necessarily very strong and heavy, I think they used a team of six yoke of cattle; and with this outfit broke three and four acres of prairie land in a day. Horses were seldom used to work in harness. In crossing the plains I remember seeing only one team in which a horse was used. That team was made up of a yoke of milch cows on the wheel and an old roan mare in the lead. The outfit belonged to Henry Stout and its uniqueness and economic makeup was not overlooked nor soon forgotten.
When we arrived at the place where we settled on Salt Creek in September, we had no time to spare from the building of cabins and other preparations for winter to make plows; and so it happened that the first plow to break ground in that country was one brought by Lindsay Applegate from the Old Mission where we had passed our first winter in Oregon. This plow was probably purchased from a missionary or French-Canadian settler, but there were no names or figures discovered on it, telling where, when or by whom made.
After the first rains had softened the ground, about the last week in November, 1844, prairie was broken with this, plow for spring wheat and a garden patch, and I think plowing was done from time to time during the winter where the ground was a little rolling and not too wet.
The wild country I am now speaking of was afterwards named Polk County, and this plow being the very first to poke its nose into the virgin soil of that county, should be entitled to some distinction, and its mysterious origin, private life and tragic end should be noted. The beam and handles were wood; all the balance was metal, cast in sections and fastened together with bolts and screws. The bar was one piece and the knee, shear, heel, coulter and nose were each separate. The first piece that broke disclosed the fact that it was pot-metal. All of the pieces were of the same metal. Each had been cast in a mould. When one of the sections was broken a new section had to be hammered out of iron at the blasksmith shop. In the course of four or five years all the parts had been broken and replaced with wrought iron sections, except the mould board; and the beam and handles had been removed, but it continued to be the same plow; and as we had named it the Cast-plow in the beginning, we never changed its name,
