A story about wagon trains

In the 1800s, wagon trains were an aggregation of travelers going to the same or nearby locations in a distant part of the country via (ta-dah!) team-drawn wagon. We've seen the movies that depict that group travel, helping one another to get thru the pain of crossing the United States at a time when there were no roads. All the while carrying with them everything they owned, or more likely only what they needed once they arrived.

As I understand it, a very large number of wagon trains started in the vicinity of St Louis, Missouri. A capable leader was located and that person received a sum of $$ to guide the train across difficult country. On occasion that required passing through territory controlled by one or another of the Native American tribes who cared for and hunted on that land. Not many of those tribes were happy about the trespass especially if one or more of the travelers had had enough and decided to stay right where they were, squatting on traditional tribal land.

My maternal g-m was Violet Mary Walsh, b. 1883, though she preferred to be called Mae. Unless you asked, Mae didn't talk much about her family history- she was more inclined to talk in the present tense. 

On one occasion in the late 1940s, however, when I was visiting the Rosses in Lockeford one summer she blurted out that she had a cousin who was a hired hand on a wagon train traveling from St Louis to Oregon. I recall the telling clearly since, as I said above, she wasn't inclined to talk about historical events. I asked the name but it wasn't Walsh and I didn't write it down, so the name was forgotten by the time I went back to Reno.

As I recall the story it seems the cousin was a hired hand on a wagon train headed to Oregon. The group had done ok getting to within very few hundred miles of their Oregon destination. As you might expect, the families were tired and wanted it all to end as quickly as possible. 

The wagon master told them there was a short cut thru the mountains though it did pass thru tribal land. Anyone that wanted to go that way would separate from the rest of the wagon train, but those that wanted to follow the original plan would be supported to the final destination as originally contracted. The alternate route wasn't necessarily shorter but rather a much easier pass through the mountains possibly saving as much as a couple weeks.

Nearly everyone jumped at the opportunity to bring the trip to an end. Only one family chose to stick to the original plan and Mae's cousin was assigned the task of getting that single (?) wagon, owned by an African American family (she looked me in the eye as she said 'negro' to be sure I got it), to their final destination. The wagon master and other hands would accompany the main body of travelers via the riskier route through tribal land. They had scouted that route and thought it looked safe at the moment so the plan was to get moving before there was a change in conditions.

On the appointed day the 2 trains separated and Mae's cousin lead the single wagon onto the more difficult route while the main body took the easier, faster route. Late in the day her cousin heard weapon fire coming from over the mountain ridge that separated the two routes- it sounded like a war! His supposition was that Native Americans had attacked the larger main body of wagons. Mae's cousin and his charges kept moving and hoped they weren't next to be attacked. 

Ultimately Mae's cousin and his charges made it to their destination safely. My grandmother had no inkling what was the fate of the main body of travelers. 

True story? Dunno. But it was my impression Mae wasn't inclined to make up wild tales. But then she was of Irish heritage (she was born a Walsh) and the Irish love a good story. A lot of my maternal ancestors were drinkers and when they were under the influence the stories were inclined to be pretty exaggerated. Mae wasn't a drinker so I was inclined to think maybe buried in that tale was a fair bit of truth about our family history.

Writing the narrative above I wondered about black families making the journey to Oregon. She was emphatic about that part of the tale. I'd frankly not heard anything about that part of our US settlement story for Oregon and the northwest. So I Googled it and found this on the National Park Service web site...

Not exactly what I would have expected! The link above the clipping tells a more complete story. The laws were bigoted and harsh to the extreme (39 lashes every 60 days till you leave? Really?!). Ugh! I suddenly had the thought 'I hope I didn't have relatives in Oregon that were part of that!' But that's what sometimes happens when you do genealogical research on relatives from the distant past: uncomfortable discoveries that are undeniably part of your family history. And sometimes DNA information can lead to some unexpected connections!