The romantic myths attached by later generations to this mighty human tide have obscured the adjustments forced on the pioneers and focused attention on the least significant of the dangers they faced and the hardships they endured. For example, Indians could of course be deadly enemies, but pioneers were more likely to complain that the Indians they encountered were dirty, lazy, and pitiably poor than to worry about the danger of Indian attack. Women tended to fear their strangeness, not their actual behavior. One reported that Indian men were commonly “guiltless of clothing.”
The greater dangers were accidents on the trail, particularly to children, and also unsanitary conditions and exposure to the elements.
Indians dance beneath the cross of a mission in early nineteenth-century San Francisco. Catholic missionaries often redefined Indian customs to accord with Catholic religious principles.
“Going west” had always been laborious, but in the 1840s the distances covered were longer by far and the comforts and conveniences of “civilization” that had to be left behind, being more extensive than those available to earlier generations, tended to be more painful to surrender.
Travel on the plains west of the Mississippi was especially taxing for women. Some assumed tasks traditionally performed by men. “I keep close to my gun and dog,” a woman from Illinois wrote in her diary. But most found the experience disillusioning. Guidebooks promised them that “regular exercise, in the open air. . . gives additional vigor and strength.” But the books did not prepare women for collecting dried buffalo dung for fuel, for the heat and choking dust of summer, for the monotony, the dirt, the cramped quarters. Caring for an infant or a two-year-old in a wagon could be torture week after week on the trail.
In their letters and journals pioneer women mostly complained of being bone weary. “It is impossible to keep anything clean,” one recorded. “Oh dear,” another wrote in her journal, “I do so want to get there, it is now almost four months since we have slept in a house.” What sort of house pioneer family members would actually sleep in when they reached their destination is a question this woman did not record, which was probably fortunate for her peace of mind.
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World History
