Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Oregon Trail from Westward Expansion to Computer Game with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

In this solo episode, Sharon dives into some of the myths vs. facts about Manifest Destiny and the Oregon Trail. What did it really look like, in the mid-1800s, for a family to travel the trail from Independence, Missouri to the beautiful Willamette Valley region of Oregon? All-in-all, about 400,000 people traveled along the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s, hoping to move from crowded Eastern communities to work the riches of the land out West. Much of what we know was probably gleaned from playing the computer game, The Oregon Trail. Chances are, it was one of the first games you played in your youth on a computer, but do you know its humble Minnesotan history? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. Happy to have you here today. Welcome. And I've got so much interesting, good stuff to cram into one episode about the gorgeous state of Oregon. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oregon is really beautiful, by the way. I meant that. It has a lot of waterfalls and like mountains and greenery and ocean. It has a lot of natural beauty. When you were growing up, did you call it Oregon or did you call it Oregon?

In Minnesota, we definitely said Oregon. And that is not the way people from Oregon say it. They say it Oregon. So FYI. Let's go back in time for just a moment to the mid 1800s, when the United States was still locked in a boundary dispute with Great Britain, States was still locked in a boundary dispute with Great Britain involving the parallel that extended from Minnesota all the way out to the West Coast. So the Canadian border with the United States has not always been that well established. And it wasn't until the sort of late 1840s that the United States finally settled this boundary dispute and it gave what is now present day Oregon and Washington to the United States and cut that boundary off at Vancouver Island. So in 1848, when Oregon became a U.S. territory, there was this rush to expand westward. Do you guys know the phrase manifest destiny? Manifest destiny, that it was the God-given responsibility of Americans to settle

the entire North American continent from East Coast to West Coast, and that it was the destiny of America to continue its westward expansion. There were paintings at the time that showed what almost looked like an angelic-like female figure guiding pioneers, so to speak, westward into California, Oregon, and Washington manifest destiny that the United States was essentially ordained by God. And so this belief was quite pervasive amongst certain groups in the United States in the mid 1800s. In fact, the term Manifest Destiny was coined by a man named John L. O'Sullivan. He was the editor of a magazine. He worked for the Democratic Party. And he, in 1845, coined this term Manifest Destiny. But it was not really, at the time, he was not like, listen up, I have got a new term

for you. It wasn't that intention. In fact, he, it was kind of buried in an article that he wrote. He was talking about European meddling in American affairs, was being annoyed with France and England. He said France and England were acting for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. So that hand of providence allotted by providence, that's a reference to a higher power. That basically, European countries are thwarting our manifest destiny. They are meddling in our

affairs. And some people, especially Democrats in the United States at that time, clung to this idea of manifest destiny. There were a lot of Whigs at the time, members of the Whig Party. They were the first conservative party of the United States. The Whig Party was like, hmm, that's dumb. They did not approve of this idea of Manifest Destiny. They wrote letters to the editor, gave speeches about how silly it was. But nevertheless, that idea sort of took root in the United States. And westward expansion became the name of the game for many people. Once Oregon became a U.S. territory, they were all of these land grants that were made.

If you could get there, if you could get to Oregon, they would give you 320 acres if you were a single man, and they would give you an additional 320 acres if you were married. Imagine the government just sort of giving you 640 acres of land as a married couple. This seems ridiculous today to be like, hello, I am here for my land. That seems absurd by today's standards that you could just show up somewhere and just be like, here is your 640 acres. But that was what was happening. So of course it incentivized people. And of course, the Willamette Valley in Oregon, which is where, by the way, the vast majority of

Oregon's population lives. It's like the valley that Portland to Salem runs in. The Willamette Valley was remarkably fertile. And so there was a lot of like, dang, let's get out there and get our acreage. So I bet you have heard of the Oregon Trail before. I bet maybe you have played the game, Oregon Trail, or Oregon Trail, as we would say here in Minnesota when I was growing up, Oregon Trail. But let's talk about what the real Oregon Trail was. It was a 2,100 mile wagon route from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. And it is a

misconception though. It's a misconception that it was just this one trail. Like if you think about hiking in the woods, there's a trail that you follow. There's this concept that the Oregon Trail was a trail. In fact, it was sort of like a wide swath of land that people were traversing. And in some places where they were going around mountain ranges, etc. Some people went south and some people went north. And in some cases, the routes of the Oregon Trail varied by hundreds of miles. It is also a misconception that people traveled across the country on the Oregon Trail in what you're thinking of as covered wagons, like the Conestoga wagons that you see on like Little House on the Prairie, where it's like a big hoop over a wagon that's covered with canvas.

