<h3>THE PIONEER ARMY OF THE PLAINS</h3>
<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">During</span> the ox-team days a mighty army of pioneers
went West. In the year that we crossed (1852), when the
migration was at its height, this army made an unbroken
column fully five hundred miles long. We knew by the
inscribed dates found on Independence Rock and elsewhere
that there were wagons three hundred miles ahead of us,
and the throng continued crossing the river for more than
a month after we had crossed it.</div>
<p>How many people this army comprised cannot be
known; the roll was never called. History has no record
of a greater number of emigrants ever making so long a
journey as did these pioneers. There must have been
three hundred and fifty thousand in the years of the great
rush overland, from 1843 to 1857. Careful estimates of
the total migration westward from 1843 to 1869, when the
first railroad across the continent was completed, make
the number nearly half a million.</p>
<p>The animals driven over the Plains during these years<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></SPAN></span>
were legion. Besides those that labored under the yoke,
in harness, and under saddle, there was a vast herd of
loose stock. A conservative estimate would be not less
than six animals to the wagon, and surely there were
three loose animals to each one in the teams. Sixteen
hundred wagons passed us while we waited for Oliver to
recover. With these teams must have been nearly ten
thousand beasts of burden and thirty thousand head of
loose stock.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder that the old trail was worn so deep
that even now in places it looks like a great canal? At
one point near Split Rock, Wyoming, I found the road
cut so deep in the solid sandstone that the kingbolt of
my wagon dragged on the high center.</p>
<p>The pioneer army was a moving mass of human beings
and dumb brutes, at times mixed in inextricable confusion,
a hundred feet wide or more. Sometimes two columns
of wagons, traveling on parallel lines and near each other,
would serve as a barrier to prevent loose stock from crossing;
but usually there would be a confused mass of cows,
young cattle, horses, and men afoot moving along the
outskirts. Here and there would be the drivers of loose
stock, some on foot and some on horseback: a young girl,
maybe, riding astride and with a younger child behind
her, going here and there after an intractable cow, while
the mother could be seen in the confusion lending a helping
hand. As in a thronged city street, no one seemed to look
to the right or to the left, or to pay much attention, if any,
to others, all being bent only on accomplishing the task
in hand.</p>
<p>The dust was intolerable. In calm weather it would
rise so thick at times that the lead team of oxen could
not be seen from the wagon. Like a London fog, it seemed
thick enough to cut. Then again, the steady flow of wind<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></SPAN></span>
through the South Pass would hurl the dust and sand like
fine hail, sometimes with force enough to sting the face
and hands.</p>
<p>Sometimes we had trying storms that would wet us to
the skin in no time. One such I remember well, being
caught in it while out on watch. The cattle traveled so
fast that it was difficult to keep up with them. I could
do nothing but follow, as it would have been impossible
to turn them. I have always thought of this storm as a
cloudburst. Anyhow, in an incredibly short time there was
not a dry thread left on me. My boots were as full of
water as if I had been wading over boot-top depth,
and the water ran through my hat as though it were a
sieve. I was almost blinded in the fury of the wind and
water. Many tents were leveled by this storm. One of our
neighboring trains suffered great loss by the sheets of
water on the ground floating away camp equipage, ox
yokes, and all loose articles; and they narrowly escaped
having a wagon engulfed in the raging torrent that came
so unexpectedly upon them.</p>
<p>Fording a river was usually tiresome, and sometimes
dangerous. I remember fording the Loup fork of the
Platte with a large number of wagons fastened together
with ropes or chains, so that if a wagon got into trouble
the teams in front would help to pull it out. The quicksand
would cease to sustain the wheels so suddenly that the
wagon would drop a few inches with a jolt, and up again
the wheel would come as new sand was struck; then down
again it would go, up and down, precisely as if the wagons
were passing over a rough corduroy road that "nearly
jolted the life out of us," as the women folks said after it
was over, and no wonder, for the river at this point was
half a mile wide.</p>
<p>Many of the pioneers crossed rivers in their wagon boxes<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></SPAN></span>
and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference
between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and
that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the
wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat
they are on the inside.</p>
<p>The number of casualties in that army of emigrants I
hesitate to guess at. Shall we say that ten per cent fell
on the way? Many old plainsmen would think that
estimate too low; yet ten per cent would give us five
thousand lives as one year's toll paid for the peopling of
the Oregon Country. Mrs. Cecilia McMillen Adams, late
of Hillsboro, Oregon, kept a painstaking diary when she
crossed the Plains in 1852. She counted the graves passed
and noted down the number. In this diary, published in
full by the Oregon Pioneer Association, I find the following
entries:</p>
<div class='center'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Entries">
<tr><td align='left'>June 14. </td><td align='left'>Passed seven new-made graves.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>June 16. </td><td align='left'>Passed eleven new graves.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>June 17. </td><td align='left'>Passed six new graves.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>June 18. </td><td align='left'>We have passed twenty-one new graves today.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>June 19. </td><td align='left'>Passed thirteen graves today.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>Junev20. </td><td align='left'>Passed ten graves.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left'>June 21. </td><td align='left'>No report.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left' valign='top'>June 22. </td><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>Passed seven graves. If we should go by the camping grounds, we should<br/>see five times as many graves as we do.</div>
</td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>This report of Mrs. Adams's, coupled with the facts
that a parallel column from which we have no report was
traveling up the south side of the river, and that the
outbreak of cholera had taken place originally in this
column coming from the southeast, fully confirms the
estimate of five thousand deaths on the Plains in 1852.
It is probably under rather than over the actual number.</p>
<p>To the emigrants the fact that all the graves were new-made<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></SPAN></span>
brought an added touch of sadness. The graves of
previous years had disappeared, leveled by the storms of
wind or rain, by the hoofs of the stock, or possibly by
ravages of the hungry wolf. Many believed that the
Indians had robbed the graves for the clothing on the
bodies. Whatever the cause, all, or nearly all, graves of
previous years were lost, and we knew that the last resting
places of those that we might leave behind would also
be lost by the next year.</p>
<p>One of the incidents that made a profound impression
upon the minds of all was the meeting with eleven wagons
returning, and not a man left in the entire train. All the
men had died and had been buried on the way, and the
women and children were returning to their homes alone
from a point well up on the Platte, below Fort Laramie.
The difficulties of the return trip were multiplied on
account of the throng moving westward. How those
women succeeded in their attempt, or what became of
them, we never knew.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-052.png" width-obs="256" height-obs="325" alt="Walking by the ox" title="" /></div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-053.png" width-obs="500" height-obs="294" alt="In an instant each Indian had dropped to the side of his horse." title="" /> <span class="caption">In an instant each Indian had dropped to the side of his horse.</span></div>
<h2>CHAPTER SEVEN</h2>
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