Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 1

Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail.

by Ezra Meeker and Howard R. Driggs.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR

OUT in the state of Was.h.i.+ngton recently, a veteran of more than ninety years stepped into an aeroplane with the mail pilot and flew from Seattle to Victoria in British Columbia, and back again. The aged pioneer took the trip with all the zest of youth and returned enthusiastic over the adventure.

This youthful veteran was Ezra Meeker, of Oregon Trail fame, who throughout his long, courageous, useful life has ever kept in the vanguard of progress. Seventy years ago he became one of the trail-blazers of the Farther West. In 1852, with his young wife and child, he made the hazardous journey over plains and mountains all the way from Iowa to Oregon by ox team. Then, after fifty-four years of struggle in helping to develop the country beyond the Cascades, this undaunted pioneer decided to reblaze the almost lost Oregon Trail.

An old "prairie schooner" was rebuilt, and a yoke of st.u.r.dy oxen was trained to make the trip. With one companion and a faithful dog, the veteran started out. It took nearly two years, but the ox-team journey from Was.h.i.+ngton, the state, to Was.h.i.+ngton, our national capital, was finally accomplished.

The chief purpose of Mr. Meeker in this enterprise was to induce people to mark the famous old highway. To him it represented a great battle ground in our nation's struggle to win and hold the West. The story of the Oregon Trail, he rightly felt, is an American epic which must be preserved. Through his energy and inspiration and the help of thousands of loyal men and women, school boys and school girls, substantial monuments have now been placed along the greater part of the old pioneer way.

Two years ago it was my privilege to meet the author in his home city.

Our mutual interest in pioneer stories brought us together in an effort to preserve some of them, and several days were spent in talking over the old times and visiting historic spots.

Everywhere we went there was a glowing welcome for "Father Meeker," as he was called by some of his home folks, while "Uncle Ezra" was the name used affectionately by others. The ovation given him when he arose to speak to the teachers and students of the high school in Puyallup--the city he founded--was evidence of the high regard in which he is held by those who know him best.

Other boys and girls and older folk all over the country would enjoy meeting Ezra Meeker and hearing of his experiences. Since this is not possible, the record of what he has seen and done is given to us in this little volume.

The book makes the story of the Oregon Trail live again. This famous old way to the West was traced in the beginning by wild animals--the bear, the elk, the buffalo, the soft-footed wolf, and the coyote. Trailing after these animals in quest of food and skins, came the Indians. Then followed the fur-trading mountaineers, the home-seeking pioneers, the gold seekers, the soldiers, and the cowboys. Now railroad trains, automobiles, and even aeroplanes go whizzing along over parts of the old highway.

Every turn in the Trail holds some tale of danger and daring or romance.

Most of the stories have been forever lost in the pa.s.sing away of those who took part in this ox-team migration across our continent. For that reason the accounts that have been saved are the more precious.

Ezra Meeker has done a signal service for our country in reblazing the Oregon Trail. He has accomplished an even greater work in helping to humanize our history and vitalize the geography of our land, by giving to us, through this little volume, a vivid picture of the heroic pioneering of the Farther West.

HOWARD R. DRIGGS

THE WORLD'S GREATEST TRAIL

WORN deep and wide by the migration of three hundred thousand people, lined by the graves of twenty thousand dead, witness of romance and tragedy, the Oregon Trail is unique in history and will always be sacred to the memories of the pioneers. Reaching the summit of the Rockies upon an evenly distributed grade of eight feet to the mile, following the watercourse of the River Platte and tributaries to within two miles of the summit of the South Pa.s.s, through the Rocky Mountain barrier, descending to the tidewaters of the Pacific, through the Valleys of the Snake and the Columbia, the route of the Oregon Trail points the way for a great National Highway from the Missouri River to Puget Sound: a roadway of greatest commercial importance, a highway of military preparedness, a route for a lasting memorial to the pioneers, thus combining utility and sentiment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature: Ezra Meeker]

PART ONE

FROM OHIO TO THE COAST

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTH AMERICA IN 1830]

This map shows the main divisions of North America as they were when Ezra Meeker was born. The shading in the Arctic region shows how much there was still for the explorers to discover.

The Oregon Country is shown as part of the United States, although the whole region was in dispute between the United States and Great Britain.

