Life and Death on the Oregon Trail | The Frontier

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with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe to bring the past alive. The sun is lifting over the prairie as the wagons begin to move. Canvas tops catch the early light. Do 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.

The woman grips her shawl against the morning chill, her dress already dust stained. A man tightens a loose bolt on a wheel, another checks of 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 turnle 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 Hip, on Don Wilde and 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, teaming rivers, towering mountain passes. Today's episode tracks that most legendary of pioneering wagon routes, 2000 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 Steven Aaron, the Calvin and Marilyn Gross Director, President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles Great Place. Steven is Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA. His works include the American West of a very short introduction and peace and friendship, an alternative history of the American West.

Greetings, Professor. Hello, Steven. Thanks for joining us, cue the banjo. We're out on the trail. It's a pleasure to be here. Let's head west. It is such a storied era of American history in 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?”

It absolutely is. 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 in Missouri or Iowa, 2000 miles almost across the plains and mountains to reach the Willamut 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 and slave-d African Americans, white Americans, coming with enslaved African Americans, who were not voluntary migrants on the journey. But for the most part, the journey, Westwood. 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

during the American Revolution in its aftermath. People from Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina,

“heading to adjacent states or adjacent territories can tuck the antenna sea in the ear of the”

American Revolution. From Kentucky, Ohio, consider, for example, Abraham Lincoln's family, moving from Pennsylvania to the Valley of Virginia, or has been into Kentucky where a 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. My contrast in the 1840s, they suddenly say, let's go to Oregon all the way across the continent.

What we're going on at that particular time, 1830-1840, that sort of laid the groundwork for this decision for so many to go. Well, there are a lot of 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, 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 helpful place where good land is available for the taking. And that becomes the private districts, but in addition, you'll 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 decisions.

And yet Oregon becomes the great beacon for American migrants in the 1840s. There was a tremendous period of economic instability, a regular event in those days, you know, more so than these days, the panic of 1837 led to a depression, which lasted until the mid-1840s, resulting in, you know, the whole menu of things that happens, laws of farms, foreclosures, shrinking opportunity. There was also 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, we don't have sort of been boiled out of our thought process because we think about making money and mobility that way. Land heads everything to do with improving your lot in life. The great dream for most white American men in the 19th century was to achieve

what they call the competence, which was a stator 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 to farmer, but to achieve an independence. And land ownership was fundamental to that

“independence. The yo-man ideal that Thomas Jefferson gives voice to is, I think, the driving factor”

here. And in those unstable times of the 1830s, in those economic turmoil 80, there's a lot of Americans find that opportunity challenge, that possibility challenge. And that certainly impels many to look westward. Me, I resent my, my mortgage. So much from my land, but that's because somebody else owns it, really. I mentioned manifest destiny in the intro. How aware were 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? So the term manifest destiny, the term itself doesn't get coined into 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 in 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, never mind what

would happen to the indigenous peoples of those areas, was certainly deeply embedded in American culture going back generations. Yes, it's really something, I'm much more aware of having hosted this podcast for years now of this period of time, which is a mystery to a lot of Americans, this 1820s, 30, 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 revolutions. 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

growing this nation, one family at a time, right? So it'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 is 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 with 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

it's 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. 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's build 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 are these people? Who were these pioneers? As I said, in many respects, they were the same as their parents and their grandparents, and their dream that it held the west was very similar to what it held their parents and grandparents to go west. Again, the desire for good, cheap land and the possibilities that came with that.

