Women's Voices

[beep] [beeping continues] [beeping continues] [Singing] My name is Emma Logan and I come from Tennessee. And there I spent my childhood with my friends and family. I married young John Logan back in 1844. That day he promised Pa we'd never go far from his door. [Narrator] Between 1840 and 1870,

350,000 Americans would cross the continental United States. Approximately 50,000 of these immigrants were women. [Woman] I almost wonder how I could have undertaken such an expedition. I was in good spirits, and little daunted by the vastness of my enterprise. [Narrator] These were ordinary women caught up in an extraordinary adventure. [Woman] They were not shakers and makers individually. Collectively, however, they were the transmitters and perpetuators of American culture. [Woman] It's easy to forget the daily stuff. And I think the women bring you back to the very daily quality of what the over-land migration was. [Woman] Each woman's experience was unique unto themselves. It depended upon the age they were, where they were in a personal relationship, what their socio-economic level was, their educational level was, and what their societal background and expectations were.

[Narrator] Oregon is built on the legacy of these women. Their story is one of determination, courage, and strength. The earth was created by Elk from the Sun, and was made without lines of demarcation, [Man] It is no man's business to divide it. [Narrator] In 18- 36, two courageous women led the way. Thousands would later follow, in one of the great migrations of modern times. Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding crossed the continental divide on July 4th, 1836 with their missionary husbands. They became the first white American women to traverse the Rocky Mountains into western lands. These women rode sidesaddle for the 2,000 mile journey from the Missouri Territory to Fort Walla Walla. [Woman] Once it was proven that women could make the journey by

wagon, that was a huge selling point to immigrants and became quite a marketing tool for telling immigrants they needed to come. Not only could they make the journey physically, emotionally, and whatnot, but they would have a woman and a man to minister to their souls once they got here. It was a great package deal. [Man] Missionaries wrote back accounts, they were published in many, many newspapers. The ostensible reason was to publicize the efforts that were being made to Christianize Indians, but for the most part midwesterners read those accounts and thought, "Hey, this is a place we outta go to settle a new farm." [Music] This was a, a move that for most people, that would never have considered. Moving 2,000 miles was beyond the capacity of most people. And it was a minority experience. You know, maybe a half a million people picked up and moved. [Music]

The majority of people who are picking up and moving are moving to the next county, to the next state. They're moving a hundred miles, or maybe five hundred miles. But these people were going to Oregon are moving 2,000 miles. and this is where the phrase "Oregon fever" comes from. It wasn't that it was so contagious that everyone caught it, it was that those who did catch it were thought to be sick. [Woman] This past winter, there has been a strange fever raging here. It seems to be contagious, and it's raging terribly. Nothing seems to stop it but to tear up and take a six month trip across the Plains, with an ox team to the Pacific Ocean. [Man] Women in the 19th century had no rights, or very few rights. The prospect of gaining an education to have a meaningful career was

remunerative was limited. The avenue to security was through marriage, and even then that was a fragile relationship because a woman's property passed to her husband at the time of marriage. It was a man's world in which women were subordinate to men. That does not mean that women were not self-active, that they did not speak for themselves, or that they did not find fulfilling roles, because I think all those things are true, but they found those fulfilling roles and they found their chance to capture their own voice within the patriarchal world of the family. (Singing) I thought my life was settled till the day John said to me, pack the wagon, woman, we are leaving Tennessee. In the winter of eighteen and forty six, our neighbor began talking of moving to the new country. My husband was carried away with the idea, too. I said, "Oh! Let us not

go!" It made no difference. We sold a home and what we could not take with us, and what we could not sell, we gave away. Can you imagine what your heart would do if that home was the only home you had ever known as an adult? And your mama lived just down the road and you got to see her every day, and your friends that you'd all gone to school together, as far as your schooling went, lived within half a day's ride and your husband was saying, "We are going across the United States, into place it isn't even the states anymore, into God knows what." I'm going with him because there is no other alternative. Agreeable to the wish of my husband, I left all my relatives in Ohio and started on this long and perilous journey. It proved to hard task to leave them, but still harder to leave my children, buried,

