In the early spring of 1851, Olive Oatman was traveling west with her family in search of a new life in California. The party included her mother, about to give birth, her father, a sister named Lucy, a sister named Mary Ann, a brother named Lorenzo, a five-year-old and a two-year old. The family had taken an unplanned-for route through the Soccorro mountains. Although they had been told the passageway was safe, during the labor of the mother “no one noticed the approach of 17 Apache braves,” a diarist and fellow traveler later recounted. Almost the entire family was killed. Olive and Mary Ann were captured and later sold in exchange for blankets to a prosperous Mohave tribe. Mary Ann died of starvation during a subsequent drought, but Olive lived with the Mohave people for years, becoming close to their leader’s wife and daughter. She was given the distinctive blue tattoo of Mohave women on her chin and arms, marks which were made by rubbing charcoal or dye into wounds.
In Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey (2004), historian Lillian Schlissel quotes further from the aforementioned diarist, who tells of Olive’s eventual return to settler society. “They found the girl in her bark dress seated on the river bank. At the approach of the white men she buried herself in the sand.” It appears that Olive did not want to reintegrate with the people she came from. “At every opportunity she sought to flee back … for four years she lived with us, but she was a grieving, unsatisfied woman … in time we erased the tattoo marks from her face but we could not erase the wild life from her heart.”
Is there something in the American spirit that resists civilization, that rebukes formality, that seeks ever deeper communion with wilderness and wildness? Why would pioneers crave the arduous journey toward the promised left-coast land, when they had perfectly good farms at home? Wasn’t breaking away from British society, as we had in the previous century, enough? Or had “the States,” as they were called then to describe the eastern half of the new nation, become so stultifying that the march toward the Oregon Territory became imperative? What drove thousands of emigrants, year after year, across the continent in spite of the many stories of illness, death and conflict that had befallen those before them?
Schlissel uses the word “restless” to describe the emigrants, and the word “relentless” to characterize their journey west. She notes the major attributes most pioneers shared:
They were men and women who had already made one or more moves before … They were children of parents who themselves had moved to new lands … they possessed the assortment of skills needed to make the journey and start again. They had owned land before, had cleared land before, and were prepared to clear and own land again. And they were young.
Considerably young: most of the Americans who completed the nation’s westward expansion were between 16 and 35 years old. The idea of rootedness, of being tethered to one’s “home place” has gained much traction in conservative thought over the past few years. You might say it’s en vogue; and rightly so, given how beautifully people like Kentuckian poet Wendell Berry have expressed the beauty of blooming where you’re planted. But it is also essentially American to partake of this restless movement toward a better life. This is intrinsic to who we are: we shift around the continent, relentlessly maximizing our nation’s potential to give us our fullest expression and fulfillment of our purpose. This is also the pursuit of happiness.
Schlissel writes that the frenzy that “propelled the emigrants across the continent did not abate when they reached the coast. They moved and moved again, searching for that final geography, that ultimate configuration of land that would make them prosperous.” For the first wave especially of Americans on the overland trails, “their pattern of life was to move from free land to free land.” Many pioneers undertook the journey as their honeymoon: “On the morning following their marriage ceremony, they set out across the plains.” The vaunted characteristics that we think of as quintessentially American — hardworking, resilient, resourceful and adventurous — arose not only in our Revolution but specifically during the westward expansion.
In her book Women and Wilderness (1980), Anne LaBastille quotes plentifully from Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a single frontierswoman and homesteader. “I never saw the good of moping,” Elinore wrote. “I want to earn every cent that goes into my own land and improvements myself … I know I shall succeed; other women have succeeded.”
American frontierspeople showed immeasurable “courage and resoluteness in the face of exhaustion and despair,” LaBastille says. They didn’t let life events deter their journey. Many women were pregnant during the migration and gave birth on the plains. At times, their parties rested for several days, giving the woman and newborn a chance to recuperate; but often, the drive west resumed the very next morning. Women who didn’t ride in the wagons walked with their babies in their arms, keeping pace with the oxen and mules. Children received names from the rivers they happened to be born beside. The accounts of these births, Schlissel writes, were as “nonchalant as a discussion of potatoes or daisies.”
