Overland Trail Journals of Pioneer Women: A Study of the Quest for Self
The overland trails refer to the journey undertaken by about half a million people to lands
in California and Oregon between 1830 and 1860. The journey stretching over a distance of two
thousand miles and above from Missouri river to the West coast was taken by approximately half
a million people expecting to benefit from gold deposits or cultivable lands to be found in the
West. There exists a wealth of written material documenting the arduous journey, the treacherous
terrain, and the difficulties faced by the men while leading their wagons, animals, and families
across the trail. Till date, however, little attention has been diverted towards interpreting and
understanding the ordeal of the females accompanying their male family members on the trail. In
this context, the objective of the paper is to study the writings of pioneer women on the trail to
interpret varied strains of experience and reflect upon the manner in which their ordeals led to
substantive subjective transformation.
Overland trail journals documenting the tribulations of women, otherwise called pioneer
women are a record of the hardships faced during the journey through the treacherous
landscapes. These experiences, both individual and collective were characterised by the loss of
familiar space, intimate ties, and habitual gender roles for the women involved. The women,
usually regarded as the second sex were expected to act within the confines of home as a
caregiver and facilitate the administration of the inner world often under the auspices of the
apparent security offered by the male members. This seemingly natural pattern was disturbed by
an ostensible rise in the interest of the men towards conquering the West and the mysteries it
held. The sirenic lures of the Promised Land epitomized by West was an ample boost to the
boisterous and impetuous heroism seeking to tame the uncanny wilderness and thus establish a
monumental discourse of the self of American men.
The same adventure had multifarious connotations for women whose accounts are ridden
with ambivalence towards a new world order and an unprecedented freedom of self-expression.
Lillian Schlissel in her account Women’s Diaries on the Western Frontier documents the
experiences of women from varied socio-economic strata and analyses them under the binary
extremities of anxieties resulted by emotional and spatial deterritorialisation on one hand, and
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freedom attained by shedding traditional roles on the other. Despite the differences in the orders,
Schlissel maintains that the gender roles were aligned towards uniformity in behavior and
propriety, held strongly by norms of conformity and habitual obedience. Taking into account the
journals maintained by women between 1840-1860, she notes the manner in which women
suffered the collateral damages of the masculine enterprise only having their gender and
associated afflictions to blame. Vivid accounts of the hardships faced by the women in executing
daily chores, angst caused by lifelong separation from vital female companionships shape the
substance of the diary of Abigail Scott Duniway, Mollie Dorsey Sanford, or Miriam Davies.
Similarly, the journals of Maria Parsons Belshaw, Cecilia McMillen Adams, Lodisa Frizzel
among many others depict the shadow of lurking death, the foolhardiness of the venture raising
the emotional distress of women that was further provoked in intensity by the lack of conducive
avenues for self-expression.
Post 1860, a deviation in the above trend was observed as can be gauged from the texts
taken up for study in the paper. Not only did the women actively choose to pursue the dreams of
wild West but also took it as an opportunity to explore those latent recesses of their self which
were otherwise forced into dormancy under the impenetrable layers of patriarchal directives. An
impeccable instance of the same would be the diary of Emily Towell documents her journey
from Missouri to Idaho in 1881 when she was 52, an unlikely age for undertaking the overland
trail. This memoir available only in excerpts, in a matter of fact done describes her sense of pride
in the new found home and the unique freedom it entailed. The memoir of Luzena Stanley
Wilson, compiled by her daughter Correnah Wilson Wright, provides a detailed account of her
journey to Sacramento and final settlement during gold rush. The memoir registers her hardships
among miners and the unpredictable life in the West, not just on the overland trail and thus is a
reflection of her indomitable spirit and entrepreneurial flair in the face of unthinkable adversities.
In her narrative, she can be found to be subverting the gender roles frequently to address
livelihood constraints and fulfill the role of a caregiver as culturally expected of a female.
A completely different strain can be read in the narratives of Jennie Atcheson Wriston
which though referring the journey as odyssey rarely exhibits any significant difficulties faced en
route thereby projecting a semblance of a rather well-planned initiative emphasizing on
observing the terrain around. The narrative can be assumed to have the tone of a discovery much
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on the lines of Stanley's Wonderful Adventures in Africa: Comprising Accurate and Graphic
Accounts of the Exploration of Equatorial Africa1. Rising above the vicious cycle of household
chores consuming creative force, the author was able to focus on the external geographical
details and look forward to the creation of a civilized society far from familiar spatial
coordinates. On similar lines is conceived the diary of Sarah Jane Osborne which offers keen
insights on the geographical make-up of the lands traversed by her party but does little to
comment on the activities of women involved in the journey or prioritize their contribution. The
overland trail had been instrumental in moulding the individual selves of the women as is evident
in the case of all the women narrators and their respective narratives. It enabled them to affect
ruptures and create parallel stories of self which would have been un-realised in a familiar space
seeking to perpetrate the normalizing effects of ossified ahistoric ideologies.
