The Oregon Trail: The Game vs. Reality

What happens when a pop culture depiction of history is better known than the history itself? The well-known Oregon Trail computer game created in the 1970s brings players on a tumultuous journey from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon in the mid-1800s, but how accurate to history is it? In this special episode of Fabric of History, Mary is joined by Dr. Andrew Fisher, author and Associate Professor of History at the College of William and Mary, to shed light on how accurate the game's challenges were. Why did so many Americans choose to go West in the mid-1800s?  What were the impacts of pioneers interacting with Native Americans and their territory as they moved West?

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Transcript

Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what's inside.

Haley (00:20)
What happens when a pop culture depiction of history is better known than the history itself? The well-known Oregon Trail computer game from the 1970s brings players on a tumultuous journey from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, in the mid-1800s. But how accurate to history is it? In this special episode of Fabric of History, Mary is joined by Dr. Andrew Fisher, author and associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary, to shed light on how accurate the game's challenges really were. Why did so many Americans choose to go west in the mid-1800s? What were the impacts of pioneers interacting with Native Americans in their territory as they moved west?

Mary (01:09)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Fabric of History. This is Mary Patterson, and I'm so glad that you're back with us to explore another fascinating story. Today we are diving into a topic that my colleague Kirk referred to as a wonderful example of the historian's curse. And I love this phrase. And he means that what happens when there's something in pop culture that sparks interest in a topic in history, but it may not give you the full picture. So this idea of the historian's curse is especially appropriate, I think, for the Oregon Trail. If you're like me, a child of the 80s, you grew up playing the Oregon Trail on an ancient Apple desktop in the computer lab, and you loved it. And I still have such fond memories of doing that, though I can trace my interest in the topic of the Oregon Trail to childhood. But this idea of moving west and the allure of westward expansion has been a huge part of the Anglo-American psyche for generations. So this leads me to ask, what was the real trail like? Why does it resonate so much in American history, especially if there are other examples of trails going west? And perhaps most significantly, what additional stories do we need to hear to give us a more complete narrative of Western migration? To help me with these questions, I'm so grateful to be joined by Dr. Andrew Fisher, who is an associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary and director of the College's Environment and Sustainability Program. He is the author of Shadow Tribe, The Making of Columbia River Indian Identity, and Additionally, he is from Oregon, and he has his own memories of playing the Oregon Trail in his younger days. Dr. Fischer, thank you so much for being with me today.

Dr. Fisher (03:03)
Thank you for having me. And in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I'm not actually from Oregon. I was born in New York City, and my family moved out to Oregon in the 1970s when Governor Tom McCall was telling people to visit but not stay. So it actually fits kind of with this story of how people from somewhere else go to a place and claim it for themselves and rebrand themselves as natives.

Mary (03:33)
Yes, it does. It does seem very appropriate. So perhaps we should start by setting the scene for our listeners. So the Oregon Trail we talk about the Oregon Trail is basically beginning in the 1840s. What's going on in the United States at that time, and why are people so interested in going to Oregon?

Dr. Fisher (03:53)
Yeah, that's a great question. A lot of things are going on in the United States in the 1830s and 40s when people start moving west to Oregon. Of course, we always think of the phrase Manifest Destiny, which was coined by a Democratic newspaper editor named John L. O'Sullivan during the 1840s when he said that history had made manifest that the United States was destined to possess the entire continent. That was said in the midst of actually the debate over the Oregon question between the United States and Great Britain, both of which had claims to the Oregon country based on the doctrine of discovery, and both of which ignored, of course, the native Peoples living in what they call the Oregon Country. So Manifest Destiny is part of this story. But it goes back even further to the age of Jefferson and his ideas of an Empire for Liberty that the United States would create by acquiring more territory. That's why he had made the losing on a purchase in 18 three and then sent Lewis and Clark across the continent to explore not only the Louisiana Purchase but beyond, over the Rockies and into the Oregon Country, which the United States had not purchased. But Lewis and  Clark were sent in part to stake a claim for the United States. And I remember growing up as a kid, I also played the Oregon Trail game on a probably even older computer than you did. I played like 1.0 version, but I also remember in fifth grade making paper machete puppets of Lewis and Clark for a play that never happened. But this narrative of exploration and discovery and settlement was so much a part of our education.

Mary (05:54)
That's a really interesting point about Lewis and Clarke going all the way to Oregon. I never really thought about it at the time that wasn't part of the purchase. But Jefferson has this idea already of going to the coast and is important to stake that claim. That's fascinating.

