Women Pioneers on the Western Trails - Report Example

WOMEN PIONEERS ON THE WESTERN TRAILS INTRODUCTION: Many immigrants had been lured to America by promises of free land and limitless horizons. They found instead hard life even in the larger cities along the Eastern seaboard, which were moving into the industrial age. The streets were crowded with itinerant workers, and coal smoke from numerous factories blackened the skies. This change in cities had occurred very rapidly. The overcrowding caused many to wish for a better place to live in. The pioneer spirit that existed in the 19th century was also born due to a need to own land. Many were farmers by trade. Government free land out West, personal discontent, and romantic stories of the promised land, led thousands to move out West1. From New England, where the soil was incapable of producing high yields of grain, came a steady stream of men and women who left their coastal farms and villages to take advantage of the rich interior land of the continent. In the backcountry settlements of the Carolinas and Virginia, people handicapped by the lack of roads and canals giving access to coastal markets, and suffering from the political dominance of the Tidewater planters also moved westward. Another reason was religious fervor and missionary zeal, which drove some of the earliest travellers on the settlement trails. In the 18th century was the trend of westward expansion to the Appalachian mountains. By the mid-19th century, U.S. citizens as well as immigrants would migrate all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Western movement was a landmark phenomenon in American history2. The native Red Indians in the West resisted the pioneer incursions into their territory. The natives were compelled to sell their land to the United States, under threat of removal of protection to the Indians if they did not comply. The federal authorities gave a false impression of the natives “voluntarily” giving up resistance. Also, recent research about the pioneers has recovered and integrated the experiences of women and children, in a process that had been treated almost exclusively as a heroic masculine adventure. The studies expose the tragic isolation, deep sadness, extraordinary hardship, and sometimes fruitless sacrifices experienced by women whose men chose to go pioneering – a decision often taken without consulting the women. Stories of great hardship from the overland migration to Oregon and California in the 1840s and 1850s, find rich antecedents in the narratives of women who earlier settled in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys3. If the American Revolution (1775-1776), followed by the Declaration of Independence, promised its people liberty, equality and republican self-government, the West was the place where that promise was tested for nearly a century. The western pioneers put up with the pure loneliness of the open plains, runaway horses, stampeded cattle, prairie fire, blizzards, heat, sunstroke, Indians, lice, snakes, and more. Some gave up and moved back to the security of the East, but many more stayed and helped build and shape the west, from the smallest beginnings. (Teaching the West in the Early American Republic: Old Chestnuts and the Fruits of New Research). DIARY ENTRIES AND LETTERS OF WOMEN PIONEERS: In the diary of Mrs. Eliza Spalding, June 15th to July 6th, 1836, she says that they were camped near the Fort and would probably remain there for several days as the company was to leave their waggons at this post and make arrangements to transport their goods the remainder of the journey, on mules. “It is very pleasant to fix my eyes, once more, upon a few buildings, several weeks have passed, since we have seen a building”. Amelia Knight wrote her first journal entry on April 1, 1853, when the family was just beginning the long journey from the South shore of the Des Moines River to the North shore of the Columbia, in the newly named territory of Washington. Their journey west was by the “Old Mormon Trail”. During the journey, she noted that the cattle were dying at frequent intervals, and that they were hardly ever out of sight of dead cattle on their side of Snake River. Their worst trouble at large rivers was swimming the stock over. Sometimes there were Red Indians to help them in the crossing. When Joel and Amelia settled in their new claim in Iowa in 1837, they already had one child. In the next sixteen years, six more children were born. (Holmes, Kenneth L (ed). pp.62-63). In 1836 Eunice Morse Pratt, at the age of forty-six, after the death of her husband, Dr. James Pratt, left her home and friends, and started the pioneer life; leaving behind the relative comforts of civilization. Hitching a team of horses to a covered wagon, she picked up the lines and started her journey westward to Palmyra, Missouri, taking her family with her; making the entire trip by wagon. After completing her trip to Missouri, Eunice Pratt sent back to her brother Ellis Morse in Eaton, New York a letter dated October 26th, 1836, from the Palmyra Marion Company. In her letter she described her entire journey by wagon, the unforeseen problems she and her children encounter, the help she received from a young man, and finally reaching Missouri safely. She comes through as a woman of indomitable courage and determination. She wrote to her brother: “With regard to the news respecting my dear husband there is no doubt of the truth of it, the reason of not receiving the news sooner, there is no mails from that place to this”. Her husband, Dr. Pratt, had died on a return trip to Palmyra, Missouri. No one had ever found where he was buried. Eunice was never officially notified of his death, but just heard he had died from his son from his first marriage, who had gone to Missouri ahead of his father. Part of the motivation for the move to Missouri could be a hope of finding