In general, though, what 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, there's, 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 invitation or to be able to go in some other way. So, but it's in general, the Oregon migration, like earlier migrations, is characterized by the migration of form of families moving west, as I say, often with multiple children, often with children being born along the way on the trail. But these were immigrant families in a lot of cases weren't there. Sometimes, sometimes, and that's a little later to the great plays where you see even

more immigrant families having to the great plays as opposed to the Oregon migration, which is primarily native board Americans, people who had been born within the United States, often in places like Iowa, Missouri or other parts of the, what we now think of as the Midwest heading to the Pacific slope. 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 never mind Ireland, of course, Germans all had to

be hearing about this as a kind of crazy phenomenon. 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's certainly as 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. 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. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseum, find out on the ancients podcast from History Hit.

thousands of years ago from the Babylonians to the Coats, to the Romans, and visit the ancient

sites which reveal who, and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the ancients

from History Hit. Hello, we're back discussing the Oregon Trail with Professor Steven Aaron from the Autry Museum in Los Angeles. Steven, when we speak of the Oregon Trail,

“wasn't a singular thing or more of a general route. What was the trail physically in geographically?”

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. They're a variety of them. The particular route to Oregon in particular, generally falls from those midwest jumping off points along the Mississippi or bend of the Missouri River, westward along the Platt River, and then across the

great south pass through the Rocky Mountains, then the Stake River Valley, and then ultimately into

the Willamage 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 in a very different group of people had to California then had 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. Depending on which trail you were on, I guess, generally speaking, they were all about 2,000 miles long, right? You would leave generally from the state of Missouri, and then head northwest, as you say, there were various routes that

“you could take on that thing, but it would take about 4 to 6 months. Is that fair to say?”

Yeah, 4 to 6 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 in just with horses and pack meals, and they're moving more quickly, but the migration Oregon generally, 4 to 6 months, and you had a lot of choices to make before you had it 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 guide books 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 call pioneer parlance, what's called going to see the elephant,

“has a how they refer to go seeing these western lands, and these fabulous and fantastic”

geographies, which to them were in some ways almost as far 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 did you just head to Kansas or Nebraska, or the Dakotas, those are the adjacent territories, and the prior generations would have headed to those that, but those lands, especially as one heads further west onto the plains, had become, again,

an 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 what it, human environments of the eastern United States, the treeless grasslands of the plains, the wind swept grasslands and 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, it hospitable

to agriculture, and therefore needed to be jumped over to get to the greater agricultural potential that lay on the Pacific slope. And I suppose the further they went, the more confirmed they were in that feeling, I mean, it's hard life, you know, those four or five months that you're in the middle there. And it's certainly, you know, for those who left too early, sometimes you run into the challenge of the grasses having 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, they don't have it. If you leave too late, you run the risk of getting caught in one of the mountains, snowstorms in the early fall, the most famous example in 1846, not to Oregon, but to California, being the Donner Party, which becomes the cautionary tale for later migrants, about the dangers,

and May, that's when you would leave so that you were getting there, not as you say, not too late,

not too early. These trains did not leave alone, right? You hired those handsome guides,

“we saw the movies, which are young and innocent. They were more handsome in movies, I think.”

They were in a rural background. They were courageous, but seriously, there must have been companies that serviced this opportunity, right? I mean, certainly the most people knew to band together, that the doing it as a solo venture was not a wise idea, 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 in the 1850s, established guides who made it a living, basically, shepherding these caravans of wagon trains across the place, across the mountains, across the Inter Mountain Desert, and bringing them into the Pacific

slope lands. 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? 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, and hundreds of thousands, and 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 the height of the trail migration period. And you can imagine here, just imagine the dust that's kicked up by those kind of sort 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. I do want to get to that, but I can understand the potential stench that's coming off of one of

these Dragon Joe might be enough for Native Americans to say, yeah, go about your business. We're not anywhere close here. I'm kidding. Of course. No, no, look, it's the same thing that Cowboys who wrote in the rear of cattle migrations up from Texas into Kansas, for example, the least attractive job was the cattle harder who was at the back of a 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. We don't want to get into the details of that. They would follow landmarks on this trail, a signpost, I suppose you call them, and these would be sort of morale boosters. I understand the plat river. Of course, they follow rivers. 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's general lay the land. chimney rock, a 300 foot tall natural spire would have been there. Scott's bluff, perhaps the most famous, marked at 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 Lanarmy, Wyoming, for

example. It really became quite organized that you could sort of measure out your route through

