10 Eye Opening Details about Life on the Oregon Trail

Death was always stalking the pioneers

Loren Hastings was one of the many thousands of Americans who completed the Oregon Trail. In 1847, after settling in the city of Portland, he looked back on his days on the move. He wrote: “I look back upon the long, dangerous and precarious emigrant road with a degree of romance and pleasure’ but to others, it is the graveyard of their friends.” And, one might add, of their loved ones too. Not for nothing is the Oregon Trail route known as the ‘biggest graveyard in the United States’. Quite simply, anyone who set off on the trail had no guarantee of completing the journey.

In fact, an estimated one in ten people who set off on the Oregon Trail did not survive. What’s more, among children, the odds dropped to one in five. Notably, far from ambushes or other violent attacks, by far the biggest causes of death were disease and accidents. In many cases, such accidents involved firearms – for, while actual premeditated shootings or murders were extremely rare, mishaps with loaded guns really weren’t. Animals actually killed more people on the Oregon Trail than humans did. There are countless tales of unfortunate souls being booted or trampled by horses or oxen, while wild animals, and above all rattlesnakes, also cut many a traveler’s journey short.

According to some estimates, some 65,000 people died on the Oregon Trail during its peak years. That means that, if they were buried at even spacing along the way, there would be one grave every 50 yards. And, in some ways, there actually is. In many cases, these pioneers died close enough to towns or settlements to be buried in a proper churchyard or cemetery. Often, though, they would simply be buried by the side of the road or, in a macabre twist, under the trail itself. Indeed, it wasn’t uncommon to see tell-tale, human-shaped bumps along the trail. But these were far from macabre. Instead, they were practical: When someone died, their bodies were left in the way of wagons. This was, the heavy wheels could run over the bodies and help erase any scents, keeping hungry wolves at bay.

Love often blossomed on the Trail

There’s a good reason why the Oregon Trail has been used as a backdrop for many a romance novel. It had adventure, it had danger and excitement. And, above all, it was a place where love could blossom. After all, many of the early pioneers were young – many were hormonal teenagers or young adults – and single, and they were forced to travel together in close-knit little communities for weeks at a time. Small wonder, then, that many people fell in love on the way to Oregon, often forging relationships that would last a lifetime.

Many couples decided to get hitched before they set off on the journey of a lifetime – so, in a way, the Oregon Trail was actually a honeymoon journey for countless newlyweds. But for those who fell in love after they set off, they would usually have to wait until their wagons pulled into a settlement where a marriage ceremony could be performed. As a result, the small towns along the Platte River and Fort Laramie especially, became wedding towns, hosting dozens of ceremonies a month.

While young couples may have been able to get married on the Oregon Trail, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to enjoy any privacy as newlyweds. If they were lucky, the couple might get a wagon of their own, at least on the night of their wedding. But even then, their friends and relatives might play practical jokes on them. This was so commonplace, in fact, that there was even a term for it: A “shivaree” was when friends or relatives would make a huge din after the happy couple retired for the night. They might bang pots and pans right outside the marital wagon, or they could even drag the pair out and force them to take part in a drunken, mocking, parade. All in the best possible spirits, of course, and couples were eventually left in peace to consummate their unions.

For those men not lucky enough to have a wife to start the journey with or to find love on the way, there were always the brothels of the Oregon Trail. While many histories – and the classic computer game based on the trail – gloss over this part of history, not all pioneers were clean-living Christian folk. At almost every town and settlement along the way, men could make use of pubs and brothels. At Fort Laramie, for example, while happy couples got hitched, the single men would have gone to the Hog Ranch bordello. Cheyenne was also a hotbed of vice, and the reason why many men arrived in Oregon with much less money than they initially hoped to have.

You could find God on the road

The Road to Damascus it wasn’t. But still, like St Paul in the Bible, many people did indeed ‘see the light’ and converted to Christianity on the Trail to Oregon. This may have been in response to the natural beauty they saw all around them. Or it could have been that the vast expanses of empty land made them feel small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But in the vast majority of cases, however, people turned to God on the Trail after meeting, or even traveling alongside one of the many, many Christian missionaries who headed west during the Trail’s heyday.

In fact, the history of the Oregon Trail – and indeed, the history of North American exploration – is closely linked to the spread of Christianity throughout the country. As soon as explorers and pioneers started heading West, missionaries started to follow. Inevitably, they would try to convert anyone they met to Christianity. The mountain guides working along the route would call these missionaries ‘crazy do-gooders’. However, they both benefitted from their close connections: The guides could show the missionaries the directions to settlements, including Native American settlements, for which they would be paid. Notably, one of the first missionaries to make the journey was Marcus Whitman. He traveled the Oregon Trail in 1836. Accompanying him was his wife, Narcissa. She would become the first European-American woman to cross the Rocky Mountains, all because of her faith.

