Glossary

The trail had its own vocabulary.

Words and names you will meet when you read about the trail, from bull-whacker and buffalo chip to South Pass and the Donation Land Claim Act. Each one comes with a short definition and a guide to saying it.

Terms: 42
Coverage: A to Z

Applegate Trail

say/ˈæp.əl.ɡeɪt treɪl/

A southern wagon route into Oregon laid out in 1846 by a party that included Jesse and Lindsay Applegate. It left the California Trail at the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, crossed northern California and entered Oregon from the south, so wagons could avoid the Columbia River. Its first season was a disaster, but thousands of people used it later.

Articles of association

say/əˌsoʊ.siˈeɪ.ʃən/

The written rules a wagon company adopted for the journey, sometimes called its constitution. They named the officers, such as a captain and a council, and set out duties for guard and march and penalties for breaking the rules. The great company of 1843 adopted rules and elected Peter Burnett as its captain, with nine councilmen.

Barlow Road

say/ˈbɑːr.loʊ roʊd/

A toll road around the south side of Mount Hood, the last stretch of the Oregon Trail into the Willamette Valley. Sam Barlow and Joel Palmer scouted the route in 1845, and Barlow built the road in 1846 with money from Philip Foster. The toll was $5 a wagon and ten cents a head for livestock.

Bartleson-Bidwell Party

say/ˌbɑːr.təl.sən ˈbɪd.wɛl/

The first American emigrant company to travel overland from Missouri toward California, in 1841. It set out with 69 people. About half turned off for Oregon at Soda Springs, and the rest reached California after abandoning their wagons in present-day Nevada.

Buffalo chip

say/ˈbʌf.ə.loʊ tʃɪp/

Dried bison dung, the main cooking fuel on the treeless plains. French-speaking traders called it bois de vache. It burned well when dry but not when wet, so travelers gathered a supply before rain. Collecting chips was often a job for women and children.

Bull-whacker

say/ˈbʊlˌwæk.ər/

An American name for the driver of an ox team, especially on the big freight wagons of the West. Drivers walked beside the oxen and guided them with shouted commands and a long whip.

Caulking

say/ˈkɔː.kɪŋ/

Sealing the seams of a wagon box with tar or pitch so it could be floated across a river like a boat. It was one way to cross a river too deep to ford. Others built log rafts or paid for a ferry.

Cholera

say/ˈkɑː.lər.ə/

A bacterial disease of the intestines, spread through water or food fouled with human waste. It was the deadliest danger on the trail, above all in the epidemic years of 1849 to 1855, and it could kill a healthy adult within a day.

Continental Divide

say/ˌkɑːn.tɪˈnɛn.təl dɪˈvaɪd/

The line along the high ground of the Rockies that separates rivers flowing toward the Pacific from those flowing toward the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The Oregon Trail crossed it at South Pass, in present-day Wyoming.

Donation Land Claim Act

say/doʊˈneɪ.ʃən lænd kleɪm ækt/

An 1850 law that gave free land in Oregon Territory: 320 acres to a single man and 640 acres to a married couple who arrived before December 1, 1850, if they lived on and farmed it for four years. Later arrivals got half as much. A wife held her half in her own name, which was rare for the time. Only white settlers and people of mixed white and Native ancestry could claim land, and the law gave away Native homelands before most treaties had been signed.

Donner Party

say/ˈdɑː.nər ˈpɑːr.ti/

A California-bound company that followed Lansford Hastings's new route south of the Great Salt Lake in 1846, lost weeks, and was trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada through the winter of 1846 to 1847. Of its 87 members, 48 survived, some of them by eating the bodies of the dead.

Emigrant

say/ˈɛm.ɪ.ɡrənt/

A person who leaves home to settle somewhere else. Trail travelers usually called themselves emigrants. In the early 1840s Oregon was not yet part of the United States: Britain and the United States shared the Oregon Country until the treaty of 1846.

Fort

say/fɔːrt/

On the trail, usually a trading post rather than an Army base. Forts Laramie, Bridger, Hall and Boise all began as private or fur-company posts. The Army built Fort Kearny in 1848, bought Fort Laramie in 1849 and took over Fort Bridger in 1858.

