go mad fromthirst. Boredom came from the daily routine of breaking camp, walking, makingcamp again in the evening, and eating the same thing day after day, all in themidst of a cloud of dust and grit thrown up by the wagons and animals. Everyonce in a while, the boredom was broken by a dangerous river crossing or asteep hill. Historians estimate that one in every ten people on the OregonTrail died on the way to Oregon. Most of them were killed accidentally: gunswent off because someone wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing,children fell and were crushed by wagon wheels, people were hurt trying toround up frightened or injured livestock, and so on. At least one person isknown to have been struck by lightning. Disease was the single biggest killeron the Trail, especially during a cholera epidemic around 1850. The nightmaremost feared by the overlanders — being attacked by Indians — was usually thelast thing they had to worry about. Still, it wasn’t all bad: there weremarriages, births, and holidays (especially the Fourth of July) to celebratealong the way, and it was always a big day when a major landmark like ChimneyRock came into view for the first time.
How many people came west on the OregonTrail?
At least 80,000 emigrants followed the Oregon Trailto settle in the present-day states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Thatestimate has been creeping upwards over the years, and as many as 200,000people may have traveled the Trail by wagon.
When was the Oregon Trail in use?
The Trail was in regular use from 1843 until the1870s. When the Union Pacific completed the first railroad link to the WestCoast in 1869, the preferred route became by train to San Francisco, then northto Oregon by ship, but wagon trains could still be seen on the Oregon Trail aslate as the 1880s. The last wagon widely known to have traveled the length ofthe Trail was driven in 1906 by Ezra Meeker, an aging Oregon Trail emigrant whowas conducting a one-man publicity campaign to remind people of the historicsignificance of the Oregon Trail. However, we’ve had visitors at the End of theOregon Trail Interpretive Center who recalled that because their familycouldn’t afford the train fare, they traveled the Trail by wagon as late as1912.