in graveyards. While most immigrant women were directed to go west, a few boldly chose to initiate their own overland journey. "I have this great desire to see Oregon, the beautiful scenery, the wild animals and Indians, and natural curiosities in abundance." "Now I will begin to work to make everything with an eye to starting out on a six month trip. The first thing is to lay plans, and then work up to the program." They would spend the time from the end of one growing season until time to migrate in the spring preparing. Men would prepare the wagon, fatten up the oxen, get all of the things that were

necessary for their phase of the journey ready, while the women would spend their time getting the needed clothing and bed clothing and household items ready. It would require at least one standard farm wagon, and two ton farm wagon, to haul just the provisions for a four member family. Wagons were maybe four feet by twelve, and could hold about two thousand pounds of supplies. Think of packing everything you're going to need for a five month journey inside that space, plus everything you're going to need for about six to nine months once you get to Oregon. That is your world right there. Few women wrote of their preparations to go west. Keturah Belknap was one exception. "I have worked almost day and night this winter at the sewing. About all done, but a coat and vest for George." It was warm clothes, durable clothes, enough to last the journey, but nothing but nothing really extra. They

took one dress which they kept separate so they could, when they arrived they could wear their nice nice dress, but they had one other, sometimes two, that they would wear during the trail. "Our trunk of wearing apparel consisted of bare back under clothing, a couple of blue checked gingham dresses, several large stout aprons for general wear, a pink calico sun bonnet, and a white one intended for dress up days." The Immigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, published in 1845, helped women pack food for the journey. The book recommends that a family of four take "a hundred and fifty pounds of bacon, ten pounds of coffee, twenty pounds of sugar, dried fruit, beans, pickles, mustard and chipped beef." And look at the physical things: the clothing, the food to feed their bodies, but what about feeding their souls? What do they take?

Some talk about books, some talk about taking fabric, their quilt fabrics they'd started, their quilt squares. There's a variety of things that people held on to. "In the trunk were a few treasures: a bible, medicines, whiskey and hartshorn for snakebites, and citric acid, an antidote for scurvy. Our matches we also carefully guarded in this trunk." (fiddle music) (singing) 'Twas in the spring of '52 that we left Tennessee, leaving my dear mother who I never more will see, and my friends, I thought my heart would break to leave them all behind, for my husband's great adventure, his fortune for to find. "Who does not recollect their first night, when started

on a long journey, the well known voices of our friends still ringing in our ears? The parting kiss feels still warm upon our lips, and the last separating word, "farewell!", sings deeply into the heart." One of the clues I think that we have as historians to how important the whole process of leaving was is the way people talk about it. They identify themselves as immigrants. That's not immigrants I M M, it's emigrants E M. They concentrate on the process of leaving. They're not looking so much to the place they're going. They're thinking about the place they're leaving. It's almost a spiritual amputation for many women. "I was standing by one of the wagons. I went around on the other side where wouldn't anybody see me, and I was standing there crying, and Father come along, and he picked me up and set me up in the wagon. I just felt deserted some way."

(singing) I'm on my way to a higher ground, to a better world than I've ever found, I've got my reasons for leaving this town, boys, so long Mom, Oregon bound. In the spring of 1842 the first wagon train consisting mainly of families departed from Missouri. They travelled only two miles per hour. The first decade was characterized by large groups moving, and in fact in some of the years it would be only one one train of, say, a thousand people. As the experience became more commonplace, they then abandoned these large wagon trains which were very cumbersome to operate, required a lot of organizational skill. Some people tended to break down into smaller groups, and in the

later years we see people traveling in very small parties, even families setting out all by themselves. To prepare for their westward trek, most emigrants traveled to towns along the Missouri River. The jumping off point was really the last moment of outfitting. For many of these people they'd already been on the road a month or two months, so when they reached the Missouri frontier that was the opportunity to make sure that they had those basic staples that they needed for their journey so that they could face the challenges of the trail ahead. One of the very interesting and descriptive diaries is Esther Hannah, who married a minister and came out west and it was a honeymoon trip. She met him at the steamboat at six o'clock in the morning, got married, boarded the boat and then joined her husband on this overland trip. "May 6th, 1852: left the Missouri River for our long journey across the wild, uncultivated plains, uninhabited except the Red Man. As we left

the river bottom and ascended the bluffs, the view from them was handsome. In front of us as far as vision could reach extended the green hills, covered with fine grass." "The first part of the route is beautiful and the scenery surpassing anything of the kind I have ever seen. Large rolling prairies, stretching as far as your eye can carry you, the grass so green and flowers of every description." "May 29th: Came eight miles to Fort Kearney. The fort is rather shabby looking, but contains two very good looking dwelling houses, which to us,who had been traveling for three weeks, presented an appearance of a very pleasing nature." "June 12th: We came in sight of a long heard of, and renowned, Chimney Rock. At first it looked as if we were a spire pointing towards heaven's blue dome.

