Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 4

"It is certain death," I said, "to take him along in that condition."

They admitted this to be true.

"Divide the outfit, then," it was suggested.

Two of Oliver's companions, the Davenport brothers, would not leave him; so their portion of the outfit was set aside with his. This gave the three a wagon and a team.

Turning to Buck, I said, "I can't ask you to stay with me."

The answer came back as quick as a flash, "I'm going to stay with you without asking."

And he did, too, though my brother was almost a total stranger to him.

We nursed the sick man for four days amidst scenes of death and excitement such as I hope never again to see. On the fifth day we were able to proceed and to take the convalescent man with us.

The experience of our camp was the experience of hundreds of others: there were countless incidents of friends parting; of desertion; of n.o.ble sacrifice; of the revelation of the best and the worst in man.

In a diary of one of these pioneers, I find the following: "Found a family consisting of husband, wife, and four small children, whose cattle we supposed had given out and died. They were here all alone, and no wagon or cattle in sight." They had been thrown out by the owner of a wagon and left on the road to die.

From a nearby page of the same diary, I read: "Here we met Mr. Lot Whitcom, direct from Oregon. Told me a great deal about Oregon. He has provisions, but none to sell; but gives to all he finds in want, and who are unable to buy."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pioneers on the march.]

CHAPTER SIX

THE PIONEER ARMY OF THE PLAINS

DURING the ox-team days a mighty army of pioneers went West. In the year that we crossed (1852), when the migration was at its height, this army made an unbroken column fully five hundred miles long. We knew by the inscribed dates found on Independence Rock and elsewhere that there were wagons three hundred miles ahead of us, and the throng continued crossing the river for more than a month after we had crossed it.

How many people this army comprised cannot be known; the roll was never called. History has no record of a greater number of emigrants ever making so long a journey as did these pioneers. There must have been three hundred and fifty thousand in the years of the great rush overland, from 1843 to 1857. Careful estimates of the total migration westward from 1843 to 1869, when the first railroad across the continent was completed, make the number nearly half a million.

The animals driven over the Plains during these years were legion.

Besides those that labored under the yoke, in harness, and under saddle, there was a vast herd of loose stock. A conservative estimate would be not less than six animals to the wagon, and surely there were three loose animals to each one in the teams. Sixteen hundred wagons pa.s.sed us while we waited for Oliver to recover. With these teams must have been nearly ten thousand beasts of burden and thirty thousand head of loose stock.

Is it any wonder that the old trail was worn so deep that even now in places it looks like a great ca.n.a.l? At one point near Split Rock, Wyoming, I found the road cut so deep in the solid sandstone that the kingbolt of my wagon dragged on the high center.

The pioneer army was a moving ma.s.s of human beings and dumb brutes, at times mixed in inextricable confusion, a hundred feet wide or more.

Sometimes two columns of wagons, traveling on parallel lines and near each other, would serve as a barrier to prevent loose stock from crossing; but usually there would be a confused ma.s.s of cows, young cattle, horses, and men afoot moving along the outskirts. Here and there would be the drivers of loose stock, some on foot and some on horseback: a young girl, maybe, riding astride and with a younger child behind her, going here and there after an intractable cow, while the mother could be seen in the confusion lending a helping hand. As in a thronged city street, no one seemed to look to the right or to the left, or to pay much attention, if any, to others, all being bent only on accomplishing the task in hand.

The dust was intolerable. In calm weather it would rise so thick at times that the lead team of oxen could not be seen from the wagon. Like a London fog, it seemed thick enough to cut. Then again, the steady flow of wind through the South Pa.s.s would hurl the dust and sand like fine hail, sometimes with force enough to sting the face and hands.

Sometimes we had trying storms that would wet us to the skin in no time.

One such I remember well, being caught in it while out on watch. The cattle traveled so fast that it was difficult to keep up with them. I could do nothing but follow, as it would have been impossible to turn them. I have always thought of this storm as a cloudburst. Anyhow, in an incredibly short time there was not a dry thread left on me. My boots were as full of water as if I had been wading over boot-top depth, and the water ran through my hat as though it were a sieve. I was almost blinded in the fury of the wind and water. Many tents were leveled by this storm. One of our neighboring trains suffered great loss by the sheets of water on the ground floating away camp equipage, ox yokes, and all loose articles; and they narrowly escaped having a wagon engulfed in the raging torrent that came so unexpectedly upon them.