In the United States itself the settled part of the country was east of the dotted line that runs from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico. West of this line was the Indian country, with only a few forts as outposts of settlement. Several territories had been organized, but Oregon, Missouri, and Nebraska were little more than names for vast undetermined regions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The old Meeker homestead near Elizabeth, New Jersey.]

CHAPTER ONE

BACK TO BEGINNINGS

I WAS born in Huntsville, Butler County, Ohio, on December 29, 1830.

That was, at this writing, more than ninety years ago.

My father's ancestors came from England in 1637. In 1665 they settled near Elizabeth City, New Jersey, building there a very substantial house which stood till almost 1910. More than a score of hardy soldiers from this family fought for the Colonies in the War of Independence. They were noted for their stalwart strength, steady habits, and patriotic ardor.

Both my parents were sincere, though not austere, Christian people.

Father inherited to the full the st.u.r.dy traits of his ancestors. I well remember that for three years, during our life in Indiana, he worked eighteen hours a day as a miller. For this hard service he received only twenty dollars a month and bran for the cow. Yet out of the ordeal he came seemingly as strong and healthy as when he entered it.

My mother's maiden name was Phoebe Baker. English and Welsh strains of blood ran in her veins. Her father settled in Butler County, Ohio, in the year 1804, or thereabouts. My mother, like my father, could and did endure continuous long hours of severe labor without much discomfort. I have known her frequently to patch and mend our clothing until very late at night, and yet she would invariably be up in the morning by four to resume her labors.

Small wonder that with such parents and with such early surroundings I am able to say that for fifty-eight years I was never sick in bed a single day. I, too, have endured long hours of labor during my whole life, and I can truthfully say that I have always liked to do my work and that I never watched for the sun to go down to relieve me from the burden of labor. My mother said I was "always the busiest young 'un" she ever saw, by which she meant that I was restless from the beginning--born so.

According to the best information obtainable, I was born in a log cabin, where the fireplace was nearly as wide as the cabin. The two doors on opposite sides permitted the horse, dragging the backlog, to enter at one and then to go out at the other. Of course, the solid floor of split logs defied injury from such treatment.

The skillet and the Dutch oven were used instead of the cook stove to bake the pone or johnny cake, to parch the corn, or to fry the venison which was then obtainable in the wilds of Ohio.

A curtain at the farther end of the cabin marked the confines of a bedchamber for the "old folks." The older children climbed the ladder nailed to the wall to get to the loft floored with loose clapboards that rattled when trodden upon. The straw beds were so near the roof that the patter of the rain made music to the ear, and the spray of the falling water would often baptize the "tow-heads" left uncovered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bringing in the backlog.]

Our diet was simple, and the mush pot was a great factor in our home life. A large, heavy iron pot was hung on the crane in the chimney corner, where the mush would slowly bubble and sputter over or near a bed of oak coals for half the afternoon. And such mus.h.!.+--always made from yellow corn meal and cooked three hours or more. This, eaten with plenty of fresh, rich milk, furnished the supper for the children. Tea?

Not to be thought of. Sugar? It was too expensive--cost fifteen to eighteen cents a pound, and at a time when it took a week's labor to earn as much money as a day's labor would earn now. Cheap mola.s.ses we had sometimes, but not often, meat not more than once a day, but eggs in abundance.

Everything father had to sell was low-priced, while everything mother must buy at the store was high. Wheat brought twenty-five cents a bushel; corn, fifteen cents; pork, two and two and a half cents a pound, with bacon sometimes used as fuel by reckless, racing steamboat captains of the Ohio and Mississippi.

My earliest recollection, curiously enough, is of my schoolboy days, although I had so few. I was certainly not five years old when a drunken, brutal teacher undertook to spank me because I did not speak a word plainly. That is the first fight of which I have any recollection.

I could hardly remember that but for the witnesses, one of them my oldest brother, who saw the struggle. My teeth, he said, did excellent work and drew blood quite freely.

What a spectacle--a half-drunken teacher maltreating his pupils! But then, that was the time before a free school system. It was the time when even the parson would not hesitate to take a "wee drop," and when, if the decanter was not on the sideboard, the jug and gourd served as well in the field or in the house. In our neighborhood, to harvest without whisky in the field was not to be thought of; n.o.body ever heard of a log-rolling or barn-raising without whisky. Be it said to the everlasting honor of my father, that he set himself firmly against the practice. He said his grain should rot in the field before he would supply whisky to his harvest hands. I have only one recollection of ever tasting any alcoholic liquor in my boyhood days.