That's not what they were using. Those kinds of wagons, Conestoga wagons, were largely used to transport large amounts of freight from one place to another. Mostly, people were just using what they would refer to kind of jokingly as prairie schooners. And a prairie schooner was literally just a regular old wagon. When you're thinking about like Pa driving half pint to town on Little House on the Prairie, and he's, you know, sitting in his wagon, you know, using his team of horses and there's a wagon behind them. That's what they would use. And they would cover it with a canvas cover to keep the contents in and to keep stuff from jostling out and to be able to secure it. But they did not use that like giant hoop because that was not efficient. The prairie schooner wagons could go much farther,

but there was no suspension in those kinds of wagons. And so consequently, it was extremely uncomfortable to ride in. Most of the people who were making the journey from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley were walking. They walked alongside the wagon and they would often walk 15 to 20 miles a day. That's about how far on average you could expect to go, obviously, weather permitting. So who was it? Who was it that was heading west on the Oregon Trail?

First of all, remember that in the 1830s, 1840s, the United States was undergoing a pretty significant economic depression, very high unemployment, huge outbreaks of illness, malaria, yellow fever. They had really swept through more crowded communities. And so some people were looking for ways out of those more populated areas. It was mostly middle class people and lower class people who were heading west. They wanted better opportunities and they could find where they were living. So initially, early on in the very early days, it was mostly trappers, fur traders, etc. And they were focused on setting up trading posts and routes that would allow them to transport the animal skins, etc. that they had

harvested, bring them east and send them off to market. Other groups that tended to head west were followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They ended up stopping largely in the Salt Lake City area, fortune seekers who were responding to this like gold rush in California, and then people who just wanted to find a place to settle. So all told throughout the mid 1800s, around 400,000 people traveled the Oregon Trail westward seeking better opportunities. They were encouraged by politicians to do this, by the way. It was definitely like, hey, it's a good idea for us to settle the western front of the United States, the larger surface area that Americans covered more political power

they believed they could have. They could hold those territories, et cetera. So it took roughly four to five months to walk because again, we're not riding in a covered wagon. That's not what we're doing. We're not galloping on our horses. We are pulling our belongings in a prairie schooner covered with a tarp. And we are walking from Missouri to Oregon. That also seems ridiculous. Right? Right? If I was like, hey, walk, go ahead and walk, go ahead and walk from Missouri to Oregon. Almost nobody's willing to do that, right? Like that seems absurd. And yet 400,000 people did just that, walked from Missouri to the West Coast.

Let's not pretend that this is all fun and games though, right? Let's not pretend that it's like, oh, look at our beautiful stony mountains. Aren't they lovely? No, I mean, you have to walk across mountains. I mean, it's not like they're scaling to the top and then going back down the other side. They're finding passes through the mountains, but this is not an easy journey. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey.

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Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1830s, there were a couple of missionaries. Their names were Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, and they traveled alongside some fur traders and sort of successfully traveled this route that would become commonly known as the Oregon Trail later. And they went from St. Louis to Oregon. And basically, according to the historic record, Narcissa, who was 28, was the first European woman that we know of to traverse the Rocky Mountains. She began writing letters

back to her family back East. And these letters began sort of spreading around as evidence of how wonderful the American West was. This is one of the things that she said in her letters. This is Narcissa Whitman. I wish I could describe to you how we live so that you can realize it. She was writing this to her brother. Our manner of living is far preferable to any in the States. I never was so contented and happy before. Neither have I enjoyed such health for years. In the morning, as soon as the day breaks, the first that we hear is the words, arise, arise. Then the mules set up such a noise as you never heard, which puts the whole camp in motion. So letters from people like Narcissa to people back East begin spreading the word about how wonderful it was in places like Oregon, where she's like, my health is amazing. It's so wonderful to live here. So people began thinking like, huh, maybe we should try it.

