Mrs Mary Elizabeth Munkers discloses her experience Crossing the Plains in 1846, as she
reflects on a significant period in her life and American history. Recalling on memories from the
tender age of ten, Mrs Munkers relays how her family and fifty others made the
journey to Oregon territory. From the outset Mary states how she has a very ‘clear
memory of the journey and of [the] conditions’. This signifies a momentous time
in Mary’s life as her family made the great journey west. Mary reveals her
mother was unable to help due to an illness or condition, therefore from an
early age Mary took on the role alongside her brother’s wife in catering for
the family and fulfilling motherly duties. It seems that Mary’s family had some
funds to help them make their journey since they had a large herd which Mary
informs not many families had this.
Mary and her family embarked on their journey from Missouri on
the train and recalls seeing the buildings ‘Forts Laramie, Bridges and Hall’. An
interesting and realistic depiction of the journeys that settlers embarked on is when
Mary expressed, ‘As this was but the second year of “Crossing the Plains”, the
way before us was much of it through a wilderness and over a trackless plain.’
This outlines ‘manifest destiny’, evoking the great west expansion of the
United States as a strenuous mission to transform this ‘wilderness’. It
demonstrates the importance of the Western settlement due to the exploration
and journey in settling, as well as claiming land.
Fort Laramie
Mary speaks of only one incident involving the Native Indians, expressing the ‘awful scare… in Utah’. Mary describes the confrontation with the Indians as a ‘war party’ yet Mary explains ‘when they had seen us all they wanted to, they gave us a whoop and a yell and away they clattered!’ This demonstrates the warfare between the groups of the European’s versus the Native American’s creating this tension which translates how the different cultures reacted when they came in contact which led on to conflict.
Mary also explains the hardship of travelling through rough terrain, bad weather conditions and living in fear of the unknown, yet states her family and herself were 'very lucky' in not suffering from some of the diseases that were prevalent and none of their oxen died as she recalls some families were left stranded on plains. However, when Mary and her family reached east of Salem, her father purchased a homestead which they eventually settled after such a long, treacherous journey.
19th Century Salem
Mary's account of her experience in making the journey West conveys a real demonstration of how difficult it was in order to settle and create a new life in the West which was not easy to accomplish. The notion of expanding westwards signifies liberty as the settler's got to discover and claim their own land with this sense of freedom, yet Mary's recollection shows the struggle to acquire the 'destiny'.
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