her missing husband. In Eaton she had a comfortable life, with servants to do everything for her. But she gave up her old life to drive a wagon to Missouri, and start a new life at the age of forty-six. She had seen New York become a civilization from the wilderness she had known. She had again seen towns and cities rise phoenix-like from mother earth. Her memory was richly stored with narratives of the War of Independence and she had lived through two important conflicts through which the country had passed. With a rich background such as this, she was open to new experiences, and unafraid of facing new challenges4. Most of the families who set out for Oregon, California, or Utah in the 1840s, travelled by wagon; but between 1856 and 1860 when Mormon funds grew scarce, hundreds of families walked all the way to the promised land, drawing behind them handcarts that held all their belongings. We see that loneliness and isolation of pioneer existence, where every act, from securing clean drinking water to making clothes, required long, hard labor, and where pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood often involved as much tragedy as joy. (Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula p.21). In May 1856, Robert and Ann Parker, with their four children joined the second Mormon handcart train. All their possessions were heaped in a handcart which Robert pulled and Ann, caring for the baby, pushed. Alice the ten year old daughter followed on foot with the other children of the train, with responsibility for Arthur, the five year old son. Before they had gone far Robert was stricken by a wasting fever, and had to be placed in one of the wagons; now it was Ann and Alice who powered the handcart. As they passed through the Nebraska timberlands, Arthur one day became ill, sat down to rest beside the train, fell asleep, and was left behind, unmissed until the end of the day. Members of the train searched for two days without result, then had to go on. Ann and Alice went on with the train; Robert, still ill, went back to look for the boy, finally returning with him to the train, after a week. By now Robert was gravely ill, and Ann and Martha Alice pushed and pulled their cart the rest of the way. When they reached the head of the Salt Lake Valley in September, 1856, Ann collapsed from exhaustion and went no further until a passing carriage passed and pulled the cart into the city. They had walked thirteen hundred miles. Robert recovered and made his way to Beaver City with his family. Woollen Mills were being set up, for which his skills were apt, and the family settled down there5. The letters and journal of Mrs. Narcissa Prentice Whitman, 1836: In her letter from Platte River, just above the Forks, Narcissa Whitman writes to her sister Harriet and brother Edward, giving a happy account of their migration trip. She appears to be a newly-married woman travelling with her husband and one more couple, along with several helpers. There appears to be not much problem or scarcity for any basic essentials, and their large caravan is described in detail. They are travelling with a Fur Company, and are taking along several horses, mules and cattle. The narrative in the letter is humorous and written with a sense of enjoyment. She looks forward to meeting native Indians, whom she says she likes very much. They are on their way to the Rendezvous, from where they will make further progress westwards. So we see that the migration was not an ordeal to some, as the move itself was more comfortable, circumstances were favorable, and also because of the positive expectation on the part of the author of the letters6. In her journal with entries from July 18th to October 18th 1836, Narcissa Whitman describes their journey from the site of the Rendezvous till Vancouver. Her husband proceeds further westwards, to stake his claim on prime land, and then sends for her to join him. In this narrative also, though tiring and weary of the long journey, Narcissa Whitman maintains a positive outlook, interspersed with religious beliefs7. The separation of families was a fairly common pattern in the westward movement. Lured first by the promise of gold and later by the hope of debt-free homesteads, thousands of men went west. Out of sight and out of mind, the women on the home frontier have remained a largely invisible sector though their work directly supported a sizable proportion of the men who explored and settled the American West. These women were totally at the mercy of their own resources, that Pamelia Fergus of Little Falls came to refer to herself and her fellows as the “widows”. The women on the home frontier also indirectly contributed to the settling of the American West. While women who crossed the plains and established homes in the west sometimes had enough awareness of being part of a great movement to record their activities and feelings in diaries, journals and letters, those women who stayed in place and held life together for absent husbands had little or no sense of the historical importance of their contributions, and were far less inclined to compile a written record of their day to day activities. (Peavy, Linda S; Smith, Ursula p.7). In the eyes of the early explorers, Kansas appeared to be an arid wasteland, unfit for cultivation and unsuitable for habitation. Originally a part of the Louisiana purchase, it had been strictly maintained by the government as an Indian territory, and officially closed to any white settlement. By 1850, an ever-increasing population and a growing economy focused attention on the country’s need for new land. The great plains seemed to answer the call of a nation, and in 1854, Kansas and Nebraska were opened to settlement, and a fever for owning homesteads swept across the country. People of all nationalities, whether rich or poor were allowed to stake their claim to own a share of these untried