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 Oreg…