The overland journey required “every bit of ingenuity and physical stamina” these American ancestors “could muster.” Women went out into the plains to collect buffalo “chips” — which were really pieces of buffalo dung — in their aprons. The chips, as well as any dried weeds that could be plucked, were used to start campfires. The diary of one man recounts how his wife managed to cook outdoors during a downpour:
having kneeded her dough, she watched and nursed the fire and held an umbrella over the fire and her skillet with the greatest composure for near 2 hours and baked enough bread to give us a very plentiful supper!
The pioneers ate a lot of beans and bacon. Each family was advised to start the trek with plentiful stores of coffee and sugar. Many found that they had overloaded their wagons after departure, and the trails were littered with discarded cast-iron stoves, chairs, and other belongings.
In many ways, the westward expansion represented a radical break with everything its travelers had known. For men especially, 11% of whom died along the way, the trails were a “physical expression” of a “dramatic rite of passage to mastery and adulthood.” Schlissel writes of the West having a kind of “magnetism;” once it had taken hold of these pioneer men, “nothing would keep them from setting forth.”
The trail required again and again this action of relinquishing that which was most precious and dear. When a death occurred, whether from dysentery, exhaustion, or exposure to the elements, the person would be buried in as deep a grave as could be dug on often-parched land. Then the march forward would continue. Can you imagine leaving your loved one on a vast plain, spending only brief moments with their body, and then surrendering them forever to the American expanse? Did the souls of these frontierspeople become angels, guiding new pioneers along the way? After their remains were eaten by wolves or scavenged by tribes for their clothing, did their bones give birth to the next spring’s flowers? Couldn’t it be said that these people died for America?
A woman named Celinda watched her father drown while crossing a river. Soon after, “with hearts overflowing with sorrow we were under the necessity of pursuing our journey immediately, as there was no grass [for the animals] where we were.” Still, she believed that her father was spiritually “yet living,” and that he would “watch over me and continue to guide me.” Any prolonged pause in the onward motion, even for significant loss or illness, put the pioneers in danger. Schlissel: “Delay for the dying threatened the life of the living.” Think of how different this attitude is from the one “polite” and “responsible” citizens held during Covid: that all of society should be stopped to protect the elderly!
What was it, then, that compelled the pioneers to undertake these journeys? Surely it was more than the material prospect of fertile land, a more temperate climate, or gold dust. It is the Holy Spirit that draws us toward God’s intentions, if we are listening. And perhaps America has a Sacred Spirit of its own that seizes men’s hearts, that sets aflame a woman’s soul and leads her on to whatever is necessary for national survival. A young female traveler named Miriam Tuller recounted in her diary that her husband was “fired with patriotism;” of herself she said that “I was possessed with a spirit of adventure and a desire to see what was new and strange.” Fired. Possessed. Fever. These are the words frontierspeople used to describe, again and again, the states of mind that compelled them westward.
“We had become indifferent to fear,” Miriam wrote. “We felt quite sure we could go almost anywhere.” Of the bison rippling across the plains: they “were solid masses as far as the eye could reach, and we had fresh meat galore.” Schlissel writes that many young people perceived “the overland migration to be a momentous calling of history.” The expansion, then, was a vocation.
“Many of the emigrants made the 2,000 mile trek for patriotic reasons,” according to 1996 documentary The Story of the Oregon Trail. “When the wagons rolled west, they took America with them — its values, its ideals, and eventually, its government.” This was a movement of “ordinary men and women who were willing to risk everything.” There was a strong impetus, Schlissel writes, to “respond to the impulses of the road, to take the chance of the moment and move with freedom.”
