The Oregon Trail: The Start

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From The Ox-Team: Or, The Old Oregon Trail, 1852-1906 by Ezra Meeker, 1907.

I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain, assuming that of course we must be with some train.

The Start

When we drove out of Eddyville there was but one wagon in our train, two yoke of four-year-old steers, one yoke of cows, and one extra cow. This cow was the only animal we lost on the whole trip: strayed in the Missouri river bottom before crossing.

And now as to the personnel of our little party. William Buck, who became my partner for the trip, was a man six years my senior, had had some experience on the Plains, and knew well as to an outfit needed, but had no knowledge as to a team of cattle. He was an impulsive man and to some extent excitable, yet withal a man of excellent judgment and as honest as God Almighty makes men.

No lazy bone occupied a place in Buck's body. He was so scrupulously neat and cleanly that some might say he was fastidious, but such was not the case. His aptitude for the camp work and unfitness for handling the team, at once, as we might say by natural selection, divided the cares of the household, sending the married man to the range with the team and the bachelor to the camp. The little wife was in ideal health, and almost as "particular" as Buck (not quite though), while the young husband would be a little more on the slouchy order, if the reader will pardon the use of that word, though more expressive than elegant.

Buck selected the outfit to go into the wagon, while I fitted up the wagon and bought the team.

We had butter, packed in the center of the flour in double sacks; eggs packed in corn meal or flour, to last us nearly five hundred miles; fruit in abundance, and dried pumpkins; a little jerked beef, not too salt, and last, a demijohn of brandy for "medicinal purposes only," as he said, with a merry twinkle of the eye that exposed the subterfuge which he knew I knew without any sign. The little wife had prepared the homemade yeast cake which she knew so well how to make and dry, and we had light bread all the way, baked in a tin reflector instead of the heavy Dutch ovens so much in use on the Plains.

Albeit the butter to a considerable extent melted and mingled with the flour, yet we were not much disconcerted as the short-cake that followed made us almost glad the mishap had occurred. Besides, did we not have plenty of fresh butter churned every day in the can, by the jostle of the wagon, from our own cows? Then the buttermilk. What a luxury, yes, that's the word, a real luxury. I will never, so long as I live, forget that short-cake and corn bread, the puddings and pumpkin pies, and above all the buttermilk. The reader who may smile at this may well recall the fact that it is the small things that make up the happiness of life.

But it was more than that. As we gradually crept out on the Plains and saw the sickness and suffering caused by improper food and in some cases from improper preparation, it gradually dawned on me how blessed I was, with such a partner as Buck and such a life partner as the little wife. Some trains, it soon transpired, were without fruit, and most of them depended upon saleratus for raising their bread. Many had only fat bacon for meat till the buffalo supplied a change, and no doubt but much of the sickness attributed to the cholera was caused by an ill-suited diet.

I am willing to claim credit for the team, every hoof of which reached the Coast in safety. Four four-year-old steers and two cows were sufficient for our light wagon and light outfit, not a pound of which but was useful (except the brandy, of which more anon) and necessary for our comfort. Not one of these had ever been under the yoke, though plenty of "broke" oxen could be had, but generally of that class that had been broken in spirit as well as in training, so, when we got across the river with the cattle strung out to the wagon with Buck on the off side to watch, while I, figuratively speaking, took the reins in hand, we may have presented a ludicrous sight, but did not have time to think whether we did or not, and cared but little so the team would go.

First Day Out

The first day's drive out from Eddyville was a short one, and so far as I now remember the only one on the whole trip where the cattle were allowed to stand in the yoke while the owners lunched and rested. I made it a rule, no matter how short the noon time, to unyoke and let the cattle rest or eat while we rested and ate, and on the present 1906 trip have rigidly adhered to that rule.

An amusing scene was enacted when, at near nightfall, the first camp was made. Buck excitedly insisted we must not unyoke the cattle. "Well, what shall we do?" I said; "they can't live in the yoke always; we will have to unyoke them sometimes."

"Yes, but if you unyoke here you will never catch them again." One word brought on another, till the war of words had almost reached the stage of a dispute, when a stranger, Thomas McAuley, who was camped near by, with a twinkle in his eye I often afterwards saw and will always remember, interfered and said his cattle were gentle and there were three men of his party and that they would help us yoke up in the morning. I gratefully accepted his proffered help, speedily unyoked, and ever after that never a word with the merest semblance of contention passed between Buck and myself.