The spire seemed to enlarge, and bear rather more, the appearance of a chimney, extending high above a dome-shaped building." The first few weeks of travel were relatively easy. As they moved across the plains, following the Platte, that wasn't so much trouble. As the days wore on, the trail became more difficult. For the most part, these were not single young man. These were families. On the trail you'd find families at nearly every stage of family life. The typical family would be a family in midlife, with children not yet grown but looking for land so that they could settle those children on that land. Those families were typically about ten people. (singing) Mending, making, thus repairing, women's work is never done. One of the things that women concentrate on in their reminiscences and their diaries of the experience is the

way that their work is never done. Of course this is the standard complaint about women, that women's work is never done. One of things that the historian discovers is that it's true. "Although there is not much to cook, the difficulty and inconvenience in doing it amounts to a great deal. Then there is washing to be done, and light bread to make, and all kinds of odd jobs. Some women have very little help about the camp, being obliged to get the wood and water, make campfires, unpack at night and pack up in the morning. On the trail, where all the regular jobs of the household need to get done, men are not particularly good at doing many of those jobs. In fact there's an interesting story of a gold rush pioneer who travels to California with a group of other men and they quickly realize when they get on the trail, Who's going to do the cooking? Who's going to do the washing? And John Johnson volunteers. He says to himself, "This seems to me to be the easiest job of all." Well, it wasn't two or three days on the trail where he writes to himself one

night, "It turns out I took the most slavish work of all." "I have cooked so much out in the sun and smoke that I hardly know who I am, and when I look into the little looking glass, I ask, "Can this be me?" Women would rise first, start the fire, make the coffee, get the porridge going, She would line out who has to walk with who. The older children looked after the younger children if there was a large family. Of course men are driving the stock, but women perhaps are gathering fuel, tending the children, and probably gathering strays (?) as well. It was typical early on in the journey that women would take tablecloths, sometimes white starched tablecloths, and for "nooning", or "laying by", as they called it, she would spread this lovely tablecloth on whatever was handy. If they had a table she would use that. If not, over a stump or on the grass. She would use china and she would attempt to wash the dishes every time that they had been

used. You were walking ten miles a day, you might or might not be pregnant, you were taking care of three, four, five children, you were cooking for the entire wagon company, and you were washing at every river where you could wash. "Camille and I had both burnt our arms very badly while washing. They were red, swollen, painful. Our hands are blacker than any farmer's and I do not see that there is any way of preventing it, for everything has to be done in wind and sun." She had to do everything herself, do it quickly, do it in line with many other women who were doing the same thing, often in the dark, in the rain, in hailstones the size of hens' eggs, and do it without complaining. "I wore a

dark woolen dress which served me almost constantly through the whole trip. The wool protected me from the sun's rays and penetrating prairie winds. It also economized in laundering, which was a matter of no small importance, the chief requisite, water, being sometimes brought from miles away." These poor for women started out in their corsets, and they had their long skirts and they had their bonnets with pasteboard in the visors so that it would stand up straight in the sun. Women in those days felt they needed, because of the etiquette, needed to cover their arms and legs. The long skirts were getting caught in the fires, in the cooking fires. They were getting torn on the sagebrush and the rocks. They were getting caught in the wheels. "In jumping off the horse today, I caught my dress in the horn of the saddle and tore almost half the skirt off. That I must mend tonight. My dress is very dirty, and has been torn nearly,

