Oregon pioneers took the trail to where grass was greener

Roberta McKern

A book entitled “The Willamette Valley: Migration and Settlement on the Oregon Frontier” can be located in the research room of the East Linn Museum with a little effort. Written by geographer William A. Bowen and published in 1978, it is filled with more information than can be consumed in one sitting. Actually, it is an excellent reference book worth visiting.

Unfortunately, our neck of the woods gets little attention. The population didn’t pick up as rapidly here as in the downstream portion of the Willamette Valley, which naturally attracts more attention for a demographer examining the earlier migrations and settlements.

We should not be deterred, however; for one thing, we learn 11,873 people lived south of the Columbus River in 1850. One free black man and two slaves were among that number and 987 people lived in Linn County.

More mass migrations were on the way, many from the same state which had listed one of the larger numbers, Missouri. As the author notes, the people who came here had to pack up and travel around 2,000 miles by wagon train, the journey from the east taking from three to six months with Independence, Mo., being a main jumping-off point.

Travel began in April if conditions were right: good weather and plenty of grass on the prairies. The hope was to reach Ore-gon Territory before winter set in because both the emigrants and their stock, what remained, would be worn down by that time and the travelers would be low on provisions, or, in the worst case, out.

What caused people to make such a journey? In 1848 gold discovered near Sacramento in California drew adventurers, but many of those headed to Oregon came with families intending to settle and stay.

As William A. Bowen notes, what motivated settlers has been little recorded. For one thing, not all could read or write, yet he offers a number of reasons. For those of us wondering, following is a fictional letter which very well could have been written from near Independence, Mo., by an educated emmigrant:

Dear Cousin Oliver,

I take pen in hand to say me and Mariah are leaving for the promised land, that is Oregon Territory, should the April weather remain amenable. Mariah continually suffers from ague and chills, but she is willing to try the venture just the same.

We hope to find a place promising better health for the younger children than here in Missouri.

The scarlet fever came through in March and taxed several families a child or two, but thankfully spared our family. The oldest three had it a couple of years ago. Mariah says they survived because she treated them with constitutional bitters which she takes for the ague. Ed Martin claims there is enough alcohol in the bitters to equal that in a run of his rye whiskey, but that can’t be so because Mariah is a teetotaler.

The flooding has not been as bad here as in last year, so it’s hoped we will not have swamps and bad water to cause the miasma, which promotes ague like that troubling Mariah. It has been very common.

My finances have been low, but Mariah sold several crocks of sweet cream butter and apple butter to traders headed toward Santa Fe, and I have picked up some savings by cutting brush for neighbors and running a conscription school from the end of harvest to planting time.

Genevieve, my oldest girl, helped me there. I planted some wheat this year, but will leave the crop behind. I am taking seed with me.

I worry about Genevieve. She has a good mind which makes her susceptible to the tracts her Aunt Eloese, Mariah’s sister, sends about abolition and the rights of women. Missouri is a slave state, of course, and for a while we rented a really nice lady from the hemp plantation up the road. Twenty five dollars a year plus board, room, and a set of new clothes didn’t seem like a bad price for someone to help Mariah, but the money ran out.

I don’t worry about the farm here since the bank will take it. Too much land speculation, in my opinion, and wildcat banking doesn’t help, either.

Our outfit is about ready. I thought to learn more about being a wheelwright, but Ed Martin is going, too. He’s a blacksmith and I’ll let him worry about work he understands better than me. He’ll carry the tools.

He says there is an excellent smith in Independence named Hiram Young. He is a black man who buys up good-sized boys and lets them work for their freedom. Genevieve says that is the best kind of pay, but she reads too many of Eloies’ tracts.

I see the country’s getting riled up about this slavery business again. I want to leave it all behind. I’m for peace, myself.

Four or five families from here are ready to hit the Oregon Trail. Some time back Ed’s brother Carl Martin went over to the Shawnee Mission to hear a talk on Oregon from some missionaries and an old trapper about how good it is out there. Carl says if the missionaries are for it, we have the right folks on our side.

It took him a while to decide to go, though. He has a pamphlet telling us what to take.

Carl has a good orchard and plans to take fruit tree starts and some black walnuts to plant, too. He holds there will be apples on each tree in Oregon.

It will be a hard wrench to leave behind family and friends we’ve gotten along so well with. Mariah and the four girls are picking through what they can’t leave behind. I am selling what stock and tools I can. The only unneeded animal we will take is Cromwell, the dog. The two boys can’t leave him behind, and they argue he will tell us if Indians are about to attack.

Otherwise, we will just have the four oxen, Bright and Bub, and Pomp and Ceaser, plus a couple of riding horses and a cow for the younger children to have milk. Traded my mules for the oxen. That hurt, but oxen do better on the trail, so it is said.

I moved here from Kentucky and Mariah’s from Illinois, so I guess we know what relocating is all about. There’s plenty of land still open nearby, and it seems funny to head out for so far away a place. But Oregon’s got plenty of wood and water, and the same can’t be said for Iowa or the Kansas Territory, when it’s opened.

The people we’re going with are good friends. We’ll get along all right. Mariah wants to know if you and Betsy want the painted sideboard her grandfather Schuster made in Pennsylvania. We’ve hauled it everywhere, but it won’t fit into the wagons with six months worth of provisions; some extra, just in case we need them. Mariah says we can’t live on apple butter alone.

We can leave it with cousin Ralph, but he’s not a Schuster, and Mariah wants you to have it. Ralph’s likely to use if for kindling or a chicken coop. His married daughter might take it.

