gration, the still existing hardships of the journey, and the threatening attitude of the Indians.
Owing to the settlement of the boundary question, and the prospect that a donation law would soon be passed, between four and five thousand persons came to Oregon in 1847, most of them people of comfortable means.[1] They commenced arriving at the Dalles as early as the 22d of August, and continued to arrive until November, when two hundred wagons were still on the eastern side of the mountains.
Every expedition by wagon had been attended by suffering and loss; nor was this one an exception. Its number was the principal cause of its misfortunes; the foremost companies exhausting the grass, compelling the rear to delay in order to recruit their cattle, which brought them in late, with great loss and in a starving condition. For the same cause, sickness attacked the trains, an epidemic called the black measles prevailing, from which many died on the latter part of the journey or after arrival. The caravan of wagons was also a cause of hostility on the part of the savages, from the Blue Mountains to the Dalles, who attacked several small companies, robbing the wagons, and in some instances tearing the clothing from the persons of the women, leaving them naked in the wilderness, and committing other outrages.
There being now two routes opened, there should have been a division of the travel; but this was prevented by the efforts of some who had met with losses
- ↑ It was said that not one wagon was bound for California this year; an evident mistake, as is shown by the account of the 'Wiggins party,' which attempted to pass through the mountains on the head waters of the Sacramento, and failing, turned back to the southern Oregon road. This party arrived in California in the spring of 1848, by the brig Henry. S. F. Californian, April 19, 1848. A correspondent of the Polynesian, iv. 123, 137, writing from California, says that 1,000 wagons were destined for that country, but that Oregon agents met them on the road and turned them to the Willamette Valley, by representations of the disordered state of California, and the insecurity of property and life. Expositor, Independence, Mo., May 17, 1847; Niles' Reg., lxxiii. 6; Johnson's Cal. and Or., 202–3; Findlay's Statement, MS., 2; Victor's River of the West, 394.
