Westward Movement and the Overland Trail

Standard scholarly thinking superimposed the male experience onto that of the female, and most history books held that the Overland Trail experience was similar to both genders. Until the last third of the 20th Century, the westward migration was seen as a lively and entertaining account of the deeds of men. "Pioneering women, if mentioned at all, were dismissed as bit players in the drama of the ever-expanding frontier" (Peavy & Smith, 1998,p. 8). Attention was not paid to the unique experiences of women on the trail, although in recent years the books of historians John M. Faragher, Lillian Schlissel and Julie R. Jeffrey have brought attention to the women's role as well as that of men. Jeffrey (1998), for example, argues that migration was a family affair and the frontier could not be understood "without considering the experience of the young, married

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y 1850 the disease was killing 30,000 people a year. Diseases were not all that the emigrants hoped to escape. In the late 1830s, the country suffered a long economic depression that sharpened the search for better opportunities. In addition, a strain of restlessness existed in the makeup of many of the emigrants. "Over three-fourths of the families who went west in the mid-1800s had made at least one move before. Many of them had moved repeatedly, sometimes within a very short span of time" (Blackwood, 1999, p. 14). Even after reaching California or Oregon, many women found they could not build a permanent home because the lure of gold and adventure spurred many men to remain on the go. The restlessness that propelled the emigrants across the continent did not abate when they reached the coast. They moved and moved again, searching for that final geography, that ultimate configuration of land that would make them prosperous (Schlissel, 1992, p. 149). The Overland Trail started in Independence, Missouri for most "Overlanders." Not all travelers went all the way to Oregon or California; some settled in the plains of Kansas and Nebraska (Blackwood, 1999). But no matter how long the journey, the character and traditional role
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Approximate Word count = 2487
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)