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Excerpt from The Overland Migrations: Settlers to Oregon, California, and Utah The busy outfitters of the neighboring towns of Independence and Westport, Missouri - merchants, innkeepers, blacksmiths, saddlers, and the rest - had never before seen such a crowd of movers as the one that poured through their muddy streets in the spring of 1843. Not that the frontier businessmen weren't used to travelers. Each spring for the past 20 years specially built freight wagons had been traveling from Missouri along the famed Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico and, some of them, on south as far as Chihuahua. But the sinewy roustabouts and the Mexican and American proprietors of those caravans were entirely male - adventurers, not set tlers seeking new homes. By fall most would be back with the bars of gold and silver bullion, the jingling silver pesos, the sacks of coarse wool, and the herds of fine Spanish mules that were the fruit of their bartering. This influx was different. Numbering close to a thousand persons, it was composed for the most part of families. Members ranged in age from an occasional grandfather and grandmother down to a scattering of babes - even unborn babes to judge from the appearance of a few of the women. They planned to journey to the Pacific Coast - more than twice as far as Santa Fe - ih ordinary farm wagons covered with flimsy roofs of canvas. What was more, none of those setting forth that year intended, at least at the outset, to come back again. When news of this gathering reached New York, Horace Greeley, editor of the influential Tribune, picked up his pen in amazement. Years later, Gree ley would advise the youth of the nation, Go west, young man, and grow up with the country. In 1843, however, he wasn't ready for so radical an idea. Instead he wrote scornfully, This migration of more than a thousand persons in one body to Oregon wears an aspect of insanity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