if not quite, twenty times. As long as I look as well as the rest I don't care." By and large the women did not want to lose those long skirts because that was the only privacy they had. Oftentimes the women would go out in groups when one had to do her business, and it they would circle her with their skirts out, end to end, and all of them would be facing out, with the person needing privacy being the one within. Despite the difficulties during these first weeks on the trail, most women maintained their optimism. Evenings there was talk, music and dancing. "We are a merry crowd. While I journalize, John of the company is playing the violin, which sounds delightful way out here. My accordion is also good, as I carry it in the carriage and play as we travel." "As I sit writing by the campfire, Johnny keeps piling on

sticks to see them burn. Henry is sitting on a camp stool, saying, "Oh dear. I believe I'll die of joy!" (beeping sounds) (beeping sounds) (fiddle music) "June 18th: We started early this morning, and passed Fort Laramie about ten o'clock. Two of our company crossed the river and carried some letters which the company had written." Six hundred fifty miles from Missouri was the next

stopping off place for most overlanders. Here, emigrants could restock provisions, get shoes for horses, and mail letters to their families. Beyond Fort Laramie the land became dry and the grass brown. There was no longer any wood for a fire. "Buffalo chips, when dry, were very useful to us as fuel. On the barren plains, when we were without wood, we carried empty bags and each pedestrian picked up chips as he or she walked along. Indeed, we could have hardly got along without this useful animal. "Father'd take a sack and he'd go out and them there was as dry as could be, and he'd bring in a sack o' them and they made a hot fire." The trail became very monotonous and they were running short of supplies. They were running short of food. Both sources for water and food for animals were becoming much longer, farther apart. "We are creeping along slowly, one

one wagon after another, the same old gait, the same thing over, all day." It was six months of harshness in the sense of dust and rain and mud and moving across the country in a wagon, and most of them walked. Almost all the women walked across on the trail. "You in the states know nothing about dust. It will fly so that you can hardly see the horns of your oxen. It often seems that the cattle must die for want of a breath, and then in our wagons, such a spectacle: beds, clothes, and children completely covered." It gets in your eyelids, it gets in your nose, it gets in your mouth and your ears and it's in your clothing, and most of it is alkali dust. It itches. "Dust! If I could just have a bath!" The amount of detail one had to tend to as a woman or a man on the trail:

everything is busy, everything is demanding your attention all at once. You have twenty eleventeen kids running around, you're hoping that they're safe, you're trying to keep the smallest ones out from under the wheels of the wagon. "It was hard to take your children. Children were subject to the normal things that children get, the measles, the whooping cough, the colds, the runny noses. Then they were subject to the broken ankles and broken legs and the arms that got snapped in running on and off the wagon tongue when they weren't supposed to, when the wagon was moving and you couldn't keep them in place. Despite the accidents, the injuries and the illness, the wagon trains pressed on. There was three months of travel and one thousand miles left to go. (music) (fiddle music) In order to get to Oregon before snow made the mountains

impassable, emigrants tried to reach Independence Rock in what is now Wyoming by the Fourth of July. "This is the fourth in the states. A great many is preparing for pleasure of some kind but we are celebrating it by traveling in the sand and dust. But we had a great dance tonight. I went up on the hill and talked over old times and then we come down and danced until nearly one o'clock. It done very well for want of better fun. It is a beautiful evening. The stars shine bright. We have excellent grass." July fourth was a huge celebration during that time, often bigger than Christmas. They would celebrate with all that excess gunpowder that they had brought with them and make a lot of noise and they would have feasting and dancing. "For your amusement I will give your description of my dress for the occasion: a red calico frock, made in the wagons, a pair of moccasins made of black

buffalo hide, ornamented with silk instead of beads as I had none of the latter, and a hat braided of bull rushes, and trimmed with white, red and pink ribbon." "This is the day of our nation's jubilee of liberty, and camped for the day to celebrate our independence. We had some gooseberry sauce for dinner gathered from the bluff, and Harry killed an antelope. What a lovely day!" The elation of reaching Independence Rock was quickly forgotten. Conditions on the trail became increasingly difficult. "The sun is melting. The stench occasioned by the dead cattle is awful. We are near being eaten by mosquitoes. There are thousands of them buzzing around your ears, which makes one almost frantic." "A rainstorm was coming on. I was riding a horse. My feet and almost the whole of my lap were uncovered. We drove through mudholes, and when we stopped

