Читать книгу The Overland Trail онлайн

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After the gold rush of 1848 set in, as many as twenty thousand were on the Overland Trail in a year, with at least eleven thousand men on horses and families under the tent of the covered wagon, oxen for beef, cows for milk trailing behind or parallel. When you add these totals to the Mormon migration and Oregon Pioneers, it matters little how many reached their destination, how many turned back discouraged, how many perished by the way. It gives a faint idea of what the Overland Trail was in the great epic of a nation.

In 1847, two thousand Mormons were on the trail, some moving with hand carts across the plains. By 1856, the Mormons were on the trail literally in thousands. That treaty with the Pawnees stood them in mighty good stead. By 1847, five thousand Oregon Pioneers were on the Trail, a thousand Californians, though gold had not become the magnet of the stampede that followed in the next few years. Wagons required rough corduroy bridges across some streams and mud holes; from which one Pawnee got a bright new inspiration. He would post himself on the bridge and demand toll to cross. A long rawhide mule whip, or rifle handed out by the wife in the covered wagon usually sent him scampering. Long dresses became Turkish bloomers. Boots were exchanged for the easier moccasin and hats for sun bonnets extemporized from superfluous petticoats to screen the face from the blazing sun and awful powder of cloudy dust.