Some days Oregon sounds mighty good. Maybe you’ll think of coming. Let us hear soon. Your cousin, Nathaniel

Of course, this letter is fiction. Still, Hiram Young did exist, as did the mentioned hemp plantation, hemp being cultivated to use for making rope and cordage. And slave owners did rent out their property.

Ailments, too, were plentiful enough to make people long for healthier climes. Malaria lay at the root of the ague and chills and was endemic to the lower Mississippi drainage system. It was thought to be caused by fetid stagnant water’s exhalations, but as we now know, was mosquito-borne.

Even though it is suspected of decimating much of the native population here in the 1830s and 1840s, it did not match the middle southern states in becoming endemic, maybe due to drier summers, colder winters and the digging of drainage ditches throughout the Willamette Valley by wheat farmers to eradicate boggy ground.

The Homestead Act of 1850, offering a man and his wife 640 acres of land, 320 each, or a single man 320 acres, did attract settlement, as it was meant to do. But the price still ran $1.25 an acre or more and required improvements. Many came to amend their fortunes after land and banking speculations brought disasters following Andrew Jackson’s decision to terminate the U.S. National Bank in favor of banks in favored states.

Also, there had been some years of disastrous flooding in the Mississippi Valley, and one thing rarely appearing in Oregon Territory was a tornado. A flatlander from Missouri might find too much of a good thing, more flooding than expected and more trees than needed by a farmer, but he had less fear of being blown away in Oregon.

Some perhaps came to save the Pacific Coast from being claimed by the Spanish, Russians, and British, while promoting manifest destiny from sea to shining sea, but as Bowen recognizes in his book, such nobility is likely after the facts, and for most emigrants more self-interested motivations likely applied.

If they did come for health and wealth, posterity, the welfare of the next generation also played a role. Many brought families, big ones at that. And most often they traveled with other relatives and neighbors. They followed the pattern set in this country by the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England, and some settlers were just as religiously directed.

In this country, the frontier has been a continuous draw since the founding of the first colonies. That’s why we are not sitting on the East Coast. Going West acted as a contagion spread through family members and neighbors.

The emigrants of the Oregon Trail were mainly farmers to start off with and the descendants of farmers who’d moved once or twice into new lands already. Big families meant descendants ready to travel. We always hear about how a farm needed a big family on it to work the land, but when it came time to leave property behind, too big a family could be a liability.

Much better to have adult sons and daughters married and making farms of their own. Otherwise, the family holdings had to be broken up and sometimes an unmarried daughter might receive a bed, a cow, and a hundred dollars while three brothers each received one third of the property.

If we look at some of the families who came here, we see them moving from one state to the next while their large families grew.

Andrew Wiley, a man of varied interests and careers who helped established the importance of the Santiam Pass after discovering it, was born in Virginia, married in Illinois, lived in Missouri and died in Oregon. He and his wife, Lucy, came here with six children, one having died on the trail. He remarried a young widow with one daughter, and together they had seven more children, the last dying in infancy. Elizabeth Settle Smith Wiley had been born here of emigrant parents. Suttle Lake had originally been called Settle Lake after a family member, “Suttle” being a corruption of “Settle.”

Charles Rice, who left many descendants, including – notably for us, Norval Rice, well-represented in the East Linn Museum, was born in Tennessee.

His wife, Sarah, died in Jackson County, Mo., where Independence is located but he left her in the Pleasant Garden Cemetery and traveled on out with seven children.

His son, Norval, married pretty Nancy Robnett, also a daughter of pioneers, and she contributed much to the history of the area along with her husband.

We hear of another family’s son, Zealey Bluford Moss, who came this way with his mother, father and siblings. The father, Mack Macajah Moss, like Andrew Wiley, had a Virginia birth and also went to Illinois. His middle name has come down as McKaig or other variations, but a letter in the museum files says it was definitely Macajah.

Sons of both Andrew Wiley and Zealey Bluford Moss went east from here to the open prairies of bunch grass on the other side of the Santiam Pass, moving on. Mack Moss arrived here with his second wife, Sarah, and nine children.

Although Andrew Wiley and Mack M. Moss were both born in Virginia, we cannot know how the issue of slavery affected them. Missouri was famously a slave state unable to enter the Union until Maine went first, so more states would not be either against or for slavery in Congress at the time. The Missouri Compromise helped draw the lines separating free (northern) from slave (southern) states.

One family did have a definite reason for removing here: that of Lowell Ames, for which Ames Creek is named. As Mormons, they sought a place where they could worship freely. They did not practice polygamy, however.

Lowell Ames was born in Ohio and his wife Anna in Pennsylvania. They lived in Illinois, emigrated to California, coming to Oregon by boat. Six sons and one daughter had been born in Illinois.

They came to Sweet Home valley along with the Wileys, Pickens and Gillilands. The Ameses took first claims on the western end near the creek bearing their name, Ames Creek. Looking for a new Eden, they called it Paradise Camp.

The others went farther east, giving their names to Gilliland Cemetery and Wiley Creek. There is also Ames Cemetery and the small Wiley Cemetery. Only the Pickenses did not seem to have an early cemetery named for them. Moving to the frontier could cost dear.

Settling our area started in 1852 after the 1850 census centered upon in Bowen’s book. But Kirk’s Ferry, Brownsville now, isn’t mentioned either although people had settled along the Santiam and Calapooia Rivers.

Perhaps the numbers were not sufficient to make good demographics on their own and were thus included in the lump sum of over 800 in Linn County. Still, the “Willamette Valley: Migration and Settlement on the Oregon Frontier” proves to be an excellent reference and good to keep in mind. Much more is covered than here.

The East Linn Museum is now open again. Masked visitors are certainly welcomed.

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