At this juncture, the paper seeks to recall the notion of Enlightenment as proposed by
Immanuel Kant. In his essay, What is Enlightenment?, he defined the notion as, “… man’s
release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his
understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies
not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from
another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!" – that is the
motto of enlightenment.” Extending the concepts to include the pioneer women on the trail, it
can be said that the journey (post 1860) provided ample scope for the exercise of their own
creative faculties for the expression of self, thus liberating them from the limited modes erstwhile
available. By diluting the gender roles the women were allowed to experience and reflect on the
outward experiences that had distinguished the life of their male counterparts till date. The
women were free to explore, alter the dominant modes of dress and utilize their intellect to
sustain their selves in a land marked by uncertainties alone.
Having taken an overview of female expression, the paper would seek to attempt a
genealogical probe into the writings of women utilising Foucauldian precepts. Hence, it becomes
imperative to briefly understand the rudiments of genealogical method in power relations as
1
Henry Morton Stanley is known for discovering the source of the River Nile. He explored large parts of Central
Africa in search of David Livingstone. He prepared an elaborate account of the terrains he saw and mapped the
regions he visited which later enabled Leopold II of Belgium to plunder the lands.
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Prior to speaking for themselves the pioneer women were victims of the policy of
representation where their male counterparts were solely responsible for speaking on their behalf
in the arena of literary or artistic expression. This can be found to be true to this date in the series
of Madonna of the Trails2 created by August Leimbach and the works of W.H.D. Koerner, where
the former valorizing the women dehumanizes them of their sexual alignments to portray male-
like noble virtues of courage and determination, and the latter, specifically in his Madonna of the
Prairie portrays Molly Wingate proceeding on the arduous journey with composure and an aura
of melancholy. Stripping of human values can also be observed in the nomenclatures itself where
the female subject with a halo around her is expected to be an asexual, angelic entity carved out
of the male rib to facilitate his quest for the transcendental sublime much on the lines of
Rousseau’s portrayal of Èmile and Sophie3. In such contexts, women speaking for themselves
and establishing themselves as a contrary agonotheta dei, sensual, secular subjects-in-process
could be deemed as a departure of utmost import to narrative genealogy which was majorly
dictated and proliferated to an excess by symbolic norms of writing.
2
A collection of twelve identical statues designed to honour the indomitable will of the American pioneer women.
These statues were commissioned by the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution.
3
They are the principal characters from Rousseau’s pioneering work Emile, or On Education. The work has been
criticised for the author’s regressive stand on females.
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Pioneer women desiring to write for consolidation of self should not be read as an attempt
directed towards the creation of alternate hegemonic discourse, but should be seen as an epoch
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Works Cited
Belshaw, Maria Parsons and George Belshaw. Crossing the Plains to Oregon in 1853: The
Oregon Diaries of Maria Parsons Belshaw and George Belshaw. Ed. Michael L
Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 2000. Pdf file.
Duniway, Abigail Scott. “Abigail Scott Duniway Diary”. 1852. Oregon Digital. Web. 09 Feb.
2019.
Foucault, Michel. “The Culture of the Self”. UC Berkeley, 1983. Openculture. Web. 09 Feb.
2019.
Frizzell, Lodisa. Across the Plains to California in 1852. Ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits. New York:
The New York Public Library, 1915. Pdf file.
Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?”. File last modified on 28 Jun. 2016. Pdf file.
Moore W. and H. A. Wilson, trans. “St Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity”. Web. 09 Feb. 2019. <
https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/virginity.asp>
Osborne, Sarah Jane. “Travel in America”. File last modified on 9 Feb. 2019. Microsoft Word
file.
Sanford, Mollie Dorsey. Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and
Colorado Territories 1857-1866. Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1959. Pdf file.
Schlissel ,Lillian. “Women’s Diaries on the Western Frontier”. Journals@KU. Web. 09 Feb.
2019.
Tate, Michael L. Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails. Norman:
Oklahoma UP, 2006. Pdf file.
Towell, Emily. “Missouri to Idaho, 1881”. Trail Dust XVII.3(2005). Web. 09 Feb. 2019.
Wright, Correnah Wilson. “Luzena Stanley Wilson, '49er: Memories Recalled Years later for her
Daughter Correnah Wilson Wright”. 1937. Library of Congress. Pdf file.
Wriston, Jennie Atcheson. “A Pioneer’s Odyssey”. File last modified on 25 May. 2014.
Microsoft Word file.