Dr. Fisher (06:11)
Yeah. And another part, of course, is Jefferson is one of the founding fathers, if you will, of what becomes the Democratic Party. And in the 19th century, it is the Democrats who are the party of westward expansion. And they want to acquire more territory. Southern Democrats want more territory to expand slavery. And that becomes part of the context for the settlement of Oregon as well. The Wigs and then by the 1850s, the Republicans are a little more skeptical about westward expansion, whether the Republic will hold together, and also certainly leery of the expansion of slavery. But the Republicans ultimately embraced this idea of free soil, free soil, free labor, free men. And so they want especially new Northern territories and States which most people considered unsuited for plantation slavery. But they wanted to add more free States to counterbalance the slave States that were coming into the Union. So a big part of the context here is the looming question of slavery, which will ultimately lead to the Civil War.

Mary (07:29)
So there are these sort of big picture pieces here of Manifest Destiny creating an Empire of Liberty. The United States, it's destined that we will take over this territory. There's also the question of slavery. So this is the 1840s Antebellum America, and that debate is only getting more and more heated. And then I have to assume because I recently went to Oregon a few years ago, and it's absolutely beautiful. So there's like the appeal of the land itself. Right. For an agrarian society, is that fair to say?

Dr. Fisher (08:03)
Yes, certainly. The Willamette Valley was coveted by Americans for agriculture. Much of Oregon and Washington are not terribly well suited to at least conventional agriculture because they're too dry. Without irrigation, it's difficult to grow crops. But the west side of the Cascades, particularly in Oregon, had good agricultural land. And by the 1830s, there was already a small community near what's now called Champagne. It was a French Canadian community primarily. These are people of mixed ancestry, some mixed native and European. A lot of people who had worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and then basically retired to become farmers in the Willamette Valley. And another piece of the context here is competition between Protestants and Catholics, which will grow more intense as you get increasing Irish immigration in the 1840s. But in the midst of or on the tail end of the Second Great Awakening, American Protestants were very keen on people in the Northwest, with Protestant people, rather than the French Canadians being overwhelmingly Catholic. And so there's an element of religious competition here as well. Overlaid on top of this Imperial competition between the United States and Britain.

Mary (09:36)
You've already painted a picture that I think is more complex. And certainly, a little kid playing the game realizes because if you get to the Valley, you win the game. And it's almost like it's this pristine wilderness. Right. But it's not like, as you said, there are native people living there, and then there's French Canadians living there. So there's already different communities there. When American settlers reach the end of the trail if they reach the end of the trail.

Dr. Fisher (10:04)
I rarely did when I played the game. I have that habit of killing off most of the members of my party.

Mary (10:12)
We never had enough time to reach the end of the trail in school. And I remember that being a big source of frustration among myself and my classmates. We were so close, but the pivot to the actual like the trail itself. So we have a variety of reasons that Americans are moving out west to Oregon. So we say the Oregon Trail, like, where are we? Where does it start? Is it one actual trail? How long did it take to actually travel the trail?

Dr. Fisher (10:41)
Yeah, I tease my fiance, who is from the Midwest, because she refers to the game as Oregon Trails, talking about it. And besides, her horrendous pronunciation of my state's name sort of hits on the fact that there are multiple trails. There's not one route. It starts in Independence, Missouri, for most people, and then runs west along the Platte River and then ultimately across the Plains and over the Rockies and the Cascades into the Willamette Valley. It's about a 2000 miles journey took about four to six months. Most people did it actually on foot rather than in wagons, but most people use smaller wagons that they called Prairie schooners because they look like with their canvas tops, they look like sailing ships from a distance. But along the way, there are a lot of different routes. In certain places, particularly west of Fort Laramie, people would spread out in part just to get out of the trail of dust that was being kicked up by all the other wagons and livestock but also to do things like look for water and Hunt for game. And so you would have kind of a braided trail running west. There's a Mormon trail that starts west in the same period headed to Utah that parallels the Oregon Trail. And then, of course, west of Fort Laramie, it branches and the path to the right or to the northwest ran to the Oregon Country in the path to the southwest ran to California. And that was the California Trail. And as an Oregonian, I love to tell students the apocryphal story about how at that juncture there was a sign that pointed to the right and it said to Oregon. And then the trail on the left was just marked with a piece of Fool's gold. And the people who could read went to Oregon.