thinking like, huh, maybe we should try it. So in 1843, after Narcissa and Marcus had been living out there for a while, Marcus traveled back and helped lead the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail. And it became known at the time as the Great Migration. And it was about a thousand people, a thousand people that Marcus was leading in 1843 across the Rocky Mountains all the way to Oregon. So as the years passed, as the Oregon Trail became more well known, as more routes became opened, as people mapped out different ways of places they could graze their animals or areas they could hunt along the route. They also developed a long series of trading posts so that people could get supplies that they needed as they were traversing the country. And there became this very lucrative industry of frontier trading posts that sprang up

and they supplied food and equipment. And so they made the journey even easier. You didn't have to bring everything with you or hunt or fish for everything that you needed. So it became even more simple, although simple is a simple, it's not the right word. It became more simple for people to traverse the country to decide to move because they knew they could stop and get resupplied as they needed to. So in popular trail starting points like Independence, Missouri, many merchants would essentially con pioneer families into buying way more provisions than they actually needed. con pioneer families into buying way more provisions than they actually needed. And so they were overloaded with provisions. And that meant that large chunks of the trail were littered with discarded food barrels, broken wagon parts, dead animals, books, clothes, furniture. There was one place in Wyoming, Fort Laramie, Wyoming, that eventually

became known as Camp Sacrifice because it developed this reputation for being an Oregon Trail dumping ground during the gold rush of 1849. The pioneers were abandoning literally tens of thousands of pounds of provision. Most famously, they dumped 20,000 pounds of bacon outside the walls of Fort Laramie. It's a little bit like, you know how when people climb Mount Everest and then they leave a bunch of crap behind at the top of Mount Everest. And when you walk past, you have to walk past the, like their packs and sometimes dead bodies. It's a little bit like what it seems like. Just, just leave it.

Just leave it. You know, somebody will eat that bacon. Probably an animal. One of the other things I think it is important to note is that this idea that was popularized by Hollywood Westerns, that Western pioneers were constantly under attack by Native American groups, that it was tremendously dangerous because of Native groups, and you had to circle your wagons and protect from outside attack. That is actually myth. That is Hollywood myth. Attack from Native groups, hardly the most dangerous thing they faced. Hardly. In fact, many Native tribes were partners with pioneers.

They were trading partners. They were allies. They helped people make their way across the country. All told, from 1840 to 1860, approximately 300 settlers died in Native attacks. So that's certainly not nothing, but it is certainly not the danger that people portrayed it to be. Also, by the way, the whole circle your wagons thing was really about protecting your animals to protect them from wandering off and protect them from predators. By far, the most dangerous thing to westward pioneers was disease. By far, an estimated 20,000 people died from disease while heading west. And the diseases were things like typhoid, cholera, dysentery. People referred to it as prairie fever. And it was kind of a madness that people, what they were referred to as a madness, that they attributed to being isolated in harsh conditions.

Today, we would call prairie fever severe depression. I have to tell you one other thing about the Willamette Valley that I found super interesting. I already mentioned that it's very lush, very green, lots of rivers, lots of whitewater kayaking. Today, it's an incredibly popular wine region. But one of the things the Willamette Valley is famous for is the Willamette meteorite. Have you heard of this? The Willamette meteorite is the largest meteorite ever found in North America. It's the sixth largest meteorite ever found on planet

Earth. It weighed approximately 15 and a half tons. And a ton is 2,000 pounds. So 15 and a half, 2,000 pound increments. It crashed into Earth sometime in the past. We don't know the exact year. Crashed into Earth going approximately 40,000 miles an hour. And it did not actually crash into Oregon. It probably crashed either in Canada or Montana and then was carried to the Willamette Valley via a glacier. And scientists know that in part because of other meteorites, but also in part because there was no impact crater. It was carried there and put there a very long time ago by a glacier. So the Willamette meteorite was just sort of outside of what is currently Portland. And the meteorite became incredibly spiritually significant over the years

to a number of Native American groups that lived in that region. The Clackamas Indians referred to it as Timonawos. And there became a belief that Timonawos healed and empowered people and had been in the Willamette Valley since the beginning of time. They viewed it as a representative of the sky people and this union between sky and earth and water, because when it rested on the ground, it collected rainwater in its basins. So it's not just a super smooth rock. At some point during the meteorite's history, it became very, very heavily indented with divots, basins. And the native groups believe that the rainwater served as a powerful healing source. They would sometimes dip their arrowheads in the water that was collected in the meteorite's crevices. And so there was a very,

