Recently, my husband and I took a road trip in a 300 hp Jeep Grand Cherokee to visit friends and family and sightsee the Midwest, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Eastern Seaboard. With autumn upon us, we packed the SUV with clothes and extra gear for inclement weather. A small ice chest and picnic basket held a stash of food, utensils, and paper products for eating along the road. Other times we pulled off to get a bite to eat. Gas and hotels were plentiful.
We reveled in comfort on our twenty-first-century high-speed freeways, loving our heated seats on cold mornings and audiobooks downloaded on an iPhone to keep us from boredom on long stretches of road. Minus the days we enjoyed with friends and sightseeing, we spent seventy-two hours on the road and drove forty-six hundred miles from door to door.
Our trip provoked reflection on how my characters fared, migrating across the continent in the nineteenth century on the Oregon and Overland Trails in a covered wagon.
Abandoning their homes in the east, pioneers left most belongings behind in favor of necessities to sustain them throughout their travels. They drove in covered wagons—Praire Schooners—wooden boxes that measured four feet wide, ten feet long, and three feet deep.
The box sat on four wheels made of wood, iron bands fastened to the outside rims, and was covered with a double-thick canvas coated with linseed oil for waterproofing. They tied the ends for privacy or protection from the elements
Prairie Schooners weighed thirteen hundred pounds and required teams of horses, mules, or oxen to pull. Poor suspension and rough roads meant people preferred to walk alongside the wagons rather than endure lurching in the box. They wore through their leather boots quickly, tolerating run-down shoes. Traveling two miles per hour—fifteen to twenty miles per day—the two-thousand-mile trip took four to six months, depending on the weather.
Pioneers constructed their wagons with interior storage; some had false bottoms with extra storage below. Few towns and scarce services meant carting hundreds of pounds of flour, lard, bacon, beans, fruit, coffee, and salt. They also carried cornmeal, eggs, potatoes, rice, yeast, and a large barrel of water tied to the side of the wagon. Halfway across the hot, barren prairie, water often ran out, and they collected it crossing rivers or during rare rainstorms. Cattle and people withered without it.
They also carried a reflector oven (tin kitchen) to cook meals, consisting of meat hunted along the trail, baked bread, hard tack, beans, bacon, and dried fruits. Without an ice source, they preserved their food with salt, and without kindling on the prairie, they collected buffalo chips (dried animal feces) to fire up the reflector oven and start campfires.
Movies and historical fiction novels give romantic notions of travel on the Oregon Trail. But diseases such as cholera, accidents, swollen rivers, and exhaustion took nine out of ten lives. The Oregon Trail afforded little time for leisure. Most pioneers spent their days walking the trail, tending camp, and fending off various dangers, including snake bites and nefarious folks stealing vital resources. Suicide was common.
Only faith and long-suffering kept the pioneers’ hopes and dreams alive. They deserve great honor and respect for risking all to obtain a better life in the west.
(c) 2022 Donna Wichelman
The Sojourners’ Quest
Novelette Prequel to the Singing Silver Mine Series
Sarah Byrne left everything behind to escape the poverty of her Irish homeland. But will she make a better life in America and find love?
Born into the lower class of Irish society, Sarah Byrne had no dowry, no chance of marrying well, no way of earning a living to rise out of her miry bog. When best friend Mary insists she must emigrate to America to make better than butter and egg money and find a man to marry, Sarah risks her life on a disease-ridden ship to sail across the Atlantic.
But leaving the land and people she loves proves more difficult than she had thought as Sarah combs the streets of New York for a job, and everywhere she turns, the signs read, “No Irish Need Apply.” Her only option: become the nanny for two children of a widowed minister who has accepted a position in the Rocky Mountains.
But will Sarah have the strength to cross the Great American Prairie in a covered wagon during the dusty heat of summer? And will her grief-stricken employer ever return the profound feelings she has developed for him?
Find out how and where love blooms in this novelette prequel to the Singing Silver Mine Series, an exciting new Historical Romance series that will take you on a journey into our deepest longings for love and contentment.
This novelette is a Giveaway. You may click on the following link to receive your free copy. https://BookHip.com/BGKHGJN
Donna worked as a communications professional before turning to full-time writing. Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in various inspirational and secular publications, and she has two self-published books available on Amazon.com.
Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of her love of history and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic—an international college in Wales, U.K. She still loves to explore the peoples and cultures of the world and views her writing as a ministry, developing plots that show how God’s love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, forgiveness, and belonging in a world that often withholds second chances.
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So true how we romanticize past eras, unaware of the hardships and suffering. Thanks for bringing history to life!
This was an interesting post. There’s no doubt about the hardships the pioneers endured, but I question the ninety percent mortality rate you cited. Where did you find that statistic?