“these different destinations, right? 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, I tried to go where Lewis and Clark had gone up the Missouri and then the tributaries and across the bitter roots, they would not have

made it. Those were not wagon-friendly roads or trails. Instead, they went further south along the

plant 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 wagon years. It would have been impossible for the wagons to make it across the plains, to make the cross the plains and then make it across the Rocky Mountains. What would the average day experience be like, a slow going for the most part? Take me through the morning afternoon and evening of

“an average wagon trail traveler. 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.

course, limits how far you could go. There were certain shores 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 days walking, make camp, cook food, men clothes, etc. You know, it's often case that the diverges between 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 far-making and they're off

seeing the elephants. Sometimes it includes their first time seeing bison. These great beasts that are in such great numbers still on the great lanes or seeing Indians for the first type of scary, but also exciting. Seeing landscapes and lands that are so unfamiliar and you're fascinating to them. So grand. For women, though, when you look at women's diaries and journals, they rarely events the same degree of excitement about this the adventure lies in part,

because for women, and if you follow that old coplit, you know, men could work from sun to sun,

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, you know, households together at the sense, plus all of the difficulties of doing that under these most arduous conditions and

“continuing that into the evening and night. So I think that's really critical to sort of”

fastened on the difference between men's experiences of the old land trail and women's experiences. 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 reach their destination. 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 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 arduers 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, for example. You mentioned these diaries. There must be tons of tons of things to read from from people going across, right? The Oregon Trail diaries are really fascinating because it's one time when we get a rare glimpse into the lies of kind of ordinary rural people who in their normal experience

really rarely had time or inclination to keep these kinds of accounts of their lies. 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've plowed today or something like that. Whereas on the trail, you got 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 a

opportunity to see more of the inner workings of 90-century rural folk. 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, their 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 and Macauly, dated May 11th, 1852, which is towards the later part of the story and the organ trail. So bear

with me is 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. A 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, kooly turned around and swam back for it. 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 folks.

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 organ trail. You mentioned Ty Foie, cholera cholera epidemics in 1850, 1851, swept away large numbers. Look, they came often from places on the Midwest where the, what they called the igue 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 principle 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

forward 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, often times again by 1852, there were people who were established fairiers who would take people across. Earlier, it was often native Americans who were acting as the fairiers 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”

principle myth conceptions about the trail, especially in the 1840s, we are so used to the but probably the most staples cinematic image besides the wagons crossing the prairies, or the planes, is circling the wagons to prevent against Indian attacks. And for some reason, the India's riding in circles around the wagon trade. That's the most familiar cinematic image. During the 1940s, people certainly circled wagons sometimes depend stocking 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 American travelers during the 1840s. But the numbers were relatively small. Yes, there was a great deal of suspicion. Yes, people bought a great deal of bias and prejudice. But during the 1840s, 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 thought one another. This changes in the 1850s as greater numbers move across the planes and start using up vital resources on the planes that creates greater resentment. And also then, in the 1850s and 1860s, as people not only pass across the planes, but begin to settle on the planes. And that then becomes the precipitant for the most famous of wars, the planes Indian wars of the

1860s and 1870s. Yeah, as long as they're heading out of town, you know, you're just here for the day, go move on. Well, as long as you also trade with us and will trade you some food or mocks, and you give us some goods we want, things remain relatively quiet or peaceful.

Never mind that the pile of trash you left behind. Thank you very much. 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? Yes, I'm sure. Here's another diary entry. I want to read this one. This is a year later than last on 1853 by a girl named Amelia Stewart Knight. And it just mentions the weather factor 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. Dairy 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 a worse day of camping in my life. Yeah,

“I think when you read the trail diaries, sometimes you see the romance of the journey. As a”

emphasized men going and shooting the first buffalo they'd 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're not just the pouring rain and the deluge that they sometimes

the deserts of the true deserts made certainly these were not easy experiences. Yes, you mentioned

“before I was going to bring it up the Native American tribes. This is a, you know, 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 work as guides, as you say, far as referring 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 where they scared about

this idea or did they kind of understand it better than we think? 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 some of 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 in 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 hostility 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 while West Show reenactments of the earlier era. 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?”

