Chapter 3: Beginning the Trip to Oregon

After offloading the wagon and livestock, Jeremiah hitched up the mules after reinstalling the tongue on the wagon. It was about eight miles due east to get to Independence, a marshaling yard was set up outside the city for all the wagons going to Oregon. He was able to check in with the Wagonmaster, Mr. Buck Allen, and pay for their passage, an amount of $120.00. He was assigned a spot to park his wagon, which would also be his place in the train; there were six wagons ahead of them. Buck, as they were told to call him, had made this trip three times with the same crew. He expected them to make this one too.

They had enough time to get set up and have a campfire started before full dark. Elisabeth cooked a fine meal in celebration of their arrival. The people from wagon number six came over and offered a peach cobbler for dessert. They introduced themselves as Nora and Nick Charles, newly from the Cincinnati, Ohio area. They were nice people and had children about the same ages as Miri, Emily, and Jack. An agreement was struck to watch each other’s children whenever needed, particularly during those times the appropriate adults wanted to get together to try and expand their families (though they would try to avoid that possibility until they arrived in Oregon).

The next few days were spent getting everything dried and aired out, inspected and fixed as needed. Trips were made into Independence and Kansas City after picking Buck and his scout Jim Fisher’s minds a little, then following their advice, and suggestions. The animals were well fed, the two milk cows were milked as they had been the whole trip, mules were exercised so that they could regain the strength they had lost just standing around on the deck of the Delta Queen. Six laying hens and a rooster were purchased in cages that could be attached to the outside of the wagon’s tailgate. They were not really expected to last the entire journey, but having eggs and sometimes chicken for dinner was worth the extra trouble and expense of dealing with them. Besides, it gave the kids a job to do, catching bugs to feed to the chickens, especially grasshoppers.

The Johnsons met the other five families of the wagons ahead of them, and greeted and met other families that continued to arrive after them almost daily, sometimes in large groups of ten or twelve wagons. By the time March 15th came around, there were one hundred and five wagons and one hundred and two families consisting of over five hundred men women, and children ready to go. Buck’s regular crew of ten people had all come back and were ready to go. As advertised we left Independence on schedule. All the first day we practiced forming the train into defensive circles, because they were the seventh wagon, the Johnsons were included in the inner defensive circle. This circle included the first thirty wagons, they had to alternate being outside and inside with the mules on the inside next to the outside wagon. This configuration allowed everyone to quickly get into position leaving the mules hitched to the wagons. This gave them a diameter of about 175 feet in which to gather the animals inside this circle along with all of the women and children for protection. If they were camping for the night they would unhitch the mule’s starting with the outermost circle, then move toward the inside ones. By leaving the mule’s hitched to the wagons, the wagons could be moved to allow animals and people in and out of the inner circle.

The next morning they were up and on the trail early and didn’t even stop for lunch. They made fifteen miles, then at dusk circled the wagons like they had been practicing. The children were allowed to play, but all were warned to stay in the circle of wagons.

Miri and Emily met other kids and played hide and seek. Miri became fast friends with Nick and Nora’s girl Sofia, they were both inquisitive, intelligent, and fun loving. They loved playing pranks on their siblings and other kids. They found another girl, Bea, who was eight years old, and had the same personality. They called themselves “The Three Musketeers”, and became the terrors of the train, or at least the children of the train. They would chase the boys and then tickle them until they called “Uncle!” They would steal the baseball during a game and extract a payment in exchange, usually kisses. They were a precocious trio.

They made friends with some older girls too, Maureen and Mary O’Hara who were fourteen and twelve respectively. They both had flaming red hair and green eyes. They lived up to their Irish heritage by being irrepressibly happy and gay, but quick to anger also.

Hildie Franks was a blonde sixteen year old, blue eyed temptress who was trying out her seduction skills on all the older boys. She wasn’t having any luck because her father, James, was the head of the Citizens Committee that helped Buck Allen keep order on the train. The Three Musketeers offered her their ears and listened to her pour out her frustrations, learning a thing or two in the process.

Polly Younger was a thirteen year old quiet and mostly reclusive girl of a widower. Her mother had died of Cholera before they left the family farm. As the oldest girl she took care of the rest of the family, three sisters, two older brothers, and the father. But no one could resist the trio of girls known as The Three Musketeers for long. Polly has shiny black hair and gray eyes and it was said she looked like her mother. She missed her mother very much. Her biggest secret was that her father used her as his substitute wife in more than just housework. A chore that she hated, but forebear for the sake of her father who really thought she was his wife, he had been so devastated by her loss. The first time he took her he was in a drunken stupor, sometime during the assault his mind snapped and ever since had called her by her mother’s name, Phoebe. Unbeknownst to Polly or her father, the next youngest girl, Jennifer (Jenny), who was fourteen not only knew what was going on sexually between her father and Polly, she watched them as often as she could. Jenny was also friends with the Musketeers.and was another source of titillating information about the secrets of men and women’s relationships. Not that families living in wagons had any secrets other than what caused the sounds that came from under the blankets.

Eight weeks out of independence, Jim, the Scout, came riding over a hill about a mile in front of the lead wagon of the train. He fired three measured shots into the air as a warning of danger. Buck called for the defensive circles to be made. Without slowing down the wagons did the maneuver with practiced ease. All the wagons had completed the maneuver and had started to get the women, children and livestock into the inner circle. All of the men not involved in that maneuver were at their posts underneath the wagons of the outermost ring. Boxes and sacks of grain were placed in front of every man. Older boys, mostly over fourteen years, and some women, were ready to load rifles as soon as they were fired by the men. They could service the guns of up to five men and had practiced the exchange many times.

Jim Fisher, rode through an opening left for him in the outer circles, and reported to Buck that he had run into a war party of twenty or so Sioux warriors painted up and looking for trouble. As a general rule they left alone those wagon trains that were not going to settle in their territory, but a faction within the tribe agitated for the death of all white interlopers. This band was led by one such agitator, Brave Hand, who was twenty five years old, he wore a war bonnet of eagle feathers and had yellow and red stripes of “paint” on his face as well as his arms, likewise his horse had the same colors. He claimed to have had a vision where the spirits had shown him a future where the white man ruled the land and the Lakota people were no more. With these declarations it was easy to gather followers. They had followed the white man they knew to be a scout, he would lead them to the wagons that held even more white people, and horses that might be stolen, and perhaps a few white women could be stolen as well.

Brave Hand rode halfway down the hill and swept his lance in a circle then pointed it directly at the wagons. This was the signal for his warriors to attack. They rode in a counterclockwise rotation around the wagons, firing arrows from their bows necessitated that direction of their travel. They controlled their horses with their knees holding the bow in their left hand while holding three or four arrows in their fingers as well as one notched in the bowstring held with the fingers of their right hand ready to draw and fire all of the arrows one after the other. Additional arrows were kept in a quiver slung on their backs, holding twenty or more arrows with flint tips napped into sharp triangular shapes with very sharp edges. As they bore down on the wagons, they found very few exposed targets, but arrows flew toward the wagons anyway. Almost all of them hit the wood of the wagons, a few hit feed bags protecting a man, of the nineteen arrows in the first volley, only one managed to hit human flesh. It hit one of the defenders in the upper arm, painful but if the arrow was properly extracted and the wound thoroughly cleaned, and the bandage changed daily he would live and keep his arm. If he didn’t, then he could lose the arm, and possibly his life. In total the savages shot over fifty arrows in the complete circuit of the wagons.