|
|
||||||||||||
|
Pioneer Family of the Month October, 1998 Emigrants of 1854 |
 |
|||||||||||
| Of the thirteen children of Lewis and Elizabeth Rinehart, all but their eldest daughter, Mary Ann, emigrated to Oregon. The first to go were the eldest brothers, John and George, who made the journey with their wives and families in 1852. John and his wife, Sarah, had a difficult journey, as all their oxen died and they were forced to abandon their wagons, while George and his wife, Martha, reached Oregon with their teams and wagons more or less intact. In 1853, George headed back east to encourage the rest of the family to emigrate to Oregon. While George was headed back to Iowa, his 18-year-old sister, Emily Jane, was on her way to Oregon with her husband, Peter Morton, and other members of the Morton family. Emily and Peter settled in Lane County, near the claims taken out the year before by John and George. It was not uncommon for extended and interlinked families to emigrate together and settle nearby one another, effectively transporting a small, ready-made community overland to Oregon. In 1854, the rest of the Rinehart family pulled up stakes and headed for Oregon. The oldest children in the 1854 contingent were Barbara and Louisa, both of whom were married and accompanied by their husbands and children, while the youngest, Sarah Rinehart, was only one year old when the family set out on the Oregon Trail. The other Rinehart children ranged in age from 5 to 17 at the time of departure. It is unclear whether George Rinehart returned to Oregon with the rest of his family, as the family record of the journey includes the names of all the children of Lewis and Elizabeth who went west that year -- including the two older, married daughters and their husbands -- and George Washington Rinehart is made conspicuous by his absence. Like many Oregon Trail emigrants, the Rineharts were a footloose clan inclined to follow the frontier as it moved west over the years. After their marriage in August, 1822, Lewis and Elizabeth lived for a time in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Iowa. The decision to move to Oregon was prompted by the search for opportunity: the railroads hadn't yet reached Iowa (though they would just two years after the Rineharts left, as the Mississippi River was first bridged in 1856 at Davenport) and prices for farm produce were low. Lewis also ran a sawmill in addition to his farm, and he may have been attracted by rumors of the tremendous trees to be found in Oregon. The Rinehart family joined a train forming up in Omaha. James H. Rinehart, the 17-year-old son of Lewis and Elizabeth, later recalled that there were 31 wagons in the train, 25 drawn by ox teams and 6 pulled by horses. Lewis Rinehart was elected captain of the wagon train, which departed Omaha on April 7, 1854. The Rineharts were northsiders, traveling on the north bank of the Platte River, which is today often mistakenly believed to have been used exclusively by Mormons bound for the Salt Lake area. Somewhere in the arid west, the train broke into two smaller groups. Many of the Indians along the Oregon and California Trails were becoming hostile toward the emigrant wagon trains by the mid-1850s, particularly the Shoshones (known to the overlanders as the Snake Indians because the were commonly encountered along the Snake River in present-day Idaho). Historians recognize at least two armed clashes between emigrants and Indians along the Oregon Trail in 1854, one of which was the infamous Ward Massacre 25 miles east of Fort Boise. The Rinehart train avoided any real trouble with the Indians, which its members attributed to the size of their party, but they may have inadvertently brought the wrath of the Sioux tribe down upon a small group of wagons traveling a few miles behind them. When a party of Sioux warriors demanded two cows as payment for crossing their tribe's territory, the Rinehart train refused. James Rinehart described what happened next in his reminiscence: The braves looked desperately mad and made signs that they would shoot, but...they went away from the road about a hundred yards and held a council. We moved on and felt much relieved when they were out of sight. When we had travelled about three miles, a messenger came up to us at full speed and asked us to send back help to relieve his train of four wagons and eight men as the Indians had attacked them and shot down some of their loose cattle. ... The time was about three o'clock in the afternoon and as we were near a camping ground where there was water, the order was given to strike camp immediately. Our thirty-one wagons were placed in a half circle for two purposes. First, they served as a protection against possible attacks from the Indians, and, second, it served as an enclosure in which we could guard and hold our cattle at night, when there was great danger of the Indians creating a stampede by a sudden approach in the dark. Immediately on the arrival of the messenger, ten men were detailed to go back and assist the attacked train. ... Our weapons were Colt revolvers and single barrel rifles, all muzzle loaders and many of them flint locks, and Bowie knife. ... Of the relief party, six men started on horseback and four on foot, all anxious to kill Indians. All were in disorder and confusion. The first ready started first and soon the ten men were strung out in a train half a mile long. When a mile out on the trail two of the footmen lost their enthusiasm and thurst for redman's blood and returned to camp. When about two miles from camp our six horsemen met the unfortunate train coming up the road and about a mile beyond they could see out on the broad, level prairie, the ten Indians skinning the cattle they had killed. Three of the train men were detailed to move the wagons along to our camp, and the other five men on horse-back with our six horsemen and the two remaining footmen, now in sight, decided to give those Indians a big scare. They all started in a full run, and the Indians seeing them coming, quit their beef skinning and ran at all speed at right angles to the road, our boys after them. After running about a mile over the level prairie, and when almost in gunshot [range], the Indians disappeared over a bluff. When our boys arrived at the place where the redmen had disappeared, they looked down into a valley and saw a village of about one hundred "tepees" or more. At the same time there seemed to be at least a hundred warriors issuing from their habitations. Dropping their blankets, and with guns and other weapons in hand, they started for the eleven horsemen on the bluff sending forth a deafening "war-whoop" as they went. The scale was now turned. The horsemen retreated at full speed, the Indians pursuing on foot. Our two foot soldiers, when...they saw the horsemen turn tail with at least a hundred Indians in hot chase, they, without even stopping for a council of way to