very strong spiritual link between Timonawos, what European settlers referred to as the Willamette meteorite, and native groups in the region. In 1902, a man named Ellis Hughes was the first European settler to recognize the meteorite's significance. So Ellis Hughes decided, listen, this meteorite is mine now. It's mine now. And I'm going to move it to my own land. And it took him 90 days to cover the three quarters of a mile to move it from where it was to his land. And that is because it weighed a lot. And eventually people discovered that he moved it. There was a lawsuit. And the Oregon Supreme Court said, listen, the Oregon's iron and steel Company owns this meteorite because it is on their land. In 1905, a woman named Sarah Hoadley purchased the meteorite for $26,000,

which by the way, is over $800,000 in today's money. Imagine having so much money that you could pay $800,000 for a meteorite. That's another thing that's absurd in this podcast. The government just gives you 640 acres of land. What? You have enough money to pay $800,000 for a rock. What? So eventually she donated the Willamette meteorite to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where it still lives today. A few chunks of it were eventually broken off. Some of them were returned to the Native groups in the region. But in 1999, there was actually a lawsuit amongst some of the Native groups against the American Museum of Natural History saying, listen, you are violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,

NAGPRA, by taking our meteorite, which is spiritually significant to us. And eventually what the outcome of that was, was an agreement between the museum and the groups of the Grand Ronde Confederation of Native American Tribes, that we will keep the meteorite here at the museum, but you are going to be allowed to conduct a private ceremony around the meteorite once a year. And if anything ever happens to this museum, or if we decide we don't want to display it anymore, we will give it back to you. So you can now go visit the Willamette Meteorite in New York City. All

right. I cannot close this out without giving you some fun facts about the Game Oregon Trail that I know so many of you grew up playing in school or as again, as we would say in Minnesota, Oregon The Game Oregon Trail. I mean, like, for a generation of children born from the mid-1970s through the 1990s, Oregon Trail was often people's very first computer game. If you are a millennial, this was probably the first computer game you ever played. The Game Oregon Trail sold 65 million copies. That's why you played it, because it sold 65 million copies. Basically, almost all schools in the United States had access to this game. And it was actually made by some teachers in Minnesota. It was created in the early 1970s by a social studies student teacher who designed it as a board game to engage

students in the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition and westward expansion. The man who designed the board game had two roommates who were also student teachers, but they were math student teachers, and they dabbled in computer programming. And they suggested that he abandon the board game idea and let them help him code it as a computer game instead. So he helped his students play Oregon Trail on computers for one week and they absolutely loved it. And some of the things that are so funny, it's like if you want to shoot a rabbit or shoot a deer for sustenance, you had to actually type on the keyboard. This makes me laugh. You had to type on the keyboard in capital letters the word bang. Hold on. Let me type B-A-N-G. Enter.

You know, like if you think about shooting games online today, like all of the controllers we have and stuff, the idea that you have to actually type the word bang makes me laugh. After he was done student teaching, Don, the creator of the game, deleted the game. This is what he said. We had to remove the game from the Minneapolis school's computer and we had no other computer to run it on. So we printed on paper the entire listing of the programming code for the game. So you guys remember all the things from Oregon Trail? Like you would input the names of like, who do you want to be as characters in this game, right? Like you would type them in. Stephanie, Tiffany, Jason. And then periodically bad things would happen to people. And it would like stephanie has died of dysentery

your oxen would be lost when you're forging a river you would try to go hunting and type the word bang and you would not be successful it would say things like health very poor and then you'd be like oh no what shall i do in 1978 they decided to share the source code for the game with a magazine called creative computing i think the fact that was in 1978 indicates that as late as then there were still no understanding that there was soon to be a software market, a big one. So I should write an article about the Oregon Trail and then give you all the code so you can type it into something else. Yeah, why not?

So he went on to say, when you're an educator, you're encouraged to write and publish. And when you got right down to it, Paul and Bill and I, we were teachers. We have the teacher mentality. And so, you know, to get rich off of this would have been very nice, but not as important as having donated something to the world of education. And I just love that. I think that's fantastic. You can still play versions of the Oregon Trail. They're a lot more graphics heavy now. It's not just like a black screen with green letters that you have to type the word bang into. It's a lot more modern day looking, but you can still play the game created by Paul and Bill and Don,

Minnesota student teachers about the Oregon Trail. Oh my gosh, so many unbelievable things. Freeland, giant meteors, student teachers who never made it rich off of the tens of millions of copies they sold. So many fabulous things. I hope you loved this episode. I hope you had some brain tingles. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review?

Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.