I dragged my husband and children out to the Oregon Trail. From
Independence, Missouri, all the way to Oregon City, Oregon, we
followed the original trail. We camped on it, hiked on it, and found
every major wagon stopping point and "landmark" along the way. We
studied the names and messages scratched into rocks. We scrambled
along the banks and among waterfalls of the great Snake and Columbia
Rivers. We talked to descendants of Native American tribes who once
populated these lands.
After that experience settled into my mind, and after I'd read most
of the existing period accounts written by actual emigrants of the
Trail, I knew I had to write about these people myself. I wanted to
express the hardship, yes, but I also wanted to show the humor of real
human beings. "The Petticoat Party" series is the end result. All of
the historical situations, all of the locations are absolutely true.
Every mile traveled by my characters has been worked out on a vast
chart of the original Trail.
What I chose to add that was different was a humorous, feminist
interpretation of the experience. My starting premise was to take a
group of women who really weren't anxious to pull up stakes and head
West. They did it only because they were forced to by their marriage
vows of obedience or because it was a lesser evil than, for example,
working in the Lowell mills. I've tried in these books to make a
little time machine, to recreate what it was really like on the Oregon
Trail or, what it could have been like.
There are many stories about journeying West along the Oregon Trail. I
noticed a large gap in the literature, however: no one ever wrote about
what it was like when these pioneers actually arrived. My mind swirled
with questions. What did Oregon City look like in 1846 and how was it
different, yet similar to eastern towns? How did the immigrants set up
their homesteads? What was their connection to the rest of the world, and
how did they learn of events happening outside the Willamette Valley?
How did the original occupants -- the Native American tribes -- react to this
sudden influx of strangers onto their lands? I began to try to find the
answers to these and other questions.
Visiting Oregon City and the Willamette Valley helped. Seeing the
area today, I got a feel for the lay of the land -- how trees still towered,
rivers still flowed (despite added dams,) cliffs still brooded, and the land
itself was still wet and green with rain. I also collected and studied old
photographs and maps until I had an image of the town circa 1846-1850 in
my head. I began to subtract people and progress from the current land
and add my own characters to the earlier environment.
It's easy in theory to learn how to build a log cabin or a barn. There
are many books on the subject. I wasn't satisfied with theory. I wanted
to know what it felt like to whittle a peg for a joist or actually help raise
the walls of a barn. Luckily, I got the opportunity when the National
Building Museum in Washington, D.C., held a barnraising within the
cavernous walls of its building. As a volunteer I was able to do all these
things using period tools under the supervision of master carpenters. It
was an extraordinary experience. I hope I was able to evoke some of the
excitement and sense of accomplishment and camaraderie in "Oregon,
Sweet Oregon's" barnraising scene.
Oregon City during this period was connected to the world by
occasional ships arriving to do business with the Hudson's Bay Company's
trading center in Fort Vancouver. More importantly, it was connected by
its very own newspaper, "The Oregon Spectator." I studied period
copies of the journal in the Library of Congress, then created my own paper, "The Oregon Intelligencer." I gave it my own
editor, the struggling young man who gives Amelia the opportunity to
continue her literary aspirations. Next I needed to know how a real
newspaper office would have looked at that time. I also wanted to know
how a press was actually operated. The Smithsonian's National Museum
of American History had all the answers. I introduced myself to the
museum's resident printing expert who not only answered my questions,
but also raised the ropes on the exhibit of the pertinent press, invited me
inside, and actually taught me how to set type, ink it, and print with the
press. After my "Oregon Intelligencer" scenes were written, this
magnificent gentleman also proofed the copy to catch errors. (He was
distraught because Johnny Tremain, the most famous of all children's
books involving the printing business, contained numerous technical
errors.)
As for the local Native American tribes, I soon learned that they were
by nature less belligerent than most of the Plains tribes. The coastal
Chinooks quietly carried on their trading endeavors. The Cayuse on the
other side of the Cascade Mountains did eventually lose their patience.
The results were the Whitman Massacre and the succeeding Cayuse Wars.
I acquired a Chinook Dictionary to make my dialogue between these
Indians and the Kennan twins more authentic. I visited the Whitman
Mission National Historic Site near Walla Walla, Washington, to try to
understand the competing point of view of these earliest missionaries to
the Oregon Territory.
Slowly I learned what it was actually like to have arrived in the
Oregon Country in 1846. I began to feel as if I were one of the new
immigrants myself. I hope Phoebe's adventures and her state of mind
reflect all these elements. More to the point, I hope that she comes alive
for readers in her own right and that the research I did is conveyed with
enough subtlety to make Phoebe and her world real. Historical fiction is
meant to bring the past believably alive. It shouldn't use a sledgehammer
to give the reader facts.
