If You Were a Pioneer on the Oregon Trail
Introduction
A 2,000-mile trek across a continent—with no idea what awaits you on the other
side. Tell your students to put on their traveling shoes and prepare for the journey
of their lives!
In this lesson, students compare imagined travel experiences
of their own with the actual experiences of 19th-century pioneers. After creating,
as a class, oral stories about contemporary cross-country journeys, students learn
about the experiences of the emigrants who traveled on the Oregon Trail. They
then create works of historical fiction in the form of picture books, drawing
upon the information they have learned.
Guiding Question:
What was it like to travel west on the Oregon Trail? How has
the experience of travel changed over the course of the last 150 years?
Learning Objectives
After completing the lessons in this unit, students
will have: - Learn about the pioneer experience on the Oregon Trail.
- Compared
and contrasted modern day travel experiences with those of the 19th century.
- Synthesized
historical data through a creative project.
Preparing to Teach this Lesson
- Before the lesson, explore what students already
know about pioneers. Who were they? With what period in history are they associated?
Where did they come from? Where did they go, and why? For background information,
visit the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Oregon Trail.
- Explain to students
that they are now going to imagine themselves as modern-day pioneers. On a map
of the United States, show students a state far away from their home state. A
large selection of maps is available in the Atlas section of the EDSITEment-reviewed
National Geographic Society Xpeditions website. In the Atlas section, click on
North America
for a current map of the United States.
- Tell
students to imagine that they are going to move to this distant state one month
from now. Have students brainstorm a list of questions about the trip (e.g., How
will I get there? With whom will I travel? How long will it take to get there?
What can I take with me? How will I feel about going on this trip?). Compile all
of their questions in a master list; save the list so students may refer to it
later.
- In round-robin fashion, with
each student contributing a sentence, have the class create a story about their
imagined cross-country trip. If a student gets stuck for ideas, you may prompt
them with a question from the master list of questions for inspiration. Write
the story in large print on chart paper so that you can refer to it later.
Suggested Activities
Lesson 1: Setting the Scene
Lesson 2: Traveling on the Oregon Trail
Lesson 3: Putting It All Together
Extending the Lesson
Lesson 1 Setting the Scene
Explain to students that they are now going to learn about the experiences
of people who really did move across the country—the pioneers who traveled west
on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. Show them a map of the route the emigrants traveled,
available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Oregon Trail. Click on Historic
Sites on the Trail to view the entire route; then click on each state for
a close-up view.
In order to give students a feeling for the period of
history they are about to enter, you may also wish to show them some photographic
images. In addition to images included on The
Oregon Trail website, a series of photographs from a re-enactment of the Trail
experience are available through the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Digital Classroom. To access these images, go to the Digital
Classroom, scroll down the left-hand side of the screen to "Other NARA Sites
for Primary Sources" and select NAIL
from this list. Now click on "Search for Archival Holdings." Next, click on "NAIL
Digital Copies Search." In the blank space next to the instruction "Enter Keywords,"
type in the words "Oregon Trail." Scroll down the boxed list titled "Media" and
select "Photographs and Graphic Materials." Finally, click on "Display Results"
to view the re-enactment photos.
If you have limited computer access
in your classroom, you may want to print out some photographs to distribute to
students. To make a copy, click on the desired photograph and hold your cursor
down until a list of options appears. After selecting "Copy this image," you may
post the image into a word processing document and print it out as you would any
other document.
As students view each image, ask them what they notice
about details such as people, clothing, transportation and setting. What does
each photograph reveal about the experiences of the pioneers who traveled west
on the Oregon Trail?
Lesson 2 Traveling on the Oregon
Trail
Using the students' questions (see "Preparing to Teach")
as a starting point, describe the experiences of the 19th century emigrants who
traveled on the Oregon Trail. You can research this information ahead of time
using the Oregon Trail website. Click on Jumping
Off to access useful and entertaining information about the following topics:
- "Jumping Off Cities" lists the places where emigrants,
many of whom initially traveled the Missouri River by steamship, would "jump off"
before the river made a turn to the north.
- Waiting tells how thousands
of pioneers delayed their journeys until the grass (necessary for feeding their
animals along the way) had started to grow.
- Supplies describes the
amount of food a family would need in order to survive on the Trail.
- Wagons
offers a detailed description of the farm wagons that most emigrants used for
the westward journey.
- Congestion describes the traffic jams that delayed
the start of the pioneers' journeys.
- Overpacking recounts how emigrants
would simply throw things off their wagons when they realized they had brought
along too much for their journeys.
"All
About the Oregon Trail" also offers detailed information on the following
topics:
- The Route West describes the 2,000-mile journey
across the country.
- Power explains why emigrants chose mules or oxen
to pull their wagons.
- Hardships describes some of the physical risks
of the journey, such as fatigue, accidents, storms, disease, and dangerous river
crossings.
- Camping documents the daily routine of trail life.
- Buffalo
describes the emigrants' encounters with herds of buffalo along the Trail.
- Native
Americans recounts both friendly and unfriendly meetings with Native American
people.
Finally, "Fantastic
Facts about the Oregon Trail" contains a wealth of odd tidbits that are bound
to appeal to young imaginations. Each of these sections also includes photographs
that can be shared with the class.
For a narrative account, you may wish
to read Westward Ho with Ollie Ox!, by Melanie Richardson Dundy (South
Beach, OR: MDCT Publishing, 1999), a picture book written for 4-8 year olds.
For first-hand accounts of the experiences of some of the pioneers who traveled
the Oregon Trail, visit the Trail
Archive section of the Oregon Trail website. Here you can access a selection
of diaries, letters and memoirs. Excerpts from Harriet
Scott Palmer's memoir, Catherine
Sager Pringle's diary, or the journals of Narcissa
Whitman are likely to be particularly fascinating to young children. As you
read the excerpts together, you may ask students to note the similarities and
differences in these first-hand accounts.
After students have learned
about pioneers' real-life experiences of traveling on the Oregon Trail, have them
compare these experiences to those they imagined in the travel story they created
as a class (see "Preparing to Teach"). In what ways were their experiences similar?
In what ways were they different? Would students have wanted to travel as pioneers
on the Oregon Trail? Why or why not?
Lesson 3 Putting It All Together
Have older students write a story about the experiences of a
19th century family traveling on the Oregon Trail. Teachers of younger students
(K-1) may wish to have the class create one story together, with each student
contributing one sentence (as in Step 1). Each student may write his or her sentence
on a sheet of paper and illustrate it; these pages may then be put together to
form a complete picture book. Teachers of older students (grade 2) may wish to
have each student write and illustrate his or her own story.
Extending the Lesson
Based on pictures and descriptions available through
The Oregon Trail website, have students work in groups to create dioramas depicting
events that could have happened along the Oregon Trail. Students may wish to use
their own Oregon Trail stories for inspiration.
Selected EDSITEment Websites
The Oregon Trail
http://www.isu.edu/%7Etrinmich/Oregontrail.html
The Digital Classroom
http://www.nara.gov/education/classrm.html
National Geographic Society Xpeditions
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