The Great Medicine Road: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, Part 4: 1856–1869 ed. by Michael L. Tate (review)

The Great Medicine Road: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, Part 4: 1856–1869, the final volume of an ambitious series, covers the last years of emigrant travel over the Oregon–California trails. Each chapter presents a diary, a reminiscence (published and unpublished), an interview, or an official report of individuals who followed the trails from Nebraska to California and Oregon. The reader will come away with a picture of the trials and tribulations faced by the emigrants. Both hot and freezing weather, dust, and mosquitos bedeviled the travelers. Sandy and rocky roads, steep ascents and descents, and dangerous river crossings were routine, and the desert crossings were exhausting. The scarcity of water or contaminated water caused animals to give out and be abandoned to perish along the trail. Stampedes of cattle and horses led to time lost re-collecting the herds. Emigrants died by drowning and disease, and Indian hostility and bad feeling amongst the travelers were serious and at times deadly problems. Rewarding experiences are also reported, including lovely weather, amazing natural formations (Chimney Rock, Devil's Gate, Soda Springs), exciting buffalo hunts, evening campfires, encounters with new and old friends, and even berry picking.

Historian Michael Tate has written extensively on Indian/Euro-American relations, including such eminent books as Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails (2006) and The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (1999). In the current volume he emphasizes that during the time period from the late 1850s through the Civil War there was a significant change for the worse in relations between Indians and emigrants. As pointed out in a report by Indian agent Thomas Twiss in 1859, this was primarily due to the ongoing destruction of the Indians' food sources, which in the case of the Sioux was the decimation of the giant buffalo herds. The main trouble that the emigrants faced was, however, with the Shoshone groups west of the Continental Divide, where the intermontane ecology was easily disrupted by the large wagon trains and cattle herds. The diaries and reminiscences for this segment of the journey all report recent attacks on emigrants by Shoshone, with the number of deaths increasing with time. Of course, the friendly relations that had prevailed earlier did not disappear. A surprising example was that of a freight hauler, Moses Sydenham, whose wagon train was caught in a blizzard in western Nebraska and was rescued by a local Sioux group, who let the teamsters stay in their winter camp until the blizzard was over.

Tate begins each chapter with an illuminating overview of the given traveler's background and his/her life after the journey. The published reminiscences are especially well written and compelling. Some readers might wish that Tate had included Noah Brooks's excellent reminiscence written in 1902 for The Century Magazine rather than his diary. Fortunately this article is easily available online. The diaries, which can be terse and repetitious, provide some of the most vivid characterizations of events along the route as on-the-spot reports. The narratives are heavily footnoted, so that a reader with no background in trail history can better follow the exposition. The extensive bibliography is invaluable, and the book is accompanied by maps, historical photographs, and artwork that enhance the reading experience.

The book concludes with a promotional pamphlet written for the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868. This broadside extols the virtues to come with the advent of the transcontinental railroad—new cities, factories, farms, mines and minerals, and jobs that would soon be in place in the entire trans-Mississippi West. The long, arduous travel by ox-train and horse-drawn wagons that the emigrants had experienced would no longer be necessary. The destruction of the Native American lifeways was...