Summary
In Book Three, Phoebe Brown (13) and her family have arrived in the promised land of Oregon. Amid the late rains
of autumn and the early snows of a particularly difficult winter, the family must built a cabin on the
land Papa Brown has chosen. Settled at last, Phoebe spends the next two years learning that
pioneering life is not for her. It has its compensations for nearly every other member of their original
wagon train: Phoebe's big sister Amelia finally lands her printer beau; Papa is content with his rich
fields; Mama satisfies herself with her home, neighbors, and the Oregon City Ladies' Literary
Society; Miss Simpson starts her own school for young ladies. But Phoebe longs for new adventures.
When she meets Robbie Robson, a young man with similar goals, she takes a bold chance to fulfill
herself.
Find out more about the book.
Pre-reading
Discuss the major events in the Oregon Territory bordering California
during the period 1846-1848:
The Oregon Controversy and the Hudson's Bay Company: The peace
treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Great Britain left
undecided the ownership of "the Oregon Country," so it remained jointly
controlled by the two countries. The Territory was a huge, vaguely
known block of land stretching from Mexican California north to Russian
Alaska, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. This land
was originally explored by wilderness men who worked for competing fur
traders. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company established Astoria
on the Pacific Coast in 1811. In 1825, to keep the British interest in the
land alive, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver on the
Columbia River.
As it turned out, Fort Vancouver became the end point of the Oregon
Trail, and John McLoughlin, the fort's chief, or factor, found himself
dealing more often with new American settlers than with British interests.
McLoughlin was cordial to the Americans and eventually became an
American himself, settling in Oregon City. In the interim, his fort
became the major point of civilization in the Territory. To the dismay of
his British employers, McLoughlin sent out a call for more American
settlers. With the population increasing in the Americans' favor, the
British eventually moved their fur operations to Victoria Island. As the
U.S. became more involved in the Mexican War (1846-48), Washington backed down on its claim,
and the boundary dispute was resolved in 1846
with the fixing of the Canadian-U.S. boundary at the 49th parallel, even
after the war hawks in the east had vowed "54-0 or Fight!" (N.B. that
the 54th parallel would have reached the southern tip of Alaska.)
The Donner Party Disaster: The most infamous wagon train of the
1846 westering season, the Donner Party allowed itself to be conned by
California promoters waiting at South Pass. Convinced to take an
unproven "cutoff" route through the Utah desert to California, the
emigrants were beset by hardships, bad decisions, and bad luck. Instead
of making it over the Sierra Nevada Mountains before winter, they were
stranded by heavy, early snows. They could have walked out and
survived, but were loath to leave their wagons and livestock. They
stayed, starved, and eventually resorted to cannibalism. Of the 23 men,
15 women, and 41 children who reached Donner Lake (named in their
honor for the spot where they wintered) two-thirds of the men, one third
of the children, and one quarter of the women died. Four relief
expeditions were sent through the mountains for help before the survivors
were finally evacuated to Sutter's Fort with the coming of spring.
Twelve-year-old survivor Virginia Reed summed up the situation in a
letter sent back East after being saved: "Never take no cutofs and hury
along as fast as you can."
The Whitman Massacre and the Cayuse Wars: Marcus and Narcissa
Whitman traveled West to organize a Methodist mission to the Cayuse Indians in 1836.
Narcissa was the first white woman to cross the
Rockies, and their baby, Alice, was the first child born of U.S. citizens in
the Pacific Northwest. They built their mission in the dry plains between
the Blue Mountains and the Cascades (near present Walla Walla) and
called it Waiilatpu.
The Whitmans preached to the Cayuse, and Marcus, a doctor, treated
their illnesses. After ten years they had few native converts and found
themselves ministering more often to the wagon trains following the trail
they had pioneered. When little Alice drowned in the mission's pond, the
Whitmans adopted the Sager children who were orphaned on the Oregon
Trail during the 1844 season. By autumn of 1847 there were 74 people
staying at the mission, most of them wintering emigrants. The Cayuse,
frustrated by a combination of ever-increasing whites and the results of a
disastrous measles epidemic that began decimating them, massacred
thirteen of these people on November 29, including the Whitmans and
most of the Sager children.
When Gov. George Abernethy, head of the provisional government in
Oregon Territory, heard of the massacre, he called out a company of
riflemen to punish the Cayuse. Soon 500 volunteers joined the effort.
The Cayuse fled to the mountains and the volunteers pursued them, but
not very efficiently. Eventually the volunteers wandered back home.
After two years of hardships, the Cayuse gave up five of their men in an
effort to make peace with the whites. The five were arrested for murder
and tried by jury in Oregon City. They were hanged in 1850. This
punishment solved nothing (and it wasn't even clear that these particular men had been
involved in the massacre.) For the next generation
intermittent Indian wars plagued the Pacific Northwest, but the Cayuse
were never again a source of real trouble.
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