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                         Historical Background

Childbirth:   “Prepare to Die!”

   A doctor of the 1800’s advised that married women should be considered pregnant unless proven otherwise.

    “It cannot be long now before the end, or the beginning,”  wrote one expectant mother.  She was fully aware that pregnancy could cost her her life.  Many women feared each pregnancy but had no way to prevent it.

     A high percentage of women could expect to die in childbirth or due to the complications of pregnancy.  Germs were still little understood in the 1800’s.  Women had almost no resources or information on how to prevent pregnancies.   Families generally averaged between 7 and 12 children.  Mothers could expect to loose a number of those children to diseases, usually before the age of 5.

    Complications of pregnancy, birth defects, infant deaths, and even death were considered the mother’s fault.  Pregnancy itself was considered the fault of the woman.  Men often took little or no responsibility for their wives’ deaths due to pregnancies

     In wagon train diaries, men often criticized women for picking poor times to “bring forth a child”.  Often, only one or two wagons would stop when a woman was giving birth.  They would then have to catch up when they could.

Children:

     Mothers were warned NOT to hold or touch a young child too much. 

     Children of farm families were considered a free work force.  Children were the property of the father, as was his wife.  Anything that belonged to a wife or anything that she earned, legally belonged to her husband.  Children also legally belonged to the father, to do with as he pleased. 

     Until the mid-1900’s, it was felt that children needed hard work and strict discipline to grow up right.  Love and affection were not considered important.  This was especially true for children who were orphaned or for other reasons taken in by relatives or other families. 

      Men (especially among professionals) referred to their son as “boy” until the father wanted to acknowledge the boy as a man.  Then he would call the boy by his name.  (Some men had trouble remembering their sons’ names since they used them so rarely!)

     Children were expected to be “seen and not heard”.  Children were to obey parents without question.  Children were not consulted in major family decisions.  Men were expected to make all decisions.  Most men would discuss major decisions with their wives, but the final decision was supposed to be his.

     Punishment usually meant a whipping with Pa’s belt or with a switch.  Some children were even made to cut the branch themselves that would then be used in their punishment.  Children had far more responsibility during this time, but also more freedom, in the case of the boys.  Girls were looked on as the “civilizers”.  It was the role of the women and girls to civilize the men and boys. 

     Just as now, families differed widely in their treatment of their own children.  A major difference was that parents knew that not all of their children were likely to live to adulthood.  High fevers from scarlet fever, or even diseases we no longer look upon as terribly dangerous, such as chicken pox, could result in death.  If the child survived, she may be left deaf, blind or brain damaged by the fever.

Assignment:   Go to a local cemetery and look at graves from the 1800’s.  Determine an average age.  Look for women who died young.  It’s shocking how many have an infant buried next to or nearby.  Look at the number of children who are buried there.  Can you find months in which there was a high death rate, or a family which lost several members in a short period of time?  A contagious illness may have swept through the area during that time. 

On the Oregon Trail

    Myths:  Conestoga Wagons were rarely used on the Oregon Trail, they were used as freight wagons.  They were first used in Pennsylvania around 1750.  They were used on the shorter Santa Fe Trail.  Farm wagons with canvas covers were the most common wagon on the Oregon Trail.

      Hollywood movies would have us believe that Indians were a major danger to the travelers on the Oregon Trail.  In fact, they were often an invaluable help.  They traded for goods and foods the travelers needed, helped them with river crossings and acted as guides.  It was only in later years that the tribes along the route became bothered by the number of people crossing their lands, hunting or scaring away their game, and not treating them with any respect.

Health:  Guide books advised emigrants not to camp near bodies of water.  The vapors off the water carried diseases, they said.  (They were unaware that it was most likely the mosquitoes living near the water that carried the illnesses.) 

    Water also carried dysentery when people relieved themselves too close to the rivers.  Some emigrants had a basic understanding of this.  They knew that camping sites were cleaner if they dug latrines at each night’s stop.  By camping away from streams and rivers, it left that water less contaminated.

     Coffee was a staple drink for all ages.  It probably saved many lives!  By boiling the water for coffee, the bacteria in the water was destroyed. 

Cooking Out:  We think about cooking out with grills and nice, dry firewood.  The pioneers had to use what was available.  They brought with them an iron kettle, a cast iron skillet called a spider, and a coffee pot.  Trees along the trail route in the Great Plains were soon all cut down.  Wood was scarce.  Any wood found was collected and saved.  Other materials used were twists of grass, sage bushes and dried bison droppings.  The “buffalo chips” were usually gathered by the children.  They burned well and did not give off an odor.

     Starting a fire with flint and tinder was actually quite difficult to do.  Most people brought matches, called ‘Lucifers’, with them.  Some of these matches were coated with wax to allow them to light in wet weather.

     If there had been heavy rains, it was very difficult to get a fire going on wet ground.  Fires would be started in the kettle.  When the fire was going well, it may be transferred to the ground.  If it was still raining, cooking may be done over the fire in the kettle or the family would have a cold meal. 

     Each evening, the dried beans or salted meat would be left to soak in the remains of the fire until the next morning.  The fire would be stirred up to heat the contents the next morning.  The mid-day meal, or ‘nooning’, would be a cold meal. 

      On the Oregon Trail games, you get to do a lot of hunting.  Most farmers were not good hunters!  They did not depend on hunting as a food source.  However, they did collect plants to supplement their supplies.