The Worst Ways To Die On The Oregon Trail

Though it sounds like one large path, the Oregon Trail was a collection of different tracks moving in more or less the same direction. Generally, pioneers traveled from Missouri through the Great Plains, up into Wyoming, Idaho, and finally Oregon. It was not an easy journey, with many hazards that could injure or kill pioneers along the rather stunning estimated 2,000 miles that made up the route.

Anyone who played the computer game "The Oregon Trail" knows that the path traveled by 19th-century pioneers was a treacherous one full of messed-up stories. Around 10% of those pioneers are believed to have died before reaching their destination, perhaps quite higher than you would have thought. Disease was one of the most common causes of death, with many succumbing to contagious illnesses including cholera and dysentery. Accidents were also all too frequent.

One greatly overstated cause of death was attack by American Indians. Though travelers on the Oregon Trail were often made quite anxious by the gory, dramatic stories of wagon trains torn apart by bloodthirsty native attackers, the reality was far different. While some pioneers were attacked by Indigenous people, natives along the Oregon Trail were more apt to trade with pioneers than face off against them. Ultimately, about 400 people died in native-led attacks on the trail between 1840 and 1860, representing a very small portion of the approximately 20,000 to 30,000 people who died on the Oregon Trail. Other ways of dying, however, were all too real and awful.

Though starvation wasn't a leading cause of death for humans traveling the Oregon Trail — it was more likely to affect draft animals like horses and oxen — it did occasionally strike some of the most unfortunate. And when it did, the deaths that resulted could be grim indeed. Death from starvation can be a lingering process that attacks a body's organs, mutes a person's immune system, and can end with hallucinations, convulsions, and heart arrhythmia.

In September 1860, a group of 26 people in the Utter-Van Ornum wagon train, already struck by an Indigenous-led attack in Idaho, made their way to what's now Nyse, Oregon. While some were hit by further attacks, others waited for help. However, a lack of supplies caused the death of four children and pushed others to resort to cannibalism. Today, the place where they waited is starkly known as Starvation Camp.

Of course, it's all but impossible to discuss starvation during the Oregon Trail era and not mention the untold truth of the Donner Party. Technically, the group of ill-fated pioneers only traveled part of the way on the Oregon Trail, splitting off to take what they believed to be a shortcut to California. But, by late 1846, this group would find themselves stranded in the snowy Sierra Nevadas and contemplating the consumption of the dead around them. A total of 42 died, leaving behind 47 survivors and a grim legacy that surely haunted at least some later travelers on the Oregon Trail.

Today, dysentery has morphed into a strange little joke about the Oregon Trail, thanks to one morbid ending you might meet while playing the vintage "Oregon Trail" computer game. But it was hardly a laughing matter for the people who traveled the real-life route. As 19th-century historian Francis Parkman wrote in "The California and Oregon Trail," his experience with the illness proved "very effectually that a violent attack of dysentery on the prairie is a thing too serious for a joke." Parkman wrote of intense weakness and inability to keep down food, both of which brought before him the all-too-real specter of starvation.

Thankfully, Parkman recovered, but not all of the denizens of the Oregon Trail who suffered from dysentery did. The gastrointestinal infection can be caused by several different bacteria or amebic parasites that thrive in poor sanitary conditions. They can induce intense vomiting, painful abdominal cramps, and dangerous levels of dehydration. Today, the worst cases are treated by medication and intravenous fluids, but travelers on the Oregon Trail had very little access to such medical care. 

To treat the ravages of the infection — which could include bloody diarrhea — some emigrants turned to a dose of castor oil. While castor oil may have helped with other stomach upsets, it was a laxative. That made it a potentially terrible choice for someone already suffering far from home, without the advantage of advanced medical care, flush toilets, or hand soap.

The popular prairie schooner, a covered wagon that's now indelibly associated with the 19th-century history of the Oregon Trail, was lighter than some contraptions seen on the trail but was still a hefty vehicle. On average, it weighed about 1,300 pounds and would have been even heavier when loaded down with supplies and people, generally topping out at about 2,000 pounds.

However, pioneer wagons typically had no suspensions, meaning that many travelers found it more comfortable to get out and walk. But this put them in serious danger. While moving in and out of the wagon, clothes might catch on a piece of the vehicle, or they could stumble. They might then be thrown beneath the iron-bound wheels of the heavy, rolling wagon. Sometimes, spooked draft animals would start running and jostle people from the wagon and into the path of the deadly wheels.

Numerous accounts from the Oregon Trail tell heartbreaking stories of individuals suddenly taken by such accidents. Lucia Loraine Williams, who traveled the trail with her family in the 1850s, wrote of the tragic death of her young son Johnny, who fell from a baggage wagon in Wyoming. "Poor little fellow, we could do nothing for him," Williams later told her mother. As Williams' friend Esther Lockhart later wrote, his end was immediate: "We were the first to reach poor little Johnny, and we saw at once that he was beyond earthly aid" (via "The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey").

While dysentery was certainly an awful way to go, it was also something from which people often recovered, even considering how sparse medical care could be on the Oregon Trail. But cholera was another story. Like common forms of dysentery, cholera is caused by bacteria that thrive under poor sanitary conditions. It added to the messed up history of the disease on the Oregon Trail, where pioneers, who might have been infected before they even technically started their trek, carried it along the trail and into new environments where it continued to thrive and infect new victims. Cholera proliferated in stagnant water that was infected by human and animal waste. Like dysentery, cholera also often takes its victims via diarrhea and subsequent dehydration. But where dysentery could be awful but survivable for many, cholera was known to be seriously deadly.

It moved alarmingly fast, too, as those who were infected could die within 24 hours or less. They might have seemed fine in the morning, but as the day wore on, the infection caused them to experience sudden vomiting, cramps, and convulsions. Toward the end of their ordeal, those infected with cholera might even have blue or purple faces, a side effect of dehydration and the deoxygenation of their thickened blood. Of the thousands of graves, marked or unmarked, that were laid alongside the Oregon Trail, a significant portion of them likely contain victims of cholera.

Pioneers might find themselves facing dangerous animals, such as the wolves and coyotes that inhabited much of the territory in which pioneers traveled, though settlers were more often unnerved by the animals' howling than harmed by them. They might face more danger via venomous snakes, which were known to occasionally kill unfortunate travelers. As diarist Velina Williams related, she had an alarming encounter with a copperhead on one occasion in 1853. As published in the "Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association," she wrote, "I found myself standing on a copperhead snake. He was coiled and my foot was across the coil so that the head was fortunately too nearly under my foot to injure me."

Meanwhile, the herds of bison that provided food, fur, and other goods for pioneers and native people alike could prove treacherous. Occasionally, wagon trains were said to be caught in a massive stampede of buffalo. While traveling in 1842 Wyoming, Ezra Meeker and his party were caught in one such nighttime rush. "A roar like an approaching storm could be heard in the distance," he wrote. "How long they were passing we forgot to note; it seemed like an age" (via "The Busy Life of Eight-five Years of Ezra Meeker: Ventures and Adventures"). However, there is little record of anyone killed by buffalo; instead, the huge animals, as well as many other species of the Oregon Trail, had far more cause to fear hunting humans than the other way around.