Forty-niner

say/ˌfɔːr.tiˈnaɪ.nər/

Someone who joined the California gold rush of 1849. Most overland forty-niners followed the Oregon Trail up the Platte and over South Pass before turning off toward California at one of several junctions farther west.

Great Migration

say/ˌɡreɪt maɪˈɡreɪ.ʃən/

The emigration of 1843, when an estimated 700 to 1,000 people set out for Oregon with more than 100 wagons, guided by John Gantt as far as Fort Hall. Urged on by Marcus Whitman, they took their wagons on to The Dalles, showing that wagons could cross the Blue Mountains and reach the Columbia. Jesse Applegate's essay 'A Day with the Cow Column in 1843' describes it.

Greenhorn

say/ˈɡriːn.hɔːrn/

A beginner with no experience. Old trail hands used the word for first-time emigrants who still had to learn how to yoke oxen, cross rivers and make their food last.

Hastings Cutoff

say/ˈheɪ.stɪŋz ˈkʌt.ɔːf/

A shortcut to California south of the Great Salt Lake, promoted by Lansford Hastings, who described it in one sentence of his 1845 guidebook before any wagon had tried it. It left the main trail at Fort Bridger, crossed the Wasatch Mountains and an 80-mile stretch of desert with almost no water. It cost the Donner Party weeks, and after 1850 its desert crossing was abandoned.

Hudson's Bay Company

say/ˈhʌd.sənz beɪ ˈkʌm.pə.ni/

The British fur-trading company whose post at Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia, dominated the Pacific Northwest until the 1846 treaty put the land south of the 49th parallel in American hands. Against company policy, its chief factor John McLoughlin sold and lent supplies to American settlers, and its posts at Fort Hall and Fort Boise sold goods to emigrants on the trail.

Independence Rock

say/ˌɪn.dɪˈpɛn.dəns rɑːk/

A granite dome about 130 feet high beside the Sweetwater River in present-day Wyoming. Trains hoped to reach it by the Fourth of July to stay ahead of the mountain snows. Emigrants carved and painted their names on it, and the missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet called it the Register of the Desert.

Jumping-off point

say/ˈdʒʌm.pɪŋ ˈɔːf pɔɪnt/

A Missouri River town where emigrants bought supplies and set out on the trail. Independence, Westport, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs were the main ones. They were busiest in April and May, while families waited for the prairie grass to grow tall enough to feed their animals.

Lay-by day

say/ˈleɪ.baɪ deɪ/

A day when the train stayed in camp, often a Sunday. The oxen grazed and rested, and people washed clothes, baked and mended their wagons. Guidebook writers disagreed about such stops: Joel Palmer warned that resting two nights in one place let the cattle wander too far.

Manifest Destiny

say/ˈmæn.ɪ.fɛst ˈdɛs.tə.ni/

The 1840s belief that the United States was meant to spread across North America. The editor John O'Sullivan is usually credited with coining the phrase in 1845, while arguing for annexing Texas and Oregon. It was used to justify the war with Mexico and the taking of Native homelands.

Mountain fever

say/ˈmaʊn.tən ˈfiː.vər/

The emigrants' name for an illness with fever, chills, headache and aching muscles that struck many travelers in the Rocky Mountains. It was probably Colorado tick fever, a virus spread by the bite of the Rocky Mountain wood tick.

Mountain man

say/ˈmaʊn.tən mæn/

A trapper and trader who lived in the Rocky Mountains during the fur-trade years, roughly 1810 to 1840. Mountain men such as Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Joseph Walker and Kit Carson knew the passes and rivers, and several later guided emigrants.

Outfit

say/ˈaʊt.fɪt/

Everything a family took on the trail: wagon, animals, food, tools, bedding and clothes. To outfit was to gather it all, usually at home or in a Missouri River town before setting out in April or May.

Parting of the Ways

say/ˈpɑːr.tɪŋ əv ðə weɪz/

A junction west of South Pass, in present-day Wyoming, where the trail split. The main road went southwest to Fort Bridger, and the Sublette Cutoff went straight west across dry country to the Green River. Travelers bound for Oregon and for California separated farther west, in present-day Idaho.

Pony Express

say/ˈpoʊ.ni ɪkˈsprɛs/

A relay of riders that carried mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, from April 1860 to October 1861. Letters crossed in about ten days. The first telegraph line across the country, finished in October 1861, put it out of business.

