Travel Oregon Special Insert Sept | Oct 2018

Photo by Megan Morse
IN THE WAGON RUTS
Exploring our Oregon Trail ancestry
to better understand ourselves
WRITTEN BY SHEILA G. MILLER
NEXT TIME YOU think your day has been taxing, just remember—the
pioneers who came to our fair state on the Oregon
Trail 175 years ago had to take at least 5 million steps to
cover the 2,170 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City.
“And they were not all easy steps,” said Mel Fuller, a descendant of
Oregon Trail pioneers. “There were probably more than that if you
were running around finding firewood, gathering buffalo chips for a
fire, trying to gather food. Five million steps was just walking it pace
by pace. It’s a long trip.”
Oregonians of all stripes are commemorating the Oregon Trail’s
175th anniversary this year, but some around the state keep at the
front of their minds the grit and determination of their ancestors
who walked the trail in search of a better life and a piece of land all
their own.
Fuller is a member of the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers,
a group that celebrates direct descendants of those who settled Oregon
Country—now Oregon, Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana,
Wyoming and much of British Columbia—before Oregon became a
state in 1859.
Fuller said his mother, whose ancestors, the Bozarths, crossed the
plains on the Oregon Trail in 1845, took an active interest in the family’s
history. Fuller, a Lake Oswego resident who grew up in Prineville,
took it from there.
The Bozarths came west with nine children, including a 13-year-old
named Christopher Columbus Bozarth. Fifty years later, Bozarth gave
an interview to the Cathlamet (Washington) Gazette, recounting his
experiences in the wagon train.
“That became kind of a family heirloom,” Fuller said. “I have one of
the original reprints.”
Bozarth’s account details the family’s start in April 1845 from Iowa
with a “large prairie schooner wagon,” four yoke of oxen, a family carriage
drawn by oxen, cattle, a dog and Bozarth’s riding pony. The family
passed through Iowa and was joined by fifteen more wagons, thirty-one
men and an untold number of women and children. In many
ways, the account is clearly from a 13-year-old’s perspective—Bozarth
recalls his riding pony being stolen, for example.
“It’s a younger person’s viewpoint and perspective from that time,”
Fuller noted. “But it certainly gave insight into the experiences on
the trail.”
Fuller’s family arrived to the Oregon Territory without any deaths
or other major catastrophes, though according to Bozarth’s account,
there were some illuminating moments. There were several interactions
with Native Americans that clearly scared the 13-year-old, and a
member of their party went missing while hunting, only to be found
a week or so later. He’d been saved by Native Americans who gave
him food and clothing and directed him back to the trail. Bozarth also
spoke in his interview of encountering wildlife.
“The gray wolves were numerous and would follow along behind,
and as soon as an animal would lag or give out it was pounced upon
and killed at once,” he told reporters.
And Bozarth also spoke in passing of the hunger that followed him
on the trail. “During this time our provisions gave out and we were
almost in a starving condition,” he said. “I picked up old salmon skins
which the Indians had thrown away and broiled and ate them and was
very glad to get them. It was enough for me, and I have been salmon
sick ever since.”
Reading about these hard times has helped Fuller understand the
significance of the Oregon Trail and its travelers.
“I think it’s important for all of us to understand that we stand on
the shoulders and the sacrifices of the people who came before us,”
Fuller said. “It’s good to learn how you came to be, how your family
came to be and what their accomplishments were along the way. It
helps round you out as a person.”
3 A NEW FRONTIER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018