Voices on the Trail: Women Moving West

The story of pioneers who headed west to build new lives for themselves is often told through the mouths of men. We have countless tales of cowboys and ranchers, sheriffs and outlaws. Meanwhile, women traveled in covered wagons, coping the best they could and trying to take care of their families in unfamiliar circumstances. Though no less important, their stories have been overlooked in the larger story of the Western Frontier. That is, until recently.

For a long time, the history of pioneers has focused on the dangers and hardships faced by men, written in their words. But historians began filling in the gaps by studying the experiences of women and families on the trails. They specifically looked at the challenge of maintaining family routines in the face of harsh conditions. Most of the women who traveled west were married, as it was rare for single women to go west on their own. They often didn’t know how to saddle a horse, hitch a team of oxen to a wagon, or drive the team. It wasn’t considered ladylike. Instead, women followed the cultural patterns of their time: they were wives, mothers, and housekeepers, while men worried about safety and livelihoods. Men were also usually the ones eager to go west for a better life. When husbands made this decision, their wives usually had no choice but to accept it, no matter how they felt. Margaret Hereford Wilson, wife of Dr. Benjamin Wilson, a man who would one day become mayor of Los Angeles, shared her reluctance: “I am going with him, as there is no other alternative.” Some women, however, were excited by the opportunity. One such woman, Miriam Thompson Teller, found herself “possessed with a spirit of adventure and a desire to see what was new and strange.”

But what was life on the trail like for these women? The day had a strict schedule, one that started and ended in the dark. The day began at 4 a.m. with a signal from the night guards to wake up the camp and didn’t end until late at night. Dangers on the journey west ranged from golf ball-sized hail to buffalo stampedes to treacherous river crossings. For their safety, most pioneers traveled in groups with other families. Families packed everything they owned into their wagon and traveled between 15 to 20 miles every day. Generally, the women and children walked beside the wagon, plodding through dust and over rough terrain. At each meal, the wagons stopped, and the women cooked over an open fire, using the food supplies the family had brought with them. If there was no sagebrush or wood available to make a fire, women and children gathered the most readily available kindling they could find: dried buffalo manure. When food supplies ran low, they had to make do with whatever could be found nearby or whatever the men could hunt.

It was a tedious routine, especially as the journey continued. Luzena Stanley Wilson, wife of a Gold Rush entrepreneur, wrote, “Day after day, week after week, we went through the same weary routine of breaking camp at daybreak, yoking the oxen, cooking our meager rations over a fire of sagebrush and scrub-oak; packing up again, coffeepot and camp-kettle; washing our scanty wardrobe in the little streams we crossed; striking camp again at sunset, or later if wood and water were scarce. Tired, dusty, tried in temper, worn out in patience, we had to go over the weary experience tomorrow.” If you have ever been on a long road trip with family, or even friends, it’s easy to imagine Wilson’s weariness as the journey west could take between five to six months to complete.

But sometimes the routine would be completely upended. Emergencies and disasters could happen in a moment and were often left for the women to handle. Illness and injury were common on the trail. Wagons broke down, cattle died, diseases such as cholera swept through wagon trains, and starvation could strike in an instant if supplies ran out and no other sources of food could be found. Furthermore, many women gave birth during their journeys. It was common for women to die in childbirth, and newborn infants often did not survive. Catherine Haun, who traveled to California in 1849, wrote of traveling through a treeless, arid area of the Great Basin region of Nevada. “Our only death on the journey occurred in this desert… Mrs. Lamore suddenly sickened [after childbirth] and died, leaving her two little girls and grief stricken husband. We halted a day to bury her and the infant that had lived but an hour, in this weird, lonely spot… away apparently from everywhere and everybody.” Graves were spotted often on the trail. Elizabeth Keegan, who traveled west at 18, wrote, “We did not meet any sickness nor see any fresh graves until we came in on the road from St Joseph. From that out, there was scarcely a day, but we met six and not less than two fresh graves.”

Life on the trail was difficult for all who traveled it. To the best of their abilities, women carried on, but there were times when it felt like more than they could handle. Lavina Porter later wrote, “I would throw myself down on the unfriendly desert and give way like a child to sobs and tears, wishing myself back home with my friends and chiding myself for consenting to take this wild goose chase.” The difficulty women faced on the trail has largely been invisible, their voices muffled by stories of cowboys and outlaws. Even those who traveled west could only see the suffering clearly in hindsight. Martha Morrison Minto, who moved west as a child in the mid-1800s, reflected, “It strikes me as I think of it now — of course, I was a girl, too young then to know much about it — but I think now the mothers on the road had to undergo more trial and suffering than anybody else.” But despite the hardships and heartaches of the journey west, women persevered, finding a way to fulfill their domestic responsibilities even when the only place they had to call home was the trail.