Prairie schooner

say/ˈprɛr.i ˈskuː.nər/

A nickname for the covered emigrant wagon. From a distance its white cloth cover looked like the sails of a ship crossing a sea of grass. Most were farm wagons with a box about 10 to 12 feet long, much smaller than the big Conestoga freight wagons.

Provisions

say/prəˈvɪʒ.ənz/

The food a family carried. Joel Palmer's 1847 list for each adult included 200 pounds of flour, 75 of bacon, 25 of sugar, 5 of coffee, 10 of rice, 10 of salt and 2 of tea, with beans and dried fruit. Families that ran short had to pay high prices at the forts.

say/ˈrɛdʒ.ɪ.stər klɪf/

A soft, chalky limestone cliff beside the North Platte River near present-day Guernsey, Wyoming, at the first night's camp west of Fort Laramie. Hundreds of emigrants carved their names there, and many inscriptions from the 1840s and 1850s can still be read.

Rendezvous

say/ˈrɑːn.deɪ.vuː/

A yearly summer gathering in the Rocky Mountains where fur trappers, traders and Native people met to trade furs for supplies, held from 1825 to 1840. Several were held in the Green River valley, not far from the later Oregon Trail.

Saleratus

say/ˌsæl.əˈreɪ.təs/

A 19th-century name for baking soda (sodium or potassium bicarbonate), used to make bread and biscuits rise. Some emigrants gathered natural soda at alkali lakes near the Sweetwater River, and the water at Soda Springs in Idaho could raise bread too.

Scurvy

say/ˈskɝː.vi/

A disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, common after months of flour and salt meat with no fresh fruit or vegetables. It made gums bleed and old wounds reopen, and it could kill. Randolph Marcy advised carrying dried vegetables or citric acid and eating wild onions and greens along the way.

Snake River Plain

say/sneɪk ˈrɪv.ər pleɪn/

A broad volcanic plain across southern Idaho. The trail followed the Snake River across it for about 250 miles, from Fort Hall to Fort Boise. The river often ran in a deep canyon, so animals had to be led down steep slopes to reach water.

South Pass

say/saʊθ pæs/

A broad, gentle saddle in the Rocky Mountains of present-day Wyoming, 7,412 feet high, where the trail crossed the Continental Divide. The climb was so gradual that many emigrants hardly noticed they had crossed it.

Stampede

say/stæmˈpiːd/

A sudden panicked run of livestock, often set off at night by a storm or a strange sound or smell. A bad stampede could scatter a train's animals and leave families unable to go on. Running bison herds could also wreck wagons.

Sublette Cutoff

say/ˈsʌb.lɛt ˈkʌt.ɔːf/

A shortcut opened in 1844 by a party guided by Caleb Greenwood that left the main trail at the Parting of the Ways and went straight west to the Green River, skipping Fort Bridger. It saved about two days of travel but crossed some 45 miles without water. Joseph Ware's 1849 guidebook named it for Solomon Sublette.

Sutler

say/ˈsʌt.lər/

A civilian merchant who sold goods at an Army post. The sutler's stores at Fort Kearny and Fort Laramie also sold supplies to passing emigrants.

Treaty of Fort Laramie

say/ˈlær.ə.mi/

An 1851 treaty between the United States and eight Plains nations (Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara), signed near the mouth of Horse Creek. The nations agreed to safe passage for emigrants and to roads and forts in return for $50,000 a year in goods. The Senate cut the payments from 50 years to 10, and the peace soon broke down. A second treaty at Fort Laramie in 1868 set aside the Black Hills for the Lakota.

Wagon train

say/ˈwæɡ.ən treɪn/

A company of emigrant wagons traveling together for safety and help. Joel Palmer thought 10 to 25 wagons was enough for safety, but the great company of 1843 set out with more than 100 before it split into smaller trains. Most had an elected captain, and some rotated the order of march each day.

Westport

say/ˈwɛst.pɔːrt/

A Missouri River outfitting town, now part of Kansas City. By about 1850 Westport and its river landing had passed Independence as the main starting point for traders and emigrants heading west.

Yoke

say/joʊk/

The wooden beam that joined a pair of oxen at the neck so they could pull together. A pair of oxen was also called a yoke. Joel Palmer advised at least four yoke for a loaded wagon, though many families managed with two or three.