Scanning McAuley's outfit the next morning I was quite troubled to start out with him, his teams being light, principally cows, and thin in flesh, with wagons apparently light and as frail as the teams. But I soon found that his outfit, like ours, contained no extra weight; that he knew how to care for a team; and was withal an obliging neighbor, as was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions, after having traveled in company for more than a thousand miles, and until his road to California parted from ours, at the big bend of Bear river.

Of the trip through Iowa little remains to be said further than that the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and weather execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the Missouri river.

Crossing the Missouri

“What on earth is that?" exclaimed Margaret McAuley as we approached the ferry landing a few miles below where Omaha now stands.

"It looks for all the world like a great big white flatiron," answered Eliza, the sister, "doesn't it, Mrs. Meeker?" But, leaving the women folks to their similes, we drivers turned our attention more to the teams as we encountered the roads "cut all to pieces" on account of the concentrated travel as we neared the landing and the solid phalanx of wagons that formed the flatiron of white ground.

We here encountered a sight indeed long to be remembered. The "flatiron of white" that Eliza had seen proved to be wagons with their tongues pointing to the landing — a center train with other parallel trains extending back in the rear and gradually covering a wider space the farther back from the river one would go. Several hundred wagons were thus closely interlocked, completely blocking the approach to the landing by new arrivals, whether in companies or single.

All round about were camps of all kinds, from those without covering of any kind to others with comfortable tents, nearly all seemingly intent on merrymaking, while here and there were small groups engaged in devotional services. We soon ascertained these camps contained the outfits in great part of the wagons in line in the great white flatiron, some of whom had been there for two weeks with no apparent probability of securing an early crossing. At the turbulent river front the turbid waters had already swallowed up three victims, one of whom I saw go under the drift of a small island as I stood near his shrieking wife the first day we were there.

Two scows were engaged in crossing the wagons and teams. In this case the stock had rushed to one side of the boat, submerged the gunwale, and precipitated the whole contents into the dangerous river. One yoke of oxen, having reached the farther shore, deliberately entered the river with a heavy yoke on and swam to the Iowa side, and were finally saved by the helping hands of the assembled emigrants.

"What should we do?" was passed around, without answer. Tom McAuley was not yet looked upon as a leader, as was the case later. The sister Margaret, a most determined maiden lady, the oldest of the party and as resolute and brave as the bravest, said to build a boat. But of what should we build it?

While this question was under consideration and a search for material made, one of our party, who had gotten across the river in search of timber for oars, discovered a scow almost completely buried, on the sand spit opposite the landing, "only just a small bit of the railing and a corner of the boat visible." The report seemed to be too good to be true. The next thing to do was to find the owner, which in a search of a day we did, eleven miles down the river. "Yes, if you will stipulate to deliver the boat safely to me after crossing your five wagons and teams, you can have it," said the owner, and a bargain was closed right then and there.

My! but didn't we make the sand fly that night from that boat? By morning we could begin to see the end. Then busy hands began to cut a landing on the perpendicular sandy bank on the lowa side; others were preparing sweeps, and all was bustle and stir and I might say excitement.

By this time it had become noised around that another boat would be put on to ferry people over, and we were besieged with applications from detained emigrants. Finally, the word coming to the ears of the ferrymen, they were foolish enough to undertake to prevent us from crossing ourselves. A writ of replevin or some other process was issued, I never knew exactly what, directing the sheriff to take possession of the boat when landed and which he attempted to do.

I never before nor since attempted to resist an officer of the law, nor joined to accomplish anything by force outside the pale of the law, but when that sheriff put in an appearance and we realized what it meant, there wasn't a man in our party that did not run for his gun to the nearby camp, and it would seem needless to add we did not need to use them. As if by magic a hundred guns were in sight. The sheriff withdrew, and the crossing went peaceably on till all our wagons were safely landed. But we had another danger to face: we came to know there would be an attempt to take the boat from us, not as against us, but against the owner, and but for the adroit management of McAuley and my brother Oliver, who had joined us, we would have been unable to fulfil our engagements with the owner.

Meeker, Ezra. The Ox-Team: Or, The Old Oregon Trail, 1852-1906. The Author, 1907.

Ezra Meeker

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