I remember living with my cousin and her husband in central upstate New York for three months as the pandemic began to wane. Nestled at the bottom of the Adirondacks, safely out of reach of any coastal culture, I lay in my room there at night, listening to the sound of their American flag high upon its pole. It was planted about ten feet from my window. As the wind whipped it back and forth, I heard a voice within me. Washington. Washington. Go to Washington — the way Jane hears Rochester’s voice calling her in Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece. All I could think of was Washington. Perhaps it was God that wanted me to come here, but it was also a force that I am beginning to think of as the Spirit of America — that same force that infused the pioneers’ rib cages with burning fire and ambition for the trail. It had seized me, and would not let go.
I wrote then in an early piece about freedom and the frontier, quoting an anonymous lecture that referenced Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous thesis, that
American culture is defined by “people leaving settled areas” and “the struggle to find new ways to live in new lands.”
If the media is a landscape, then Substack is surely a frontier. Just as every pioneer arriving in Oregon was granted 320 acres free of charge, provided he could work its soil for four years before calling it his own, Substack promises the ability to grow and cultivate exactly as we please. No one can tell us what to do. Anyone with a hearty dose of oppositional defiant disorder and the ability to write clean copy can have a Substack. Frontiers do not only need to be geographical. They can exist in the mind.
And why do we love a frontier? Because we’re Americans, and we’re wild. If Ralph Waldo Emerson, that great voice of America, wrote in “Self-Reliance” (1841) that “your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none,” then America in 2024 could be said to consist mostly of edge. Consider the message of Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse,” which just won Song of the Year at the Country Music Awards:
My mind is turning like a cloud of dust
My heart always wants to run
If you want a cowboy on a white horse
Riding off into the sunset
If that’s the kinda love you wanna wait for
Hold on tight girl I ain’t there yet
The song, which routinely erupts into Stapleton’s outlaw wail, is about a man who isn’t ready to be tamed. As much as the progressives wanted to tame America, she was not (and may never be) ready. People who try to make America too simplistically moral always fail. America’s goodness has edge. That is what makes us America.
I once heard a young priest, whose beautiful homilies compelled me to go to daily Mass whenever I could, claim indignantly that the faith is not merely a morality. “It is not a morality,” he insisted. “It is the Good News.” He meant that it is about redemption and resurrection, not solely a rigid set of guidelines. The kind of morality trumpeted by progressives — flat and unforgiving, with no transcendence to accompany its strictures — was always bound to topple.
I went to the National Portrait Gallery this week in search of Olive Oatman and found the great frontiersmen Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett instead. The photographs of Oatman are not currently on display. But there is a wealth of paintings by frontier artist George Catlin to be seen, many of them depictions of Native Americans:
I was dismayed, however, to find the negativity toward America that was written into many of the captions alongside the artworks. Whoever wrote these dismal paragraphs obviously felt compelled to denigrate the heritage of this great nation, and rain on the legacy of national folk heroes like Boone. America’s many evils were emphasized, and even descriptions of great presidents were followed by finger-wagging reminders of the “isms” they had participated in. Perhaps these small sermons were intended to educate the children of flyover patriots as they pass through on school field trips, but I can assure you, Reader, that I saw no teenager reading them. They were too focused on their phones.
There must be some way of acknowledging the moral complexity of America’s history without completely throwing America under the bus. Why does a nation need to be morally spotless in order to be beloved? No nation, no people, is completely without fault.
Despite the violence of the trail, the encounters with tribes who could be either murderous or helpful (many travelers paid or traded goods with Native Americans who helped them cross rivers), the disease, the plentiful early deaths that could have been avoided by staying in place, and the punishing routine of bumpy roads, rain, hail, and desert heat, the pioneers found beauty in their surroundings. “Tonight my husband brought in some beautiful flowers,” a woman named Harriet wrote. “The form & color resembling the snowball & the perfume the night-blooming Jessamine.” Another named Caroline journaled that “the ground here is covered with artemesis,” as well as “wild roses, geraniums, and amaranth.”