everything was wet, my feet and limbs, cold as ice, and my face and head like fire." There were those who were killed by being struck by lightning. There were people who drowned in fording rivers, and many of these people did not know how to swim. There's this horrifying image that you find over and over again of men swimming horses or stock across the stream, and disappearing below the water and never being seen again. At river crossings, women were responsible for the unpacking and repacking of the wagon. This ritual also occurred after hard rain and hail storms. "Waiting to cross the river. There is no ferry here, and the men will have to make one of the tightest wagon beds for this purpose. Everything must now be hauled out of the wagon head over heels. Then the wagons must be all taken to pieces, one possession at a

time. Women and children last, and then swim the cattle and horses across. There were three horses and some cattle drowned while crossing this place yesterday." Preparing for river crossings, women were provided with an opportunity to forge new friendships. "We women folk visited from wagon to wagon, or congenial friends spent an hour walking and talking over our home life back in the states, telling of the loved ones left behind, voicing our hopes for the future, and even whispering a little friendly gossip." Women depended on each other, most importantly when it came time to give birth. When it came time to have a child on the trail, if there wasn't another woman to attend that birth, it was devastating. Pregnancy was a common condition for emigrant women. My statistics indicate that about one in five was pregnant on the journey.

From the time they married until their mid forties, most women are either always pregnant or they're nursing children. If you were delivered on the trail, you had a problem because you couldn't stop the wagon train, and so labor is pretty much accomplished in the wagon. The technology for childbirth at that time was pretty basic. People still considered it natural event, and even in their homes they didn't necessarily call a doctor a a baby was being born, and on the trail there weren't a lot of doctors available. The health care system on the trail was relying on your neighbors to come and help you. There are some diaries where women tell that it rained, it poured It poured, when they were giving birth. And if there was another woman in wagon, they were wading ankle deep in water while this poor lady was giving birth. The women in a wagon train helped as much as they could in taking care of newborn babies, offering, you know, if they were still breastfeeding, offering to breastfeed a baby. Or if they had a milk along,

you know, getting milk for the baby and doing what they could in that respect. One of the important stories I remember years and years ago was of a teenage girl who was there when a woman died in childbirth. She took the infant and spent the rest of her journey overland riding up and down the wagon train to women who were nursing. "I carried a little motherless babe 500 miles. And when we would camp, I would go from camp to camp in search of some good, kind, motherly woman to let it nurse, and no one ever refused when I presented it to them. It was not considered proper to let anyone know of your discomfort, of your nausea, of all the attended ailments and and physical strains that come with being pregnant. You were just considered a weakling and less than a woman if you complained. Just west of Independence Rock, in what is now

central Wyoming, emigrants would arrive at another famous landmark: Devil's Gate. "At noon we stopped about a fourth of a mile from Devil's Gate, and it surpassed anything I ever say in my life. The Sweetwater River passes through a gap--or gate, as it's called--of the Rocky Mountains." "This is a beautiful part of the country. The flowers surround us. Yesterday it was as if we walked through miles of wildflower bouquets." Cecilia Adams and her twin sister Parthenia, both 23 years old, traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852 with their husbands and father. I would have loved to travel in the same train with Cecelia and Parthenia. They were both very articulate, observant, "adventurous" we would call them today. "Parthenia and I walked on ahead of the rest the company. We climbed one of the hills. Parthenia and myself have some jolly times, even if we are in the wilderness."

"It was after dark before we got to the camping place where Uncle Sam had a campfire built. Everyone was tired. Some of us were cross and wet. Went to sleep immediately. Not until the next morning did we see that the campfire was built on a grave. No one bothered to move it. I have mentioned our growing indifference and what we endure each day is robbing us of all sentiment. It is to be hoped that we will not be permanently changed." By mid-August, most overlanders finally reached their next stopping-off point. Fort Hall, in what is now Idaho, was called "the fort of broken dreams" because so many of the wagons had fallen apart on this way or that way, had to be broken down, perhaps had to just be stashed right there. It was at Fort Hall where many travelers separated.

