Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail

by Ezra Meeker; Howard R. Driggs

In such places the oxen would be taken to the opposite side, and a chain or rope would be run to the end of the wagon tongue. One man drove, one or two guided the tongue, others helped at the wheels. In this way, with infinite labor and great care, the wagons would gradually be worked over all obstacles and down the mountain in the direction of the settlements.

But the more numerous the difficulties, the more determined I became to push through at all hazards, for the greater was the necessity of acquainting myself with the obstacles to be encountered and of reaching my friends to encourage and help them.

Edward S. Curtis

Before me lay the summit of the great range, the pass, at five thousand feet above sea level. At this summit, about twenty miles north of Mt. Rainier in the Cascade range, is a small stretch of picturesque open country known as Summit Prairie, in the Natchess Pass.

In this prairie, during the autumn of 1853, a camp of immigrants had encountered grave difficulties. A short way out from the camp, a steep mountain declivity lay squarely across their track. One of the women of the party exclaimed, when she first saw it, "Have we come to the jumping-off place at last?" It was no exclamation for effect, but a fervent prayer for deliverance. They could not go back; they must either go ahead or starve in the mountains.

Stout hearts in the party were not to be deterred from making the effort to proceed. Go around this hill they could not. Go down it with logs trailed to the wagons, as they had done at other places, they dared not, for the hill was so steep the logs would go end over end and would be a danger instead of a help. The rope they had was run down the hill and turned out to be too short to reach the bottom.

James Biles, one of the leaders, commanded, "Kill a steer." They killed a steer, cut his hide into strips, and spliced the strips to the rope. It was found to be still too short to reach to the bottom.

The order went out: "Kill two more steers!" And two more steers were killed, their hides cut into strips and the strips spliced to the rope, which then reached to the bottom of the hill.