For their part, the missionaries not only saved souls along the Oregon Trail, they also served as an early-day advertising agency for the route. Many of them sent letters back to their families in the East. In them, they would praise the beauty of Oregon and the fertility of the soil. They even maintained the rumor that new settlers would automatically receive 640 acres of land just for making the move.

Not all Native Americans were out to kill you!

According to popular perception, the biggest danger facing pioneers on the Oregon Trail was being attacked by Native Americans. Not so. Sure, the early pioneers did certainly fear the various tribes whose land they were to cross on the way to Oregon. But this was more due to the countless stories of clashes between wagon trains and Native Americans – most of them exaggerated, to say the least – and not really a reflection of daily life on the trail. In fact, relations between Native Americans and pioneers were often friendly or at the very least cordial.

The two parties had good reason to remain on good terms, after all. The pioneers needed goods and food, and the Native Americans were happy to trade. Native American tribes could often be hired as guides in cases of bad weather or blocked roads. Indeed, for the early pioneers, Native Americans were a valuable source of help, without whom they might not have made it. For instance, the diaries of some pioneers tell how Native Americans would be waiting at rivers with canoes to help pioneers make the crossing. Or, in some cases, they served as porters, helping out those pioneers who were traveling on foot with their luggage in exchange for a small fee. There was also a vibrant trading scene. The Native Americans would trade buffalo hides or furs and might even sell horses in exchange for beads and tobacco.

However, sometimes the pioneers’ worst fears were realized. In one much-publicized case, the Ward Train was attacked by Shoshones. In all, 19 pioneers were killed, many of them having been tortured beforehand. But the violence wasn’t all one-way. In fact, one of the biggest blood baths that occurred on the Oregon Trail was actually carried out by the pioneers. When a cow strayed into a Sioux village, the people living there slaughtered it and ate it. This infuriated the cow’s owner, a man by the name of Gratten. Even though the Sioux apologized and even offered Gratten a horse as compensation, he was not willing to back down. He and his men fired on the Sioux. Even though they didn’t fight back, the pioneers showed no mercy, killing several people, including the Sioux chief, Chief Conquering Bear. Enraged by this, the Native Americans finally retaliated, killing 29 men, including Gratten. The First Sioux War had begun.

You would get nowhere fast

These days, a 2,000-mile overland trip across North America can be done in a couple of days. But the Oregon Trail was more a marathon than a sprint. This really was an epic adventure and a true test of endurance. It wasn’t so much a question of the distance, huge though this was. Indeed, even the fastest wagon could only really travel around 15 miles in a day, meaning the whole trip would take between four and six months to complete. Rather, it was the terrain involved that made the Oregon Trail such an ordeal – and the reason why so many people never actually made it to the end but perished along the way.

So tough was the trail that getting over the Rockies weren’t the only obstacle – though they were a formidable foe. Most pioneers reached the famous mountain range around three months into their journey, by which point they would most likely have been tired, hungry and perhaps even low on supplies. But the Rockies were a cakewalk compared to the Blue Mountains. Here, progress was extra slow, and extra dangerous, too. Men would be required to use ropes to haul wagons up the mountains, with women and children following behind, laying down rocks to ensure they didn’t roll backwards. Progress was glacial and accidents were all too common.

On the Oregon Trail, men were at the mercy of the elements. However, you could improve your chances of making it safely to Oregon by planning accordingly. Timing was everything. In the early days, some pioneers would set off as soon as winter ended. Big mistake. By this point, the grasses of the plains hadn’t grown long enough. Oxen starved and died, leaving wagons stranded. Alternatively, parties leaving it too late ran the very real risk of being hit by winter. There are many instances of wagon trains becoming stuck in snow or trapped by ice up in the mountains, with many even freezing to death.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“Facts of the Oregon Trail”: USA Today, April 2018.

“Life and Death on the Oregon Trail”. The Oregon-California Trails Association.

“What Animals Were Found on the Oregon Trail?” Meg Jernigan, USA Today, March 2018.

“5 ‘Oregon Trail’ Diseases You Could Still Get.” Alex Gardner, Men’s Health, April 2014.

“The True Tale of the Oregon Trail”. Allison Williams, Seattle Met, February 2018.

“The bloody, sexy, drunken Oregon Trail”. Phil Edwards, Vox, March 2016.