Go West: Imagining 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 writing
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 or letters, 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 this lesson, students will have:
- learned about the pioneer experience on the Oregon Trail
- compared
and contrasted modern-day travel experiences with travel experiences of the 19th
century
- synthesized historical data through creative writing
1
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?
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
homestate. A large selection of maps is available in the Atlas section of the
EDSITEment-reviewed National
Geographic Society Xpeditions website. Click 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 that students may refer to it later.
Have each student create a story about his or her imagined cross-country trip.
If students get stuck for ideas, they may refer to the master list of questions
for inspiration. After their stories are complete, put students in pairs so that
they may read their stories aloud to each other.
2
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 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, follow these steps: Enter the Digital
Classroom. On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a list entitled
"Other NARA Sites for Primary Sources." 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?
3
Using the students' questions (see Step 1) 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 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 Americans.
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 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 to access a selection of diaries, letters, and memoirs. Segments
from Harriet
Scott Palmer's memoir and Catherine
Sager Pringle's diary 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 wrote (see Step 1). 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?
4
Have students create picture books or write letters based
on the experiences of a 19th-century family traveling on the Oregon Trail, drawing
on the historical information they have learned. Younger students (grade 3) may
wish to write a letter addressed to a young emigrant, describing what to expect
on the journey, while older students (grades 4 and 5) may wish to write a series
of letters from the perspective of a young pioneer.
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.
For a discussion of the multi-ethnic dimension of westward migration, visit the
EDSITEment-reviewed New
Perspectives on the West website. Episode 7, "The Geography of Hope," details
the migration experiences of African Americans and Asian immigrants, and also
discusses the displacement of American Indians and Hispanic Americans that resulted
from the massive settlement of the west. You may access this section of the website
by selecting "Tour of the West" from the frame on the left-hand side of the website's
opening screen and then choosing "Episode 7."
Students may also wish to visit the EDSITEment-reviewed Women of the West website
for accounts of the lives of women in the West in the 1800s. "There
are no Renters Here: Women's Lives on the Sod House Frontier" offers a virtual
tour of life in a Nebraska sod house, while "The
Lodo Mural Project" at tells the stories of eleven Colorado women who helped
to shape the American West.
Standards Alignment
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