Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail

by Ezra Meeker; Howard R. Driggs

We had no trouble to get the cattle across, although the river was wide. Dandy would do almost anything I asked of him; so, leading him to the water's edge, with a little coaxing I got him into swimming water and guided him across with the wagon bed. The others all followed, having been driven into deep water after the leader. It seems almost incredible how passively obedient cattle will become after long training on such a journey. Indeed, the ox is always patient, and usually quite obedient; but when oxen get heated and thirsty, they become headstrong and reckless, and won't obey. I have known them to take off the road to a water hole, when apparently nothing could stop them till they had gone so far into the mud and water that it was a hard job for them to get out again.

We had not finished crossing when tempting offers came from others to cross them; but all our party said, "No, we must travel." The rule had been adopted to travel some distance every day that it was possible. "Travel, travel, travel," was the watchword, and nothing could divert us from that resolution. On the third day we were ready to pull out from the river, with the cattle rested by the enforced wait.

Now the question was, what about the lower crossing? Those who had crossed over the river must somehow get back. It was less than a hundred and fifty miles to the place where we must again cross to the south side (the left bank) of the river. I could walk that distance in three days, while it would take our teams ten. Could I go on ahead, procure a wagon box, and start a ferry of my own? The thought brought an affirmative answer at once.

With only food and a small blanket for load, I walked to the lower crossing. It may be ludicrous, but it is true, that the most I remember about that tramp is the jack rabbits. Such swarms, as I traveled down the Boise valley, I had never seen before and I never saw again.

I soon obtained a wagon bed, and all day long for several days I was at work crossing people. I continued at this till our teams came up, and for a few days after that. I left the river with a hundred and ten dollars in my pocket. All but two dollars and seventy-five cents of this was gone before I arrived in Portland.

But we could not delay longer, even to make money. I thought I could see signs of failing strength in my young wife and the baby. Not for mountains of gold would we jeopardize their lives.

A nap in the wagon.

All along the way the baby and the little mother had been tenderly cared for. We used to clear away a space in the wagon bed for them to take a nap together. The slow swaying of the wagon over smooth, sandy stretches made a rock-a-by movement that would lull them off to dreamland and make them forget the weary way.

When we left the lower crossing, the mother and baby were placed in a small wagon. A sprightly yoke of oxen was hitched to it that they might get an early start and keep out of the dust. What few delicacies the pioneers had were given to them. By this tender care the mother and child were enabled to continue to the end of the long journey, though the brave little mother was frail and weak from the wearisome struggle before we reached a resting place at last.