Women kept assiduous records of graves passed and miles completed. From the 1852 diary of Cecelia McMillen Adams:
July 19 Passed 2 graves … made 14 miles
July 23 Passed 7 graves … made 15 miles
July 25 Passed 3 graves … made 16 miles
July 27 Passed 3 graves … made 14 miles
July 29 Passed 8 graves … made 16 miles
They and their families made time to celebrate Independence Day. From Elizabeth Wood: “I [wore] a red calico frock, made for the purpose in the wagons; a pair of mackasins, made of black buffalo hide, ornamented with silk … and a hat braided of bullrushes and trimmed with white, red and pink ribbon and white paper.” From Catherine Haun: “We sang patriotic songs, repeated what little we could of the Declaration of Independence, fired off a gun or two, and gave three cheers for the United States and California Territory in particular … we danced until midnight.”
Some of the most poignant writing from the trail concerns the relationships formed with animals, both domesticated and wild. Oxen, cattle, and mules were an indispensable part of the journey for almost every wagon party. It was difficult for the animals to survive: water and adequate grass for grazing could be hard to find. Many of the poor creatures arrived emaciated, if they arrived at all. Their contributions to the making of America should not go unheralded.
On the third day of her party’s journey, Lydia Allen Rudd wrote about her cattle “shaking their bells and grunting.” Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a single mother who settled in Wyoming years after the initial migrations and established herself on 240 acres under the Homestead Act, talked congenially about her encounters with wildlife:
Suddenly a great wolf started from somewhere and galloped along the edge of the canyon, outlined black and clear by the setting sun. His curiosity overcame him at last, so he sat down and waited to see what manner of beast we were. I reckon he was disappointed for he howled most dismally … It was too beautiful a night to sleep, so I put my head out to look and to think. I saw the moon come up and hang for a while over the mountain … I saw a coyote come trotting along and I felt sorry for him, having to hunt food in so barren a place, but when presently I heard the whirr of wings I felt sorry for the sage chickens he had disturbed. At length a cloud came up and I went to sleep, and next morning was covered with several inches of snow. It didn’t hurt us a bit.
Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman who explored the Rocky Mountains of Colorado almost completely alone save for her equine companion, writes this moving account of a nighttime journey in a blizzard:
It soon became so dark that I could not even see [my horse’s] ears, and was lost and benighted. I rode on, hour after hour, in the darkness and solitude, the prairie all round and a firmament of frosty stars overhead. The prairie wolf howled now and then, and occasionally the lowing of cattle gave me hope of human proximity. But there was nothing but the lone wild plain. You can hardly imagine the longing to see a light, to hear a voice, the intensely eerie feeling of being alone in that vast solitude … By that time I had reached the prairie, only eight miles from Longmount, and pushed on … I could only see a very short distance anywhere; the drifts were often two feet deep. Reaching a wild place, I lost it, and still cantered on, trusting to the pony’s sagacity.
Imagine that, Reader. Imagine being alone on the American plain at night, lost to the stars, completely at one with your beast. Trusting in nature and animal instinct, because you had nothing else. This was the life of the frontier.
Not every perception of animals along the trail was so enthusiastic. A particularly dark entry concerns the story of Louisa Smith, a sixteen-year old who was dying of mountain fever. “She felt herself dying,” the diary recounts, and demanded (rudimentary spelling is original) “a Grave six feet deep for she did nat want the wolves to dig her up and eat her.”
Whether eaten by wolves or dissolved into the soil, the flesh of the pioneers who died along the trail became one with nature. So, too, did their survivors who soldiered on. In “The Freedom Aesthetic,” I wrote of American style that it is “defined by the interface between person and nature, and the bravery it takes to confront anything that is wild, unknown, or dangerous. In leaving behind the comfort and elegance of civilization, the wearer does not need to overcome or conquer wilderness so much as incorporate it, inherit it, and internalize it.” I was referring in part to Rodarte’s Autumn/Winter 2011 Great Plains collection, which “showed women in silk dresses with wheat printed at the bottom of their hems, as if the prairie had become part of them in the process of crossing it.” This correlates to Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 frontier thesis:
For the historian, the expansion was not only a way to claim land, but to cast off European ideals and influences. It produced “antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control.” It was characterized by a profound anti-authoritarianism, a “restless, nervous energy,” and a favorability to violence. It changed the way people dressed as it “stripped off the garments of civilization.” The outcome: “a new product that is American.”
