54-40 or Fight

  CHAPTER XXV

  OREGON

  The spell and the light of each path we pursue-- If woman be there, there is happiness too. --Moore.

  Twenty miles a day, week in and week out, we edged westward up thePlatte, in heat and dust part of the time, often plagued at night byclouds of mosquitoes. Our men endured the penalties of the journeywithout comment. I do not recall that I ever heard even the weakestwoman complain. Thus at last we reached the South Pass of the Rockies,not yet half done our journey, and entered upon that portion of thetrail west of the Rockies, which had still two mountain ranges to cross,and which was even more apt to be infested by the hostile Indians. Evenwhen we reached the ragged trading post, Fort Hall, we had still morethan six hundred miles to go.

  By this time our forces had wasted as though under assault of arms. Farback on the trail, many had been forced to leave prized belongings,relics, heirlooms, implements, machinery, all conveniences. The finestof mahogany blistered in the sun, abandoned and unheeded. Our trailmight have been followed by discarded implements of agriculture, and bywhitened bones as well. Our footsore teams, gaunt and weakened, began tofaint and fall. Horses and oxen died in the harness or under the yoke,and were perforce abandoned where they fell. Each pound of superfluousweight was cast away as our motive power thus lessened. Wagons wereabandoned, goods were packed on horses, oxen and cows. We put cows intothe yoke now, and used women instead of men on the drivers' seats, andboys who started riding finished afoot. Our herds were sadly lessened bytheft of the Indians, by death, by strayings which our guards had nottime to follow up. If a wagon lagged it was sawed shorter to lessen itsweight Sometimes the hind wheels were abandoned, and the reducedpersonal belongings were packed on the cart thus made, whichnevertheless traveled on, painfully, slowly, yet always going ahead. Inthe deserts beyond Fort Hall, wagons disintegrated by the heat. Wheelswould fall apart, couplings break under the straining teams. Still morehere was the trail lined with boxes, vehicles, furniture, all theflotsam and jetsam of the long, long Oregon Trail.

  The grass was burned to its roots, the streams were reduced to ribbons,the mirages of the desert mocked us desperately. Rain came seldom now,and the sage-brush of the desert was white with bitter dust, which invast clouds rose sometimes in the wind to make our journey the harder.In autumn, as we approached the second range of mountains, we could seethe taller peaks whitened with snow. Our leaders looked anxiously ahead,dreading the storms which must ere long overtake us. Still, gaunt nowand haggard, weakened in body but not in soul, we pressed on across.That was the way to Oregon.

  Gaunt and brown and savage, hungry and grim, ragged, hatless, shoeless,our cavalcade closed up and came on, and so at last came through. Ereautumn had yellowed all the foliage back east in gentler climes, wecrossed the shoulders of the Blue Mountains and came into the Valley ofthe Walla Walla; and so passed thence down the Columbia to the Valley ofthe Willamette, three hundred miles yet farther, where there were thensome slight centers of our civilization which had gone forward the yearbefore.

  Here were some few Americans. At Champoeg, at the little Americanmissions, at Oregon City, and other scattered points, we met them, wehailed and were hailed by them. They were Americans. Women and plowswere with them. There were churches and schools already started, and abeginning had been made in government. Faces and hands and ways andcustoms and laws of our own people greeted us. Yes. It was America.

  Messengers spread abroad the news of the arrival of our wagon train.Messengers, too, came down from the Hudson Bay posts to scan ourequipment and estimate our numbers. There was no word obtainable fromthese of any Canadian column of occupation to the northward which hadcrossed at the head of the Peace River or the Saskatchewan, or which layready at the head waters of the Fraser or the Columbia to come down tothe lower settlements for the purpose of bringing to an issue, or makingmore difficult, this question of the joint occupancy of Oregon. As amatter of fact, ultimately we won that transcontinental race sodecidedly that there never was admitted to have been a second.

  As for our people, they knew how neither to hesitate nor to dread. Theyunhooked their oxen from the wagons and put them to the plows. The fruittrees, which had crossed three ranges of mountains and two thousandmiles of unsettled country, now found new rooting. Streams which hadborne no fruit save that of the beaver traps now were made to givetribute to little fields and gardens, or asked to transport wheatinstead of furs. The forests which had blocked our way were now madeinto roofs and walls and fences. Whatever the future might bring, thosewho had come so far and dared so much feared that future no more thanthey had feared the troubles which in detail they had overcome in theirvast pilgrimage.

  So we took Oregon by the only law of right. Our broken and weakenedcavalcade asked renewal from the soil itself. We ruffled no drum,fluttered no flag, to take possession of the land. But the canvas coversof our wagons gave way to permanent roofs. Where we had known a hundredcamp-fires, now we lighted the fires of many hundred homes.