Adventuresome Women on the Oregon Trail: 1840-1867

Abstract

From 1840 to 1867 approximately 350,000 women, children, and men trekked across the American continent to Oregon. Most historians have considered this emigration a male-oriented project; women's participation, they have suggested by omission or outright assertion, held importance only in relation to the activities and goals of men. Women on the Oregon Trail have been portrayed as reluctant but long-suffering and obedient wives and daughters of ambitious male travelers. This image of the pioneer woman has taken several romantic turns, but the stereotypical elements of passive bravery, quiet endurance, sadness, regret, and fear have never been erased. In 1846, Francis Parkman wrote that were divided between regrets for the homes they had left and fear of the deserts and savages before them.2 Seventy-five years later Emerson Hough idealized the westward-bound pioneer woman as the chief figure of the American West, the figure of the ages ... the gaunt and sad-faced woman sitting on the front seat of the wagon, following her lord where he might lead.3 Eva Emery Dye asserted that was Oregon's Amazonian age but the Amazons were quiet, patient Christian women. They never dreamed of being heroes, they only tried to do their duty.4 Though women seem to gain more heroic credit as time passes, little mention is made of their active participation; implicitly, women's achievements were quite by accident. Recent scholarship has corrected the misimpression of women's invisibility on the Oregon Trail, but the stereotypes of passivity and fear have changed little. Julie Roy Jeffrey has argued that women dearly missed home life and only sought to recapture it at the journey's end.5 John Mack Faragher and Christine Stansell have also asserted that women felt essentially out of place, and that they strove to maintain or recreate their female sphere.6 Though these historians present accurate pictures of hardworking women, their conclusions deny the importance of this participation. They argue that lacked a sense of inclusion ... ; no augmented sense of self or role emerged from augmented privation.' Women are viewed, even in some of these recent histories, as followers; their involvement on the Oregon Trail is portrayed as involuntary and secondary. In short, the Oregon Trail was no place for women. This paper will present an entirely different point of view. Among the hundreds of Oregon Trail accounts read for this study can be found countless examples of women's enthusiastic, self-confirming experiences on that journey. Women did write about their belief in domesticity, their fear of the wilderness, and their frustration with trail life; but they also recorded their experiences as leaders, writers, scientists, artists, and explorers. This paper will balance the historical account by highlighting women's experiences of personal growth, enthusiasm, happiness, and purpose on the Oregon Trail. It will show how these positive experiences affected their lives and prove that there was indeed a place for women on the Oregon Trail.