plains. Lily Marcks wrote in 1864, about her family’s emotional farewell from her home in Ohio. She also wrote about the inconveniences suffered during the long journey. Melora Espy was a young girl who resigned her position as teacher, and went over the long trail to become one of the pioneer women of Kansas. To leave permanently one’s home and friends, parents, brothers and sisters, to journey a thousand miles, part of the way in an ox wagon, part of the way in a steamboat of the early time, to a strange land inhabited by savages required the greatest courage. To forsake culture, plenty, prosperity and peace, for crude living, poverty, adversity and war, required a poise of soul that few possessed. Migration was by covered wagon, horseback, stagecoach, steamboat, railroad, and even by foot. For many pioneers the water routes proved to be particularly convenient. The stagecoach was particularly convenient for the woman immigrant, alone or with children, who followed friends and family westward. However the trip often proved to be a grueling journey over rough and rutted roads. In 1867, Carrie Stearns Smith travelled by stagecoach from Kansas City, Missouri, to her new home South of Fort Scott. It was a tiring journey, but also one of adventure and spectacle. (Stratton, Joanna L. pp.33-35). In Nancy C. Glenn’s letter dated June11th, 1862, she expresses how much she misses her mother and sisters. She narrates that two mules had got lost by straying away from camp. They had been found 70 miles away, and had been brought back. (pp.22-23). In Nancy Glenn’s letter dated 8th October, 1862, she writes to her parents and brothers and sisters, expressing how much she misses all of them and her home that she had left behind. She also narrates incidents of horses being stolen by Indians, and also of the murder of one man, and two men wounded. She describes coming across many men killed and buried along the trail in several places.(p.30). Lucretia Epperson writes in her journal that they started their journey on Friday April 1st, 1864. (p.165). Mary Ringo narrates that she saw her husband’s grave site where a marker had been placed with his name engraved on it, at the side of the trail. (p.201). (Holmes, Kenneth (ed).). The short diary of Mary E. Bower in 1881, reminds us of the dangers faced by children and adults in their travels without medical care. Mrs. Bower was sick for most of the journey, and her baby was deathly ill at the close of her account. (xix). The women told their own story just as it was happening, or immediately afterwards. In these primary documents, immediacy is the key word. (xx). Holmes, Kenneth (ed). Captivity narratives are the accounts written by men and women reporting on their experiences as abductees of the Native Americans. The first known captivity narrative by Mary Rowlandson in 1682, remained essentially the same, conflict between the settlers and Indians, capture by the Indians, ordeal at the hands of the captors, and a return to European American society. The captives’ detailed descriptions of torture-scenes and the suffering of women and children provided justification for armed conflict on the western frontier and the displacement of Native Americans whose voices were rarely heard in the captivity documents. Stories like those of Fanny Kelly’s painted a vivid picture of the native Americans who rejoiced in the killing of women and children. The natives were forced to move away to Oklahoma, undertaking a long and arduous trek, that killed many of the Native Americans. The pioneers were not concerned about the natives’ desperate situation. (Wishart, David J. (ed) p.326). In 1909, Elinore Pruitt Stewart and her young daughter set out for a ranch in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, where an acre can be had for $ 1.25 and a bit of determination. Stewarts letters create a colorful account of her new life on the prairie, the eccentric characters who inhabit it, and the community they build together. The author’s greatness of heart and her willpower come through to the reader, and the book is an unsurpassed classic of American frontier life. By 1849, the California Gold Rush turned into a torrent from what had been a mere trickle. It was the greatest peacetime migration in history. The experiences of the many explorers and pioneers who travelled across the American west are narrated. (Wilkerson, Lyn R. p.164). The great American gold rush drew thousands of people westward. They suffered rugged and perilous journeys by land and sea to face the hardest people and the most backbreaking work of their lives. For some, it was the fantasy of gold, the prospect of untold riches lying on the ground, waiting to be gathered by the wagon load. The dream had the whole world in an uproar by 1849, but by the time most folks could get to California, the days of easy pickings were over. There was still plenty of gold, but it demanded more hard labor than even some strong men could stand, to extract it from the uncooperative earth. Few gold seekers were women. Some Gold Rush women had come along with their husbands to the mines and had travelled for months in covered wagons to get there, because the overland route was the cheapest. But some sent their man off alone. Eventually, several of the wives tired of waiting for them to return home. So they packed their belongings and set off with their children in tow to find them. One such woman, Lucinda Mann, waited three years for her husband to come back, before she decided to take her children overland to California. When she reached the mining town of Jackson, she was shocked to learn that her husband had died four months before her arrival. Rather than go back east, she settled there and took charge of the store her husband had started. The following year, she married another miner and eventually she came to be considered a great success by the women of her time. But only