Parties were often comprised of people from the same town or the same extended family, who were pursuing a new life in the West. Only by standing in such vast isolation, and by imagining spending weeks crossing it at a rate of two miles per hour, with practically nonexistent amenities, can the modern mind begin to understand the challenge of the western emigrant.īefore starting out for their new homes, many settlers banded together into parties, or companies, for safety and assistance while in transit. But even today, there are places in the Middle and Far West where modern-day emigrants can look to the horizon - in every direction - and see nothing but grass blowing in the wind. A gently rolling landscape, dotted with modernized farms and gas stations, and crisscrossed by well-paved roads, is about as close to isolated rural America that many people ever come.
For many 21st-century Americans, raised in the congestion of cities and the sprawl of the suburbs, the vastness of the North American continent is only vaguely understood. He enormity of the task faced by covered wagon emigrants in the American West is almost unimaginable today. he must cease to think, except of where he may find grass and water and a good camping place. He must learn to eat with his unwashed fingers, drink out of the same vessel as his mules, sleep on the ground when it rains, and share his blanket with vermin, and have patience with musketoes. a man must be able to endure heat like a Salamander, mud and water like a muskrat, dust like a toad, and labor like a jackass. Native American (Navajo) women and children pose on and near a covered wagon.
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