Wagon Trains

• Wagon train needs

  • Plan for the journey, enough food, oxen to pull wagons, group of migrants with useful skills
• The Oregon Trail was marked in red on the map
• The journey on the Oregon Trail could take around four months
• Independence, Missouri was the starting point
• Independence Rock was roughly halfway through the journey
• Independence Day

  4th of July
• Successful migrants needed a plan for

  Setting off from Missouri in spring, crossing the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada before the snow fell, taking enough food, using oxen to pull wagons, having a group of migrants with useful skills
• Oxen


  • Slow and reliable animals that survived on grass, travelled at three kilometers an hour
• Horses


  • Needed much more and much better quality feed, travelled faster than oxen
• Useful skills for migrants

  • Hunters, trappers, carpenters, fishermen, women to take care of children
• Indian attacks

  Migrants demanded protection, Indians were more likely to help than harm, attacks did occur
• Cholera


  Spread rapidly due to unsafe campsites near rivers
• Drowning


  Bridges were rare, dangerous river crossings were sometimes necessary
• Accidents

  Being crushed under a wagon wheel was a risk
• Approximately 20,000 people are thought to have been killed on the Oregon Trail
• Wagons used for cover and protection from weather
• Weapons carried by migrants

  • For protection against Indian attacks, hunting wild animals
• Wagon necessities

  • Carrying migrants' belongings, food, and equipment without overloading
• Whole families moved west to start a new life
• Oxen


  • Typically used to pull wagons, slow but strong and dependable
• Tens of thousands of migrants traveled in wagon trains and the majority made it to safety
• Traveling west along the Oregon Trail as part of a wagon train became a realistic proposition