“To enjoy such a trip along with such a crowd of emigration,” an anonymous pioneer said, “a man must be able to endure heat like a salamander, mud and water like a muskrat, dust like a toad, and labor like a jackass. He must learn to eat with his unwashed fingers, drink out of the same vessel with his mules, sleep on the ground when it rains, share his blanket with vermin, and have patience with mosquitoes — who don’t know no difference between the face of a man and the face of a mule, but to dash without ceremony from one to the other. He must cease to think, except as to where he may find grass and water, and a good cabin. It is hardship without glory.”
A spiritual account from the diary of a woman named Sarah Royce shows the faith in God that sustained pioneers such as herself who prayed without ceasing.
that calm strength, that certainty of One near and all sufficient hushed and cheered me … that consciousness of an unseen Presence still sustained me … the only thing to be done was to go steadily on, determined to do and endure to the utmost … [I] mechanically pressed onward again, alone, repeating, over and over, the words …
When Sarah and her family finally reached California, she “looked down, far over constantly descending hills, to where a soft haze sent up a warm, rosy glow that seemed to me a smile of welcome … A short time I had on those rocks, sacred to thanksgiving and prayer.” LaBastille writes that this woman in particular “seems to have come through her trials mainly because of her belief in God … She simply committed herself and her family into the Almighty’s hands and then carried on as loyally and strongly as she was able.” When Sarah was afraid, she hummed verses and hymns to herself. It was not long then, she said, before “precious companionship seemed to gather about me.” Over and over, she speaks of a “Guiding Presence, always near.”
Women and Wilderness concludes its chapter on female pioneers by claiming that most of the women “seem to have had a faith in some kind of God and drew amazing strength from their religious convictions. It often seems that the main way they got through their incredible hardships was by clinging to this staunch belief and leaving their fate entirely in the hands of Providence.”
It is worth noting that the Emersonian self-reliance that characterized the westward journey had less to do with rugged individualism than rugged solidarity. The journey would have been impossible to do by oneself. A young woman named Catherine, who was expecting her first child, ventured forth with “seventeen wagons, fifty men, eight women, and twenty children.” Interestingly, Schlissel notes that “the emigrants were a people of joiners, but also a people of separatists, and the truer picture of their behavior was that they were continually moving in and out of formal groups.” The essential unit was the family, “self-determined and self-directed.” Alliances among families formed and dissolved. Sometimes individuals joined new families due to accidents or death. Once adopted into a traveling party, a stranger often contributed to chores and tasks with great loyalty.
Forward motion was prioritized. Even among large wagon trains, “each unit was free to go or stay, move quickly or slowly, keep the threads of family ties or loose them.” Despite the desire to “keep the family together, to keep with kin,” Americans responded to the needs of the road and moved with freedom.
Several years into the migration that had begun in 1841, the “wild road” was still not tamed. But Americans were ready for the journey. A young girl named Mary was fifteen at the time of her family’s movement west. “I drove four horses nearly all day,” she wrote one May morning. “Saw the most magnificent scenery I ever saw … had a good time singing.” One thing was certain, according to Schlissel:
The New Country was a land for survivors.
“One learned to build upon the ruins of each day the necessary sinew to last until tomorrow,” she writes. “They refused to be discouraged.” Do you recognize yourself in these words, Reader? Are we not still the same people who crossed these mountains?
A traveler named Nancy H. Snow Bogart, punctuation be damned, offered the quintessential American sentence when asked if fear consumed her and her family on the trip:
no we did not have sense enough to realize our danger we just had the time of our lives