California emigrants went south. Those bound for Oregon kept moving westward. The joke in Oregon we used to tell about how you would come to the fork in the road, where you could split off and go to Oregon and California or California. The one said, "To Oregon" and on the other marker it just had a picture of the pot of gold, and those who could read came to Oregon. For the emigrants, the hardest part of the journey is now at hand. "My vision of hell is is traveling along the Snake River in southern Idaho, day after day with the river basically out of touch. It's hundreds of feet below you and it's so dry and dusty you can hardly, you're swallowing grit." The farther they went the more they would have to lighten the load so that the oxen could keep pulling the wagon. (singing) This table's too heavy,

this (unintelligible), and the old chest of Grandpa's will just hold us back. Oh this trail's lined with pieces of long ago times, I'm afraid I'm still missing what we left behind. Ultimately what was the most important thing was getting there and getting here safely, so if it meant that you had to leave something that seemed awfully important to you when when you started out in the east, or in Indiana, or even in Missouri, you might have left it at some point along the trail in order to just reach your destination. There was so much garbage along the roads, a lot of emigrants talk about being able to pick up some extra salt pork, an extra bag of flour that had been left behind, or to cook on a stove that had been dumped behind.

Pretty soon you have trash and dirt and bodies of oxen. Some women even wrote that you could smell your way to Oregon. Loss was a constant companion, and when you look into the diaries of the women, often in the early stages when there was loss that touched them directly, they would call death "the monster". Death. By the time they got to the other end of the trail they had lost so many that it became less a monster and just a constant companion, and there is even one diary the coals it "the constant friend". "There was an epidemic of cholera. I think it was caused by drinking water from the holes dug by campers. All along was a graveyard. Most any time of day you could see people burying their dead, some places five or six graves in a row. It was a sad sight. No one could realize it unless they had seen it."

The greatest danger on the trail was the danger of disease, and the danger of poor sanitation. You're on the overland trail, you're on your way to Oregon, and there are 20,000 or 30,000 people ahead of you, and every night when you stop at a campsite those people have preceded you. Ninety percent of the deaths on the trail were disease related. "The mothers had the families directly in their hands and were with them all the time, especially during sickness. Some went through a great deal of suffering on the trail. I remember one girl in particular about my own age that died and was buried on the road. Her mother had a great deal of trouble and suffering. Mothers on the road had to undergo more trial and suffering than anybody else." "The sick man is dead this morning. We stopped to see him buried.

They wrapped him in bed clothes and laid him in the ground without a coffin. We sung a hymn and had prayer. Oh, it is so hard to leave friends in this wilderness." "The heart has a thousand misgivings, and the mind is tortured with anxiety, and often as I passed the fresh-made graves I have glanced at the sideboards of the wagon, not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some one of us." Some people in early part stages of the journey tried to have a casket, tried to have a regular funeral but, as wood became short, and supplies became short and their time became short, sometimes they were very hasty funerals, maybe somebody wrapped in a blanket or quilt if they had that, and rather hastily buried, and then the wagon train had to move on. There is a lovely passage from one of the women who said that a mother and her newborn died together and they wrapped them in the quilts. The women all got together with their quilts, wrapped them together,

and then laid them on this "weird and lonely foot stool of God". That was one of the big worries of the women, that it would all close in on them, that it would all be too much, and that they would just lose their mind. "I would make a brave effort to be cheerful and patient until the camp work was done, then starting out ahead of the team and my men folks, when I thought I had gone beyond hearing distance, I would throw myself down and give way like a child to sobs and tears, wishing myself back home with my friends and chidin' myself for consentin' to take this wild goose chase." The whole attitude was, "Keep your chin high, and your stomach sucked in, and just keep going." There must have been a lot of recriminations, whether they were spoken or not, a lot of men thinking, "This was the stupidest thing I ever did in my life," and a lot of women

saying, "Yes indeed it was!" Their food supplies were running low, and their wagons were breaking down, their draft animals were getting tired and they themselves were exhausted. As they kept going, and going, and going, and it seemed like they were never going to get there, they were ragged, they were hungry..."Oh dear! If we were only in the Willamette Valley, or wherever we are going, for I am tired of this." They had to make it over the Blue Mountains and the Cascade Mountains before snow started, before October or November got there. "We crossed the Blue Mountains at the summit, and it was awful rough. It was just bounce, bounce, bounce down mountain there." The Blue Mountains in northern Oregon were terrible. Wagons had to be winched down inclines, roped down...frequently they,

