Oregon Country

Link to game plus notes and artist credits.

Apr 17, 2022

Link:

͏ ͏ 𝙊𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙤𝙣 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙮 A story-game of chained tweets. Will your wagon train survive the trek from Missouri to the Pacific? Will you perish or prosper on The Oregon Trail of 1844? Scroll down to begin.

Various notes and credits.

My primary source was David Dary’s The Oregon Trail. It is thorough and excellent.

The Cornelius Gilliam wagon train with the Bush family was historical. I embellish him as a villain, but he really was a former escaped slave bounty hunter with authoritarian streak. He really did declare martial law on the wagon train.

I tried pretty hard to stick to things that actually happened, although not necessarily to the Bushes. There really was an emigrant who transported 700 trees across the Oregon Trail: https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2015/12/28/apples-to-oregon-the-journey-of-henderson-luelling

*What was the mortality rate on the trail? One interesting study points out that it wasn’t that bad, at least early on. (https://www.livescience.com/46834-mormon-pioneers-mortality-rate.html).

“An analysis of historical records reveals that the mortality rate for early Mormon pioneers was a mere 3.5 percent, hardly higher than the national mortality rate at the time. The average American between the 1840s and 1860s, when the Mormon pioneers were heading West, had between a 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent chance of dying in a given year.”

*The worst year was 1850. The second year after the gold rush, desperate men with scant equipment flooded the trail. Cholera was rampant. Death rate that year was around 8 percent, maybe even as high as 10 percent.

*I played the old Oregon Trail game as a kid in the ‘80s. I watched some gameplay videos to refresh my memory but mostly to avoid duplicating it. The one primary flaw it has is showing a solitary wagon—wagon train of large numbers were crucial to survival.

Oregon Trail links of interest.

The 1844 Gilliam party: http://www.kansasheritage.org/werner/joseph.html

Second link: https://www.start-wa.com/wagon_train.html

Donner Party http://troytaylorbooks.blogspot.com/2014/02/forlorn-hope.html?m=1

Donner Party FAQ https://user.xmission.com/~octa/DonnerParty/FAQ.htm

Wagons of the Oregon Trail: https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/learn_interp_nhotic_faqwagons.pdf

Cornelius Gilliam https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/gilliam_cornelius/#.YlqrmWROklT

George Washington Bush and family

http://www.oregonpioneers.com/bios/GeorgeWBush_1844.pdf

Another link: https://www.historylink.org/file/5645

A comprehensive list of Oregon Trail emigrants in 1844. http://www.oregonpioneers.com/1844.htm

Rose Jackson. https://www.oregonlive.com/ospecials/blackhistory/2008/02/1849_rose_jacksons_trip_to_ore.html