Among these histories, which illustrate most clearly the virtues of the pioneer women, we count those which display her battling with the difficulties of the passage through the mountains, as proving that the heroine of our own time may be matched with those who have lived before her in any age or clime. One of these histories runs as follows: In the corps of pioneers who, in 1844, were pushing the outposts of civilization farther towards the setting sun, was a young couple who left Illinois late in the summer of that year, and, journeying with a white-tilted wagon, drawn by four oxen, crossed the Missouri near the site of old Fort Kearney, and moving in a bee line over the prairie, early in November, encamped for the winter just beyond the forks of the Platte.
A low cabin, built of cotton-wood, banked up with earth, and consisting of a single room, which contained their furniture, farming utensils, and stores, sufficed as a shelter against the severe winds which sweep over those plains in the inclement season; their oxen, not requiring to be housed, were allowed to roam at large and browse upon the sweet grass which remains nourishing in that region throughout the winter.
At that period immense herds of bison roved through that section, and in a few days after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Hinman—for this was their name—they had each shot, almost without stirring from their camp, three fat buffalo cows, whose flesh was dried and added to their winter's store. A supply of fresh meat was thus near at hand, and for five weeks they fared sumptuously on buffalo soup and ribs, tender-loin and marrow bones, roasted with succulent tidbits from the hump, and tongue, which, with boiled Indian meal, formed the staple of their repasts.
Both Mr. Hinman and his wife were scions of that hardy stock which had, even before the Revolutionary War, set out from Connecticut, and, cutting their way through the forest, had crossed the Alleghany Mountains and river, and pitched their camp in the rich valley of the Muskingum, near the site of the present city of Marietta. Both had also grown up amid the surroundings of true frontier life, and were endowed with faculties, as well as fitted by experience, to engage in the bold enterprise wherein they were now embarked, namely, to cross the Rocky Mountains with a single ox-team and establish themselves in the fertile vale of the Willamette in Oregon.
The spare but well-knit frame, the swarthy skin, the prominent features, the deep-set eyes, the alert and yet composed manner; marked in them the true type of the born borderer. To these physical traits were united the qualities of mind and heart which are equally characteristic of the class to which they belonged; an apparent insensibility to fear, a capacity for endurance that exists in the moral nature rather than in the body, and a self-reliance that never faltered, formed a combination which fitted them to cope with the difficulties that environed their perilous project.
As early in the spring of 1845 as the ground would permit, they re-packed their goods and stores, hung out the white sails of their prairie schooner and pursued their journey up the north fork of the Platte, crossed the Red Buttes, went through Devil's Gate, skirted the banks of the Sweet Water River, and winding through the great South Pass, diverted their course to the north in the direction of the head-waters of Snake River, which would guide them by its current to the Columbia.
At this stage in their journey they consulted a rough map of the route on which two trails were laid down, either of which would lead to the stream they were seeking. With characteristic boldness they chose the shorter and more difficult trail.
Following its tortuous course in a northwesterly direction they reached a point where the path was barely wide enough for the wagon to pass, and was bounded on the one side by a wall of rock and on the other by a ragged precipice descending hundreds of feet into a dark ravine.
Here Mrs. Hinman dismounted from her seat in the wagon to assist in conducting the team past this dangerous point. Her husband stood between the oxen and the precipice when the hind wheel of the wagon slipped on a smooth stone, the vehicle tilted and being top-heavy upset and was precipitated into the abyss, dragging with it the oxen who, in their fall, carried down Mr. Hinman who stood beside the wheel yoke.
He gave a loud cry as he fell, and gazing horror-stricken over the brink Mrs. Hinman saw him bounding from rock to rock preceded by the wagon and oxen which rolled over and over till they disappeared from view.