The Oregon Trail ends in racist territory
In 1844, African-American U.S. Army veteran and former Hudson Bay Company fur trapper George Washington Bush set out on the Oregon Trail. He and his German American wife dreamed of a new life in the west. Bush knew the terrain well, drawing from his time as a fur trapper. He successfully led a wagon train of five families across treacherous trail. His party faced difficulties along the trail; hunger, thirst, illness, nature, but also had to deal with suspicion and bigotry of others in the wagon train and at trading posts along the way.
Unfortunately the racism they hoped to escape back east had already found its way to the west; the provisional government in Oregon had already established laws preventing African-Americans from settling or owning land. Bush and his party moved north to settle in the area across the Columbia River, where the Oregon law had no reach.