decide upon future plans, also made tracks toward camp. One of the horsemen on passing them took one on his horse and they easily made their escape. But the now lone footman, a boy of nineteen years, was soon over taken and surrounded by Indians. After holding a little "pow-wow" they took the boy's coat, vest, and neck-tie and after relieving his pockets of a little cash and all his ammunition they let him go. In his hurried flight he had dropped his old flint lock gun, but an old Indian, after him in the chase had picked it up and after firing it off, returned it to the lad. This boy had been ordered to remain in camp that day, and not to go on the Indian chase on account of his youth, but go he must, and go he did. After that it took very little persuasion to cause him to remain in camp when there was an Indian scare at hand. - James H. Rinehart That night, the train's cattle stampeded during a thunderstorm, an event which was universally blamed upon the Indians rather than the weather. The Rinehart train took an unusual route to the Willamette Valley. While the 1852 and '53 Rineharts followed the old Oregon Trail, the 1854 contingent took their chances on the infamous Meek Cutoff. First attempted in 1845 by mountain man Stephen Hall Meek, the untried route nearly led to disaster when Meek's party got lost in the unexplored reaches of the high desert. By 1853, an extension of the Meek Cutoff known as the Free Emigrant Road (to differentiate it from the Mount Hood Toll Road, better known as the Barlow Road) had been blazed from the present-day site of Bend, Oregon, over the Cascade Mountains and down the Middle Fork of the Willamette River to Eugene. Few emigrants were willing to chance it, however: What most discourages me is the prospect of having to go the old road and cross the mountain makeing our journey two hundred miles farther than if we could take the cutoff but no one has taken that Route and though we have every reason to believe it is finished and Staked out all are afraid to try it. - Charlotte Stearns Pengra, 1853 The Rineharts were guided through the desert by a "squaw man" -- a white man who had taken an Indian wife -- whom they met on the Malheur River. The Rinehart train had split up by this time, but about two dozen of the original 31 wagons were still traveling together in two groups. The lead party of 20 wagons was led by Thomas D. Edwards, husband of Barbara Rinehart Edwards, while the Rinehart train proper, led by Lewis Rinehart, had been reduced to four wagons. There may have been dissatisfaction with Lewis' leadership of the wagon train, as it was quite common for trains to split up, reorganize, and change leaders during the course of the long journey, or the train may have split simply to reduce the volume of dust thrown up by the wagons or because forage was becoming scarce at campsites along the way. Our train, at that time, consisted of four wagons and thirteen persons, counting all ages, which is considered an unlucky number nowadays, but we were not so schooled at that time. ... We started on the new trail about the 20th of July, just two days behind the Edwards train. For five weeks we never saw a human being on the way, not even an Indian, and not until we arrived at the Deschutes [River] where we over took the advance train resting after crossing a forty mile desert without water. Our course was up the Malheur and its tributaries for several days. One day while yet along this river, about mid-day, I saw a lone covered wagon suddenly pull out from the line of our train and make for a small grove on the bank of the stream nearby. Then I noticed that the oxen were unhitched from the wagon and allowed to graze on the beautiful bunch grass. Just then father instructed us to drive on a distance of about four miles and camp for the night. He and mother then went to the lone wagon at the grove where they remained for about five hours, and during those fleeting precious moments I was captain of the advance fraction of our train, with all the rights, powers, and privileges pertaining thereto, and as was customary for one holding that important office, I rode on ahead to select a camping place, which I found on the banks of a beautiful mountain stream fringed with willows and alders. Just as the sun was disappearing along the western hills the lone covered wagon arrived in camp and when the roll was called that evening the thirteen superstition could no longer be applicable. Number fourteen had arrived, and then and there they named him Warren Malheur Duncan. ... We followed one branch of the Malheur to its source and after crossing the divide we often had to travel long distances on lava rocks where wagon tires failed to make a mark that could be seen. Sometimes we lost our way for a while, but soon someone would call out "here it is" and again there would be sufficient marks to enable us to follow the trail of the train ahead of us. Those ahead would often leave letters at their camps with information for those that might follow them, telling distances between watering places ahead and other facts of value to the traveller. These instructions they gained from their pilot who was quite well acquainted with the country through which they were passing. A stick would be driven into the ground near the camp-fire and the letter would be clamped in a spit at the top. These letters were often of much value to me and saved us from much suffering on the dry parched prairies. - James H. Rinehart The Rinehart family reached Eugene on September 12, 1854, and settled a few miles south of town, in the area of Spencer Butte. Lewis Rinehart claimed a patch of land adjacent to the claim of his eldest son, John, and only five or six miles from George's homestead. Lewis planted only enough wheat to provide flour for his family and feed for the chickens. The rest of his acreage was pasture and hayfields that supported cows, sheep, and hogs. The "cash crops" of Lewis' farm were butter, cheese, lard, bacon, wool, and eggs -- his herd of some sixty milk cows was among the largest in the Willamette Valley until the hard winter of 1861-62, when cold weather and flooding killed two-thirds of the herd. After the harsh winter, Lewis' son John sold out and moved to the Grand Ronde Valley in eastern Oregon. He did well farming and ranching, but the money really began rolling in when he bought a flour mill in 1866 and began supplying prospectors and gold rush boomtowns in Idaho and Oregon. The other Rinehart brothers (except George, who stayed in Lane County until 1886) moved east of the Cascades, as well, and in 1870 even Lewis and Elizabeth rented out the old homestead and joined their family in the Grand Ronde. The family's presence there is still recalled in the names of Rinehart Lane and the small community of Rhinehart -- the "h" was a spelling error inflicted when the railroad came to town and built a train station there in 1908.
|
||||||||||||
