They Had More Food Than They Could Carry. So What Killed Them?

How long would you last on the Oregon Trail? In the 1840s and 1850s, about 300,000 people walked roughly 2,000 miles from Missouri to Oregon. Many of them packed so much flour and bacon that they ended up dumping it by the road with signs that said "help yourself." And yet the trail was lined with graves, about ten for every mile. So if people had more food than they could carry, what was killing them? We follow the guidebooks of Joel Palmer and Randolph Marcy, the diary of Cecilia Adams, the Donner Party's shortcut, and Ezra Meeker's family in 1852, the worst cholera year on the trail, to find out what actually kept people alive. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:24 The Wagon 5:16 What You Eat 8:35 The Great Dump 12:20 The Road of Graves 15:48 The Shortcut 20:00 The Panic 23:08 Muddy Water 25:54 How Long You'd Last FIGURES THAT DID NOT FIT IN THE VIDEO Under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, a married couple who settled in Oregon Territory by December 1850 could claim 640 acres; later arrivals could claim half that. Joel Palmer's 1847 guide lists 200 lb of flour, 30 lb of pilot bread, 75 lb of bacon, 10 lb of rice, 5 lb of coffee, 2 lb of tea, 25 lb of sugar, a half bushel of dried beans and 10 lb of salt per adult, among other items. The Donner Party reached the Sierra Nevada in late October and early November 1846. The last survivors were brought out in April 1847. NOTES AND CAVEATS "Twenty thousand graves" and "about 5,000 deaths in 1852" are Ezra Meeker's own estimates. Meeker himself thought the 1852 figure was probably too low. The figures of about 360 emigrants and more than 400 Native Americans killed on the trails (1840–1860) come from historian John D. Unruh Jr., "The Plains Across" (1979). They are estimates from incomplete records. Meeker avoided the shallow wells because of alkali, not because of germs. The link between cholera and contaminated water was not known on the trail at the time. The Virginia Reed letter quote ("Never take no cutoffs...") is from her letter of May 16, 1847, as widely published. Maps and charts are simplified and made for this video. Old film footage is a 1923 silent movie and is labeled on screen; it is not real footage of the trail. SOURCES Joel Palmer, "Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains" (1847) Randolph B. Marcy, "The Prairie Traveler" (1859) Ezra Meeker, "Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail" (1922) and "The Ox Team, or the Old Oregon Trail, 1852–1906" (1907) Cecilia Adams, trail diary (1852), as published in "Covered Wagon Women" John D. Unruh Jr., "The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60" (1979) C. F. McGlashan, "History of the Donner Party" (1880); Lewis Keseberg's statement; Virginia Reed's letter of May 16, 1847 National Park Service, Oregon National Historic Trail; Bureau of Land Management Film: The Covered Wagon (1923, James Cruze, public domain) Video: Bureau of Land Management (public domain); brigachtal (CC0); PapaJohn (CC BY 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons Photos (Wikimedia Commons): Mike Tigas, Rick Obst (CC BY 2.0); Larry D. Moore (CC BY 4.0); Murray Foubister (CC BY-SA 2.0); Frank Schulenburg, J.smith (CC BY-SA 3.0); DenesFeri, FeldBum (CC BY-SA 4.0); other photos and paintings are public domain or CC0 #History #AmericanHistory #OregonTrail #Pioneers #WildWest