Quote:
Originally Posted by Hector Cerif
I get the feeling you don't know what you're talking bout, but I'll respond anyway cause I'm hungover and ****ty.
When you have recovered, you will realize that you are the one who doesn't know what he is talking about.
Horseback travel is unsuitable for a significant portion of the people who travelled the Oregon trail, e,g, young children, babes in arms, and most women, especially the pregnant ones. The kid in your photo would probably last 2-3 hours, at most.
You seem to be worried that wagon travel would be significantly slower than travel on horseback, and you cite Lewis & Clark' expedition as a group who moved faster. Perhaps you were unaware that it took Lews & Clark more than a year to reach the continental divide from Illinois. The things the expedition bought along the way were not really bought, but traded for - mostly food and canoes, which were items the local native inhabitants had in quantity. The things settlers would need - farm implements, machinery, tools, furniture, seeds for crops, were not available at all west of the Missouri.
The pioneers didn't have strong, lightweight, rigid-framed waterproof backpacks. Nor did they have packaged freeze-dried foods, ziplock bags, plastic dishes or lightweight cookware to put in those backpacks.
Homesteaders who traveled the Oregon trail brought everything they needed to establish a homestead along with them because at first there was nobody from whom to buy the things they needed once they arrived at their destination. Until the railroads arrived a generation later, it was much cheaper to buy your supplies in the central states and take them on your own wagon to your new homestead than it was to buy when you arrived. Prices might differ by a factor of ten. Later on, people who could afford to buy all their homestead's outfitting in the territories were rich enough not to need a homestead in the first place.
I don't know why you think taking a wagon along the Oregon trail of the 1840's would take three times as long as taking your family on horseback. The fundamental reason they took wagons was to carry all the things they would need once they arrived, not just to carry food for the journey.
Anyway, it's good to see you think you are so much smarter than the tens of thousands of folk who actually took the trail.