the brakes didn't hold and they tumbled over cliffs. "I came down out of the Blue Mountains, into the Grande Ronde Valley, and found Indians, helpful Indians." Frequently Cayuse Indians would be there to trade fresh vegetables, and they could get fresh vegetables or maybe trade for a fresh horse. One of most poignant accounts of Indian-emigrant experience occurred in the Grande Ronde Valley, where a woman, Harriet Talcott Buckingham, was sitting on the tongue of the wagon doing her embroidery work, and a Nez Perce woman came along and sat down beside her and took a few stitches for her, as if to say, "Though I cannot communicate in your language, I too know how to sew, just like you do." Indians had developed an interest in calico shirts. That was the major trading item they valued. Women write to other women, "When you come next year, be sure to bring calico shirts or you'll be naked, because the

Indians will have traded you for every calico shirt you've brought." One important thing to keep in mind is when the exchange is about food, then it's women who were doing the exchanging. (flute music) (fiddle music) By the time they reached the military outpost of The Dalles, summer was over. The weather started to change. By that time for many parties, it was October, November, wonderful Oregon weather with lots of rain and grayness, a hard end to what had really been a hard trip. When they got to the Cascades, they had to make a decision, either to go over the Cascades or to float down the river. This is the undammed Columbia River, and so you just don't placidly float down the river! One graphic account by Elizabeth Dixon

Smith Geer, of stumbling around rapids with a child in her arms and a couple hanging from her skirts, in the mud...By the time they got that far her husband was sick, several of her children were sick, and she had no shoes. Thinking of people at that stage of the journey with no shoes, and they still have to somehow finish the journey. The Barlow Road over the Cascade Mountains had a lot of very steep ascents and descents, and pretty heartbreaking for some people to make it that far and then have their wagon smashed to pieces going down the last descent before you make it to the Willamette Valley. "I saw a woman on a very poor horse with a little child in her lap and one strapped on behind her, and two or three tied on another horse. I felt thankful, and imagined I

was only on a picnic." It was a very harsh and difficult and trying time, but I have no question if you survived it, you came out much stronger than when you begin the journey. After so long,

so many heart breaks, so many deprivations, so many adventures, they finally arrived. For most, the arrival in Oregon was bittersweet. They had lost loved ones and friends, suffered through sickness, and watched many of their treasures vanish into the dust. "Here we are in Oregon, making our camp in an ugly bottom with no home except our wagons and tent. It is drizzling, and the weather looks dark and gloomy. This is the end of a long and tedious journey." So many people arrived in Oregon really stripped down to their basics. "We lived on boiled wheat and boiled peas." "We never had a bit of tea or coffee. The coffee made was pea coffee." They don't have any food and it's November and they can't move out of the (?) homestead and farm. They have to make it

through the winter. There's no hotel. There is no house. There's nothing, and so a lot of them then either share, if the wagon is still with them, then they live in the wagon through the winter, or they find a house and three, four, five families live in it together until the spring, when they can go out and get some land. "The seven girls slept in the loft, and the younger ones slept on the floor in the front room by the fireplace. Father, in exchange for our housing, taught school to the tenant children, and at night made furniture consisting of chairs, tables, brooms and bedsteads." For many of them, what was going through their mind is, "Where will I go? What do we do now?" "This morning I ran about, trying to get a house to get into with my sick husband. At last I found a small, leaky concern with two families already in it. You could have stirred us with a stick. He was never out of that shed until he was

carried out in his coffin. How comfortless is a widow's life, especially when left in a strange land without money, or friends, and the care of seven children." "When we reached Portland, our family consisted of my mother and nine children. Mother had no money and had nine hungry mouths to feed, in addition to her own. So she would go to the ships that came, and get washing to do." Many of them sold eggs, if indeed they had chickens. They tanned some of the hides that they'd traded for along the trail and made garments or gloves or shoes or whatever they could to sell those to make a living. Some went into service to others as maids or cooks or hired labor. It was not an easy end of the trail. "My most vivid recollection of that first winter in Oregon is of the weeping skies, and of Mother and me also

weeping." There's a diary of a young woman who has just had a child, and she writes that she does not know within the scope of five miles 'round her where any other human being may be living. (singing) "There's a song that will linger forever in our ears, oh hard times come again no more! "Tis the song, the sigh of the weary: Hard times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door, oh hard times come again no more."