women who actually lived in the camps knew how hard life was there. Basic conditions were not at all comfortable. Miners moved from claim to claim and lived in tents or shacks or slept on the ground until they settled on a site they knew would be productive. Only then would a log cabin be raised. Usually, it had a dirt floor and no windows. Nothing was expected to be permanent in the gold fields, and these rough conditions kept most women in the towns. A woman who wasnt out looking for gold had her choice of permanent jobs. Those who took on the chores of washing and cooking for the men were highly paid. Eastern women, disgruntled over low wages, were encouraged to come to California where cooks could make as much as thirty dollars a day. Women who washed clothes could often make twice as much. By 1849 standards, this was big money, but not in gold country, where high wages were necessary for survival. At one point, a dozen eggs cost ten dollars and one potato or one onion went for a dollar each. Often, miners struggled to support themselves. Just saving enough to get back home seemed impossible-never mind being lucky enough to strike it rich. Luck played a major role in the Gold Rush, and women who came to the mining towns were more likely to be professional gamblers than prospectors8. CONCLUSION: The great dessert and the snow-covered mountains stood as a barrier to the settlers, who had flowed across the Alleghenies. Even the approaches to the mountains were forbidding. Between the western edge of the settlement and the great divide lay the treeless plains, where wind and alkali dust accompanied fierce storms and tribes of Indians roamed in search of buffalo. Beyond the horizon of the settlers were the trappers and traders. The Rocky Mountains were supposed to be impassable. But no mountain, dessert, sea or river could stop the American people. The settlers came, first for good land, and when gold was discovered, the gold hunters joined the ranks of those interested in claiming land. The migration westward was unique in numbers and distances. For fifty years the Westward migration continued, until the good land from the Missouri to the Pacific was peopled, and the frontier was declared to be past tense. Many people preferred to simply walk across the plains, pack on back. To all of the immigrants the trip was a series of new and often terrifying incidents. (Brown, Dee p.26). Kenneth L. Holmes mentions that years of research on this subject has made it very clear to him that our contemporaries whose ancestors had achieved this great feat, are highly impacted by its influence. They are moved, inspired and motivated at critical moments in their lives. A woman had to be physically strong and mentally alert in order to carry out her daily duties and to keep her family fed, clothed and in fairly good health. These “women” were barely out of childhood. The hardships that they endured as settlers, included protecting themselves against wild-life like cougar, bear, fox, wolf, and porcupine. 9Lydia Leaming Miller (1839-1939), in her semi-autobiographical Migrating to Oregon in ’66, narrates recollections of her journey from Iowa to Oregon, as she related them to her daughter Lois (Miller) Van Vleck. First, they organized a train of wagons large enough to ensure safe travel across the plains. “We left Adel, Iowa on May 4. The hardest part of the entire journey to me was the leaving of friends and relatives. It wasnt so hard for William for he was going to join many relatives in Oregon, but to me who was leaving everything Id loved from childhood, my father, mother, sisters and brothers to embark on a new and strange undertaking of which even the outcome was doubtful, it was indeed a sad time”. This is the recurrent feeling, expressed by all the women undertaking the move to the west: the sadness at leaving loved ones, unsure about whether there would be a reunion in the distant future. She narrates the long and uncomfortable journey, and constant fear of attack by native Indians, which does not happen, and they reached their destination safely. Though many people suffered unimagined hardships, several made it through and settled down to a new life in the country’s West. The experiences the women pioneers had on the western trails, would have left lasting memories. Their lives changed for ever when they settled down in the hitherto unknown land, and their hardships would have made them stronger to face whatever life had in store for them. REFERENCES Dee, Brown. The American West, Scribner, 1995. Holmes, Kenneth L. (ed). Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1850 Vol I, University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Holmes, Kenneth L. (ed). Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1853-1854 Vol II, University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Holmes, Kenneth L. (ed). Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1862-1865, Vol III, University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula. Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women On the Frontier, University of Oklahoma Press; Oklahoma Paperbacks Ed Edition, 1998. Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula. Women in Waiting In the Westward Movement: Life on the Home Frontier, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Stewart, Elinore Pruitt. Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Publisher: Mariner Books. Stratton, Joanna L. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier, Touchstone Publishers. Teaching the West in the Early American Republic: Old Chestnuts and the Fruits of New Research http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/earlyrepublic/larson.html Wilkerson, Lyn R. American Trails Revisited: Following in the Footsteps of the Western Pioneers, iUniverse, 2003. Wishart, David J. (ed). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Read More