I've Been Everywhere, Man
  • Our Travels
    • Alaska Stories
    • Flowers, Trees, Rocks & Skies
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog

How the West Was Won

11/9/2015

0 Comments

 
​Western history has taken on new meaning with our visits to the broad steppes, wide rivers and majestic mountains of the West.  From the Lewis & Clark expedition in the early 1800s to the Christian missionaries who arrived forty years later to proselytize the Plateau tribes, we have gotten a superficial look at the clash and co-existence of two peoples. 
Picture
A diorama at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site in Walla Walla, Washington depicts an encounter between the Cayuse people and the missionaries.
​Ten years after the first missionaries arrived, 5,000 people a year were arriving to the Walla Walla region via the Oregon Trail.  At first, the Native peoples  responded in friendship, attending services, trading and living near the missionaries
Picture
By 1850, thousands of these covered wagons came west each year on the Oregon Trail.
​As their numbers increased, settlers brought diseases that wiped out half the people in many tribes.  The Native people fought back, killing missionaries and fighting US troops at places like Cottonwood Canyon or White Bird Creek.
Picture
I visited a quiet graveyard in a grove outside of Fort Walla Walla and read the markers of the fallen soldiers.  Calvary soldiers, many of them veterans of the Civil War, came West with the US Army and died in pitched battles with the Native people whose dwindling numbers inspired them to make a last stand.
Picture
​And in the graveyard, a few markers remain, many of people still unknown.

Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Inspiration

     Listen as Johnny Cash & Lynn Anderson tear it up.
     We'll be singing their song when we come home. 

    Picture
    Listen here.

      Follow us as we go everywhere!  
      Enter your email address below.

    Submit

    Where we are today.

    Archives

    November 2020
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    Categories

    All
    Backpacking
    Grand Tetons
    Maine
    RV Life

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Our Travels
    • Alaska Stories
    • Flowers, Trees, Rocks & Skies
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog