Oregon Trail: The Great Overland Migration to the Northwest

The Oregon Trail was the main overland route that carried American emigrant families about 2,000 miles from Missouri to the Pacific Northwest between the early 1840s and the late 1860s. The Great Migration of 1843, when around 1,000 settlers made the journey with their wagons and cattle, opened the floodgates. The trail helped the United States win the Oregon Country from Britain, but it brought disease, competition for resources and eventually war to the Native nations whose lands it crossed.

Background

In the early 19th century the Oregon Country, stretching from northern California to Alaska’s southern border, was claimed by both Britain and the United States, which agreed in 1818 to occupy it jointly. Its main European presence was the fur trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company, based at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806 had already reached the Pacific overland, and fur trappers later found the easy crossing of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass in what is now Wyoming.

Missionaries followed the traders. In 1836 Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, together with Henry and Eliza Spalding, travelled to the Columbia Plateau; Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding are often described as the first white American women to cross the continent overland. Letters, lectures and books praising Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley spread through the Midwest, where the economic depression after the Panic of 1837 left many farmers in debt.

The Great Migration of 1843

Small parties went west in 1841 and 1842, but the first large wave set out from near Independence, Missouri, in May 1843. Estimates put it at about 875 to 1,000 people with roughly 120 wagons and several thousand cattle. Among them were Peter Burnett, later the first governor of the state of California, and Jesse Applegate, whose essay A Day with the Cow Column described the daily routine of the march. Marcus Whitman, returning west, helped guide the party over the difficult later stages.

The success of 1843 led to much larger migrations in the following years. In 1846 the Oregon Treaty settled the boundary with Britain along the 49th parallel, and Congress created the Oregon Territory in 1848. The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 offered free land to white settlers, up to 640 acres for a married couple, which drew still more families. Oregon became a state in 1859.

The route

Most emigrants gathered in the spring at Missouri River towns such as Independence, Westport or, later, Council Bluffs. The trail followed the Platte River across the plains of present-day Nebraska, past landmarks such as Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff, to Fort Laramie in Wyoming. It then climbed the Sweetwater valley past Independence Rock, which emigrants hoped to reach by 4 July to stay on schedule, and crossed the Continental Divide at South Pass.

Beyond the Rockies the route ran by Fort Bridger or the Sublette Cutoff to Fort Hall in Idaho, then along the dry, rugged Snake River plain. The Blue Mountains and the Columbia River Gorge were among the hardest stretches. Until the Barlow Road opened around Mount Hood in 1846, many families had to float their wagons down the Columbia on rafts, a dangerous final leg. The journey ended at Oregon City and the Willamette Valley.

Other trails branched off the same corridor. The California Trail split away beyond South Pass or Fort Hall, and the Mormon Trail ran along the north bank of the Platte to Salt Lake City, founded in 1847.

Life on the trail

Emigrants travelled in ordinary farm wagons fitted with canvas covers, often called prairie schooners, usually pulled by oxen, which were slower than horses but stronger and cheaper. The wagons were packed with flour, bacon, coffee, tools and seeds, so most people walked the whole way. A good day’s travel was about 15 to 20 miles.

Families organised into companies with elected captains and rules, though many broke apart in quarrels. Women cooked over buffalo-dung fires, cared for children and the sick, and in many cases gave birth on the road. Diaries and letters describe boredom and exhaustion as well as wonder at the landscape.

Dangers and deaths

Disease was the greatest killer. Cholera swept the trail in the years around 1849–1852, when the gold rush multiplied traffic, and could kill a person within a day. Accidents were the next most common cause: people were crushed under wagon wheels, drowned at river crossings or shot by careless handling of guns. Historians commonly estimate that somewhere between 4 and 10 per cent of emigrants died, and graves lined the route.

Bad decisions about shortcuts could be fatal. The Donner Party, heading for California in 1846, took an untested cutoff and became trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada.

Impact on Native nations

The trail crossed the lands of the Pawnee, Lakota, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Bannock, Cayuse, Nez Perce and many other peoples. In the early years encounters were mostly peaceful: Native people traded horses, food and guidance, and helped with river crossings, often charging tolls.

As traffic grew, wagon trains stripped grass and timber along the river valleys, disturbed bison herds and brought diseases such as measles, smallpox and cholera. In 1847 a measles epidemic killed many Cayuse, who blamed the Whitman mission; on 29 November 1847 a group of Cayuse killed Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and 11 others, setting off the Cayuse War. On the plains, the US government tried to protect the route with forts and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, which defined tribal territories. Violent clashes increased in the 1850s and 1860s, and the trail became part of a wider process of displacement that pushed Native nations onto reservations.

Myths and facts

Popular images of the trail come largely from later films and novels. Wagon trains rarely formed defensive circles against attack; they circled at night mainly to corral livestock. The heavy Conestoga wagons of Pennsylvania were seldom used, being too large for the route. And although many emigrants feared attack, the historian John Unruh found that violent clashes killed about 360 emigrants and over 400 Native Americans on the overland trails between 1840 and 1860, far fewer than died of disease.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1836: The Whitmans and Spaldings travel overland to the Columbia Plateau.
• 1843, May: The Great Migration sets out from Missouri.
• 1843, 2 May: Settlers at Champoeg vote to form a provisional government for Oregon.
• 1846, 15 June: The Oregon Treaty divides the Oregon Country at the 49th parallel.
• 1847, 29 November: The Whitman killings at Waiilatpu lead to the Cayuse War.
• 1848, 14 August: Congress creates the Oregon Territory.
• 1851, September: The Fort Laramie Treaty is signed with Plains nations.
• 1859, 14 February: Oregon becomes the 33rd state.
• 1869, 10 May: The first transcontinental railroad is completed.

Why it matters

The Oregon Trail turned the American claim to the Pacific Northwest into a reality on the ground and became a central story of westward expansion. Its wagon ruts, still visible in places, recall the endurance of emigrant families, while its history also records the heavy losses suffered by Native nations. Its era closed with the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.