The Life Of The Black Horn Route

My life as a female pioneer taking the journey down the Oregon Trail was one of hardship and adventure. During the early 1800s settlers began to explore new territory in the New World looking for new opportunities. Through the pioneer journeys of Lewis and Clark a route through America was discovered that would take settlers to new land in the Pacific Northwest portion of the country. To reach the new land pioneers, such as I, had to travel down what became known as the Oregon Trail.

Where I Was From by Joan Didion is a book written about Didion’s perspective of the history of California. Throughout the novel Didion shares her families past experiences and adventures of moving west. Didion not only shows the readers how California has changed but also how it changed her as a person as well. Particularly in “Part One”, the opening paragraph contains an abridgement history of the eventful westward journey of Didion’s pioneer family unit, focusing particularly on the women in the family and tracing vertebral column six generations the blood of her famous hemicranias. Didion makes a very unpersuasive argument in “Part one” by her ineffective use of organization but effective use of grounds and claims.

When the California Gold Rush took off almost everyone wanted to try their luck in California, and the first thing they had to do is get there. If you on the eastern side of the United State or from European you had two choices to get to California they were the sea or land route, but if you were on the Pacific Ocean coast you direct sea route to there. The land route took you across the great United State through some of its most extremes weather and terrain, and traveler had survived the untamed west on their own and what they bring. Also, they had to struggle against diseases outbreaks such as Cholera which the text said, “As many as 1500 travelers died from Cholera along the Overland Trail in 1849” (Gillon, 298). The most popular route

But, in order to get here, they had to go through the voyage. It was full of dreadful conditions, from eating “old and sharply-salted food and meat” to disease and death at a high rate. He explains that some women had to die because they, “could not give birth under the circumstances, was pushed through a loophole (porthole) in the ship and dropped into the sea.” This was horrible but that’s not it, children had to see their parents die or vice versa. These conditions explain that coming to the American colonies was not that simple but rather difficult due to the horrifying conditions one had to face during the voyage and then when they had

Before long ships from Asia, Australia, Europe and South America were left stranded in the San Francisco Bay as everybody looked to accomplish their own particular variant of the American Dream in the Gold Rush also.

The California Gold Rush was a very tough time for many cultures. The gold searching included many people like, Native Americans, gangs, and Foreigners. Native Americans were the first victims, Foreigners were treated to contempt, and many gangs stole until they were caught and forcibly stopped. There were many challenges individuals faced such as harsh punishments for claiming a miner’s gold, there wasn’t any police or guards to protect the gold, and many individuals who dug for gold struggled from Xenophobia.

There are two water routes to California. A 17,000 mile route around the South America and Cape Horn took 5 to 7 months.

While the current US Americans who were in California all got there traveling by sea. A man named Jedediah Smith made great advances in getting us closer to California. Author

The Susan Lee Johnson article on miners in California helped me to understand the how men in the mining towns behaved in the absence of Anglo-women. It was interesting to see some of similarities between men assuming female gender roles in California Gold Mines with that of the men in the early establishment of Jamestown, Virginia. However, the added factors like spare time and the local women in California added an even more distorted spin to the men's behavior.

As they blazed the trail that would soon lead to colonization in the Middle West they were faced with many adversities, because the path through the wilderness was too narrow for wagons due to the fact it was originally a hunter’s trail. The Wilderness Road was steep and rough, and could only be traveled by foot or horseback, despite that drawback thousand of settlers descended up the trail to the new discovered land.

On the other hand, they also had to hurry because they still had to walk through three mountain passes, the Sierra Nevada to California, and had only time from Spring to Fall. One of the travelers had 'The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California' with them. Since different people meet and had to live with different characters, Tamsen Donner wrote: “We have of the best people in our company and some, too, that are not so good.” Since it was Spring, rain and storm were pretty common and stopped the group on the Big Blue River. For a few people it was already too much of what they can withstand and the first death was by Reeds grandma, the loss of her was tragically written down by Virginia Reed: “..We made a neat coffin, and buried her under a tree... We miss her very much.” So far, there were no other major difficulties for the travelers, it was a pretty smooth trip. Arriving to Fort Bridger about just a week behind schedule, there James Reed meets James Clyman, an old friend who thought that the Hastings shortcut is unpractical, the old way would be more safer, but Reed did not take the advice, he wanted to take the shortcut, probably by the thought that a shortcut in our life also gets us to our target faster.

During the time of crossing the overland trail, many people instead chose to take the ship route which went around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. The points that we are given to keep in mind are:

The opening chapter of this book discusses the role of women in the Californian provinces, and the problems they faced just because they are women. One of the major problems that women faced at this time, was the constant sexual abuse by Spanish soldiers. The soldiers raped women of all ages and hurt anyone that tried to stop them. During these acts of abuse, venereal diseases, such as syphillis, would be past along to the Native Women and then across their missions. This disease soon became

This is especially true of the writing by women of the time. It is a long held myth that the gold rush was almost completely male. Yet, most trail diaries mention the presence of women.4 Still, they were quite a minority. The 1860 census reveals that in San Francisco that year, men outnumbered women three to two. Lopsided though this ratio may be, there were enough women in California to have quite an influence, and perhaps they struggled even more with their new freedom than the men. More restraint was expected from women, and it was their duty to keep their husbands and children proper. How they chose to deal with their new surroundings would have greatly impacted their families. Women offer an interesting perspective, as women were traditionally the epitomes of Victorian morality. Historian Lillian Schlissel writes that unlike the men, “...women did not always see the venture in the clear light of the expectation of success. There were often shadows in their minds, dark areas of reservation.”5 Women usually had little say in the matter of going West; therefore, it is logical that they would see things in a different light than their adventure seeking husbands. Still, many women were able to see the positive aspects of California, if not

In California, between 1850’s to the Chinese Exclusion Act, most of the Chinese women who came to San Francisco were either slaves or indentured. They were often lured, kidnapped or purchased and forced to work as prostitutes at the brothels which is run by secret society of the Tongs of San Francisco. Chinese prostitutes also were smuggled and had worked at the Chinatown brothels in the Comstock Mines in Nevada. Chinese prostitutes were commonly known as prostitutes of the lowest order. “Both outcast slatterns and Asian slaves stood at the edge of the irregular marketplace, far more socially stigmatized than ordinary prostitutes.”