Wherefore art thou, Reuben?
Reuben Van Ornum was taken by Indigenous attackers when members of the wagon party left the Owyhee camp. The three girls were not found and likely died in captivity. Two years after the Utter-Van Ornum conflict, California army volunteers located a boy they thought to be Reuben from a Shoshone camp. The Shoshone said he was not Reuben, but the son of a French fur trapper and the chief’s sister.
Before DNA testing, it was a “you said, they said” situation, so Reuben’s uncle took the boy to live with him in Oregon. The boy, if he were, in fact, Reuben Van Ornum, could not adjust to this new life. He disappeared after a few months and may have gone back to live with the Shoshone. In the end, only fifteen out of forty-four members of the Utter-Van Ornum party survived the Oregon Trail.
