Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers
MANY A WEARY MILE I have not told you half we suffered I am not ade quate to the task Elizabeth Smith Geer the trail's end 1847 Not long after sunrise on a May day in 1841 a dozen jam packed covered wagons rumbled out of a small town along the Missouri River Ox teams pulled the wagons steadily westward toward the Pacific coast carting the baggage of 69 men women and children Dawn rose behind their backs but that night the sun would set ahead of them a sign of hope beyond the horizon They were the first trickle in a flood of pioneers lured by the promise of better lives in the American West Americans had always looked west for escape and refuge The lure of Western lands symbolized health wealth and freedom In 1837 the United States plunged into an economic depression as banks closed Back to page 322 Page 11
their doors and thousands of unemployed workers crowded Eastern cities Farm prices plummeted and many people lost their land Adding to the sense of despair were the yellow fever malaria typhoid and tuberculosis that ravaged the country year after year Eastern audiences devoured the published jour nals of fur trappers and explorers in awe over their glorified western adventures Letters from Oregon missionaries excited trouble weary Americans To many readers the missionaries tales of religious zeal paled next to their descriptions of rich farmland and forests crystal waters abundant with fish and hordes of animals awaiting fur trappers News of miraculous cures in the West's pristine air offered great hope Societies sprang up to encourage settlement of the Oregon country and California too praised as an earthly paradise of sunshine and lush fruit One woman summed up the dreams of many We had nothing to lose and we might gain a fortune The temptation of cheap land in paradise proved hard to resist During the spring of 1842 another 200 people traveled west A year later 1 000 opti mistic settlers braved the journey After the 1848 dis covery of gold in California the numbers exploded to 30 000 in 1849 and 55 000 in 1850 The Wilson fam ily abandoned their Missouri farm in 1849 for the California gold fields So we came wrote wife Luzena young strong healthy hopeful but penni less into the new world 3 Thousands of European immigrants mainly from Germany the British Isles Page 12 15 pages left in this chapter
and Scandinavia also joined the hopefuls heading west Most pioneers especially those heading to the goldfields of California were single men But families and a handful of single women undertook the west ern journey too Of the 50 000 people journeying west in 1852 about 7 000 were women John Sutter's mill Sacramento California The discovery of gold here led to a gold rush of emigrants From Story of the Great Republic by Helene Guerber To meet the emigrants needs publishers churned out manuals like The National Wagon Road Guide and The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California Unfortu nately too many guidebooks proved dangerously unreliable One manual even assured readers that notions of toil hardship and danger on the trail grew from their own fruitful imagination 4 And though women too studied the manuals the books offered Back to page 322 Page 13
hardly a word of advice for female pioneers Women were left to discover on their own how to cook clean dress camp and care for children on the long adven ture Usually the man of the household decided to pull up stakes and move his family west While women shared the hope for a better life many found it painful to leave their homes and sever ties perhaps forever with family friends and communities Push ing beyond the established boundaries of the United States early pioneers were emigrants to a foreign mostly uncharted land California and the Southwest belonged to Mexico The United States and Great Britain both claimed the Oregon Country an area so large it included six future states These faraway lands were already the home of Native Americans and people of Spanish decent White Americans often viewed both groups with a mixture of fear and scorn A woman's journey west carried an added burden coming at a time of life when she might be pregnant or caring for young children The prospect of aban doning society to face months of heat dust storms and savage Indians filled many women with dread and misgivings I have been reading the various guides of the route to California wrote Lodisa Frizzell They have not improved my ideas of the pleasure of the trip 5 Luzena Wilson recalled her feel ings My husband grew enthusiastic and wanted to start immediately but I would not be left behind I thought where he could go I could and where I went Page 14 13 pages left in this chapter