Fording a river was usually tiresome, and sometimes dangerous. I remember fording the Loup fork of the Platte with a large number of wagons fastened together with ropes or chains, so that if a wagon got into trouble the teams in front would help to pull it out. The quicksand would cease to sustain the wheels so suddenly that the wagon would drop a few inches with a jolt, and up again the wheel would come as new sand was struck; then down again it would go, up and down, precisely as if the wagons were pa.s.sing over a rough corduroy road that "nearly jolted the life out of us," as the women folks said after it was over, and no wonder, for the river at this point was half a mile wide.

Many of the pioneers crossed rivers in their wagon boxes and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat they are on the inside.

The number of casualties in that army of emigrants I hesitate to guess at. Shall we say that ten per cent fell on the way? Many old plainsmen would think that estimate too low; yet ten per cent would give us five thousand lives as one year's toll paid for the peopling of the Oregon Country. Mrs. Cecilia McMillen Adams, late of Hillsboro, Oregon, kept a painstaking diary when she crossed the Plains in 1852. She counted the graves pa.s.sed and noted down the number. In this diary, published in full by the Oregon Pioneer a.s.sociation, I find the following entries:

June 14. Pa.s.sed seven new-made graves.

June 16. Pa.s.sed eleven new graves.

June 17. Pa.s.sed six new graves.

June 18. We have pa.s.sed twenty-one new graves today.

June 19. Pa.s.sed thirteen graves today.

June 20. Pa.s.sed ten graves.

June 21. No report.

June 22. Pa.s.sed seven graves. If we should go by the camping grounds, we should see five times as many graves as we do.

This report of Mrs. Adams's, coupled with the facts that a parallel column from which we have no report was traveling up the south side of the river, and that the outbreak of cholera had taken place originally in this column coming from the southeast, fully confirms the estimate of five thousand deaths on the Plains in 1852. It is probably under rather than over the actual number.

To the emigrants the fact that all the graves were new-made brought an added touch of sadness. The graves of previous years had disappeared, leveled by the storms of wind or rain, by the hoofs of the stock, or possibly by ravages of the hungry wolf. Many believed that the Indians had robbed the graves for the clothing on the bodies. Whatever the cause, all, or nearly all, graves of previous years were lost, and we knew that the last resting places of those that we might leave behind would also be lost by the next year.

One of the incidents that made a profound impression upon the minds of all was the meeting with eleven wagons returning, and not a man left in the entire train. All the men had died and had been buried on the way, and the women and children were returning to their homes alone from a point well up on the Platte, below Fort Laramie. The difficulties of the return trip were multiplied on account of the throng moving westward.

How those women succeeded in their attempt, or what became of them, we never knew.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: In an instant each Indian had dropped to the side of his horse.]

CHAPTER SEVEN

INDIANS AND BUFFALOES ON THE PLAINS

OUR trail led straight across the Indian lands most of the way. The redmen naturally resented this intrusion into their territory; but they did not at this time fight against it. Their att.i.tude was rather one of expecting pay for the privilege of using their land, their gra.s.s, and their game.

As soon as a part of our outfits were landed on the right bank of the Missouri River, our trouble with the Indians began, not in open hostilities, but in robbery under the guise of beggary. The word had been pa.s.sed around in our little party that not a cent's worth of provisions would we give up to the Indians. We believed this policy to be our only safeguard from spoliation, and in that we were right.

Our women folks had been taken over the river with the first wagon and had gone on to a convenient camp site nearby. The first show of weapons came from that side of our little community, when some of the bolder p.a.w.nees attempted to pilfer around the wagons. No blood was shed, however, and indeed there was none shed by any of our party during the entire journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Demanding pay for crossing.]

Soon after we had left the Missouri River we came to a small bridge over a washout across the road, evidently constructed by some train just ahead of us. The Indians had taken possession and were demanding pay for crossing. Some parties ahead of us had paid, while others were hesitating; but with a few there was a determined resolution not to pay.