The Trail To Oregon

When I started the Trail To Oregon, the research and thousands of facts and depressing incidents was almost overpowering. Getting into the wagons with them, fording the Rivers and walking barefoot with them was a struggle. They were sleeping in wagons laden with food and furniture, children and clothing, guns and forgotten belongings buried under blankets and animal feed. Their lives were fragile and the perils from nature and other men cost the lives of ten percent of all the travelers as they struggled from Missouri to Oregon.
I wondered at first what kind of story I could extract from the bare facts, from the perilous threat the pilgrims presented to each other. But the courage of the men and women that walked across the states barefoot, that starved and bled and struggled, told me their stories as I searched their dark sunken eyes. They were possibly the bravest Americans very much like the men that fought alongside General Washington except the bravery and courage was shared by the women that shouldered most of the work.
I was drawn into the struggle and felt the anguish when their children died, when a woman was accidentally shot. When mothers chewed leaves from the trees and fed the food to their husbands and children. Their tattered clothes hung like potato sacks on gaunt bodies long before Oregon was in sight as they clutched their rifles and bibles praying for the strength and endurance to survive and keep the children alive.
Wooden crosses dotted the trail where weak, sick and unfortunate souls succumbed to sickness, accidental shootings, and the treacherous River crossings. The overland trail to Oregon was not for the meek or faint of heart, even the healthy and robust found prayer a necessity to bolster their strength for the months it took to reach Oregon. Come and share their courage, walk with us.