When they got to Oregon what they discovered there, a world without connections, without communities, without institutions, all of which required work at building up, and one of the first things that women turned their attention to is the effort to try to build larger connections in this new world, to organize a school, to bring together like-minded people in religious fellowship. They saw to it that funds were raised and a building was erected and minister employed so that they would have some sense of order and stability and values being taught in their community. Home was what these women were supposed to do. It was who they were. Home was what defined them. And so they set about creating their homes, again, one more time. For most people this was a log cabin. The women had to plant a garden, and then there was weeding to do. There was

attending those delicate seeds that had been brought from home. There was trying to live where things weren't very familiar. This was a process, and it might go on for four or five years before a more permanent house would be built. Throughout the 30-year emigration, pioneer women played an integral part in the settling of the Oregon frontier. Of the 30,000 women who travelled west, less than 1,000 left written accounts. Pioneer Lily Dixon Williams left her family the only known oral history, recorded shortly before her death in 1968. At age 12, Lily Dixon arrived with her family at Fort Walla Walla. They would eventually rent a cabin in Keed's Gulch (?) for the winter. In the spring they would purchase their own land. Lily Dixon would marry pioneer Dan Williams, leaving a legacy of three children and

numerous grand and great-grandchildren. This matriarch of Oregon history passed away at age 97. Pioneer Tabitha Brown walked into Oregon in 1842 with one pair of gloves and a coin. She used that coin to buy some leather, and she made some gloves and made $30 from these gloves, and with that she was able to start establishing herself. She would later open a school for girls that would lay the foundation for Forest Grove's Pacific University. In 1987 the Oregon legislature named her "The Mother of Oregon". Pioneer Lucia Bigelow Williams settled in Salem with her husband Elijah in 1851. Upon her arrival, Lucia became one of four to found the local Congregational church.

Nine years later that church would become one of the few biracial parishes in Oregon. Lucia would form lifelong friendships with some of the local tribesmen, fighting for equality and civil liberties throughout her days. Lucia's great-granddaughter, Helen Althouse, carried on her legacy, when in 1997 she was awarded the American Civil Liberties Union's Life Service Award for her dedication to the struggle for civil rights in Oregon. Pioneer Mary Stevens reached Oregon in the winter of 1852. Five years later she would marry Albert Gates. Mary and Albert settled in Rock Creek, in what is now northern Oregon. Years later, Mary would donate a large portion of her land to the state government. As payment, officials renamed the town Gatesville, later shortened to Gates. Today, 35 miles east of Salem, Gates remains a quaint town, population 535.

Some say the most extraordinary woman of them all was Abigail Scott Duniway. Abigail Scott Duniway is the least ordinary of the Oregon Trail women. During the course of the migration in 1852, her father had asked her to be the historian, and she wrote the journal. She transformed that into her first novel, Captain Gray's Company. Abigail would eventually start her own newspaper, which soon became the leading voice fighting for women's suffrage in Oregon. She was very outspoken and was determined that women who would walked to Oregon were going to have the vote. Her brother was the Oregonian editor for the largest newspaper in the state, and he was adamantly opposed to women having the vote and she was adamantly determined they were going to have the vote, and she eventually won and cast the first vote in Oregon.

The voices of thousands of Oregon Trail women will never be heard. They were the schoolteachers and they were the minister's wives who made churches operate. They were the store operators and they were the nurses, and they were the mothers. They were instrumental in the settling of the West. They were instrumental in the changing of the West, in its most positive senses. It would not have happened without them. "July 19th, 1923: Now Now I think I will write the last lines I will ever write. It has been a good life, and I have been blessed. What a wonderful place, this Oregon." (singing) I'm on my way - I'm on my way - to a higher ground - to a higher ground, to a better world than I've ever found. I've got my reasons for leaving this town, boys. So long, I'm Oregon bound. I'm on my way - I'm on my way

to a higher ground - to a higher ground, to a better world than I've ever found. I've got my reasons for leaving this town, boys, so So long, I'm Oregon bound. So long, I'm Oregon bound. So long, I'm Oregon bound. Whoo! (clapping)