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 Kaiser that actually tries to chronicle not just how many people die on the trail or what they die of, but it's 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, to unshallow 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. Steve, 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. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death

in the Coliseum, find out on the ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, joined me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Coats, to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which

reveal who, and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the ancients from History Hit.

Okay, we're back with Professor Steven Aaron, we're finally nearing our destination. Steven, I'm curious, how do they know that they've 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 do they

“set themselves up? Or had all that been already done for them back at the beginning?”

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 that's 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, you know, there's the Polk administration,

latitude in the line reaching way up in the British Columbia. That's where the Americans, the United

“States are trying to claim. Now, ultimately, that dispute gets settled with Britain, the variety”

reasons why Britain is willing to settle for the 49th parallel, as what becomes the border between British Canada and what the 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, or 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 see it 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 Will Abbott Valley, which is the principal destination, gigantic region, as well. 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 Will Abbott Valley. But they know when they get there. How did the Oregon Trail affect the shaping of the American West and the nation at large? I mean, as far as 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? This 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 warfed by the numbers who are going to California, the law of gold in California, transforms the destination and transforms the the demography of the migrations. Whereas the Oregon migrations had been made up by family farmers, you know, found farmers in their families, looking for land, looking to replicate their the lives of their parents and grandparents

in these new lands. By contrast, California often younger, 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 completely new American dream gets born in California gold fields. But the Oregon wants 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, and 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. 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?

“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 a caravan. So the railroad is a principle. But it's not that people don't continue to move to new lands, but instead of going all the way to California in 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 in 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 farge lands, for free

farge free places to feed their cattle and then later farmers try to make a go of it 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. 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 effective 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 the states and territories. That's when really the impact is felt, isn't it? 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 are mitigated by trade relations. But when Americans start

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 again, so to then, and 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. Exactly. That's where you get to 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 because it's made. But so interesting that it isn't the more immediate thing that happens, but rather later on. Let's talk about legacy factor of all of us. How has the organ trail and migration in general at that time lived on in American culture so much of what your museum

“is about, isn't it? So certainly, as I mentioned earlier, I think some of the most familiar”

images we have, both in paintings of the American West, and then in Hollywood depictions of the director 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 happen. I think for my students, the generations of students that I raised oftentimes

there, images were forged less by Western movies than by the organ trail game that you mentioned. And there, I think it's actually interesting. I once took a look at how the organ trail game has through its multiple additions because this game is 50 plus years old now. It really dates from almost, you know, the beginnings of where we think of computers getting their start. You know, we all know these little stick figure versions in the earliest version,

where you die of dysentery or you, you know, it actually, the game actually brings up some very fascinating points about when do you go, where do you go with whom 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 collar or 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 organ 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 argue that all this was just, you know, about to political correctness to sort of try to be, you know, a feel good frontier being created here, or a wish tree, 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

an ever-hustility between Native tribes on the plains and Euro-American migrants crossing of 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. You know, I think it's really important to underscore how much the”

this pioneering period, these, 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 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? Yeah, and I think just more even more generally, the idea of frontier, the association of frontier with possibility and with promise, and promise land, and certainly Oregon comes to exemplify those notions about promise and promise land and possibility that continue long after those lands

to settle, or 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, the traces”

back to these Western migrations as the founding creed. Yes, and it's the, 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, you 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. And I think one of the things that I just would add here on that point, because I think it's”

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. Steven Aaron is the director and president of the”

Austrian 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 West, a very short introduction and peace and friendship, an alternative history of the American West. I have a look at the Austrian's website, TheAutree.org, but better yet, as I say, pay a visit yourself. Thank you so

much, Steven. Nice to meet you. It is a pleasure and, as I said, let me echo. Please, everyone, come visit the Austrian Museum of the American West and learn about the American West. Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes,

too, new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. From mysterious missing colonies to powerful political

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