Pioneer Diaries -- Our Laura Ingalls Wilder Forum

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Date Posted: 16:41:25 07/04/02 Thu
Author: Ann
Subject: Pioneer Diaries

I found a book called "Women's Diaries of The Westward Journey" with diaries of women crossing the frontier (99% of the time at their husbands request, not their own idea, lol!). It is really fascinating, and makes the living in FH house almost luxurious by comparison. Bad enough traveling by wagon train, but then often settling where there was no home yet (even when their husbands went ahead of them!), or just a mud and stick hut or such.
Interesting point was that mostly Indians helped the pioneers by guiding them, helping them cross rivers (for payment in calico shirts), and trading for food. Turns out many of the men in wagon trains were not good hunters and, while they did scrounge up berries and stuff, often came back to wagon-train camps empty handed after a hunt. So the women often bartered with the Indians for meat.
When the pioneers headed for Oregon got here, they all seem to be surprised by all the rain (some (not all) winters it just rains almost non-stop from October through June. But, as usual, the word was more that it was the "land-of- milk-and-honey" and pioneers believed what they wanted to hear. (Good thing Pa never migrated out here. Laura's books might have had a decidedly darker edge to them, lol!). People often had to share dismal two-room huts with earlier settlers until the rains stopped and they could build their own homes.
Often women arrived without their husbands, as they died on the way. One woman with three children made a living weaving hats out of wheat, then eventually married a widower with several children and it sounds as if they lived quite happily as each strived to be good to the other.
Fascinating reading!

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Replies:

[> Re: Pioneer Diaries -- Laura, 08:53:59 07/05/02 Fri

I've got that book, and loads of others! If you liked that book, you should try the 'Covered Wagon Women' series edited by Kenneth L. Holmes. It's an eleven volume set of pioneer women's diaries. The series covers the time from about 1843 to 1903(?) These diaries really helped me to get a deeper understanding of LIW's books.

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[> [> Re: Pioneer Diaries -- Ann, 11:07:35 07/05/02 Fri

Wow! Eleven volumes. That would be great reading for a long, chilly, rainy Oregon winter. I'll have to look for the series.

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