Mary (13:01)
I love that.

Dr. Fisher (13:01)
But more people actually go over the course of the trail's existence. More people actually go to California. About 250,000 people ultimately went to California, many of them seeking gold after it's discovered there in 1849. And only about 80,000 end up in Oregon, what becomes Oregon and Washington.

Mary (13:23)
So again, that's really interesting to note. So why isn't the game the California Trail if that was the trail that most people took?

Dr. Fisher (13:30)
I think part of it is that the Oregon Trail is all about settlement by what we imagined to be good, proper, God-fearing farmers who are going to set up their little house on the Prairie, albeit in Oregon. Whereas the California Trail and the story of California's settlement is so tied up with the Goldrush, which is sort of this chaotic story driven by greed and by the desire to get rich quick. And although a lot of the people that go to California also intend to settle and to become farmers, I think in the popular imagination, California is about the gold rush. The Oregon Trail is about homesteading, and we love this homesteading narrative in American history.

Mary (14:30)
Going back to the game again, so part of the fun of playing the game was all of the challenges that came up along the way. So you get a snake bite or you're running out of food, you have to go hunting. Perils in the game. Is that fairly inaccurate picture of what it might have been like or may things have been overblown a bit?

Dr. Fisher (14:54)
Well, what's really been overblown is the risk of Indian attack. We have all these images from art to the Wild West shows in the late 19th or 20th century to modern Westerns that show brave pioneers in peril and having to circle the wagons against to protect themselves against native people. But scholars like John Unrau, who have looked quite meticulously and systematically at statistics from travelers' accounts and so forth, have shown that most people did die from disease and accidents. Estimates vary anywhere from 3% to 10% of the people who went west died, and most of them did die of diseases. And Dysentery, the one that we all got that green screen of death that said you have died of dysentery was a major killer because getting good quality water along the way was often difficult. Cholera was a major killer as well. And Unrau shows that between about 18, 40, 18, 60. Around 2000 immigrants died of cholera alone, whereas only about 400 died from Indian tax. And during that same period, more native Americans died at the hands of white pioneers. Some of what the game says is based in reality, but of course, in the popular imagination, this is an epic story of people putting themselves not only it's nature, but also hostile native inhabitants to conquer the west.

Mary (16:44)
You mentioned when we talked the other day about all of the junk that accumulates along the trail. I think that was an interesting point and maybe to talk a little bit about the environmental impact of the trail.

Dr. Fisher (16:57)
I'm not sure how much junk still remains along the trails, but historian Patricia Limerick wrote a great essay back in the 1990s during the birth of the so-called new Western history helped trashing the trails, and in it, she talked a lot about the junk that accumulated on either side of these trails that were heading west. People would often, as we often do when we're traveling, overpack. And a lot of the merchants who set up business in places like Independence, Missouri, were more than happy to sell immigrants everything they needed and a lot of stuff they didn't need it. And they prey on their fears of running out of food, running out of ammunition, and so forth. So a lot of the wagons that left Independence were overburdened, including with family possessions that people hope to bring with them. Some things are quite impractical when you're hauling everything across the Plains and over the mountains like pianos and other kinds of household items and personal possessions. And as they progress and their animals got weaker and it was just hard to get the wagons up the Hills and float them over the Rivers. A lot of people threw out stuff and you also had discarded food barrels and dead animals littering the trail. And so it would have been pretty hard to get lost actually outside of the trail, dust and the ruts there's junk. So you just follow that. And that's just one suggestion of a larger environmental impact that the Oregon Trail is having as they're moving west. People, of course, Hunt for game along the way. They are bringing livestock with them that eat the forage the pasture land that bison depended on and also native people and their horses. So for a certain radius around the route are having a considerable impact on the land. And native people along the way often resent this because these are intruders who haven't asked permission to travel through their territory. They are taking things that native people need to survive and they're doing it without payment. And so some native people choose to enforce reciprocity, which is an important value in Indigenous societies by stealing. And then, of course, the immigrants considered just a bunch of thieving Indians and sometimes retaliate. And that's how you get some of the violence that occurs.

Mary (20:01)
There's a couple of things and what you just spoke of that really resonate with me. So again, the idea that you are Loading your life basically onto a wagon and walking mostly 2000 miles and what that might actually mean. So I always thought of people riding in the wagons and I don't know if that's from reading Little House in the Big Woods books. They're in the wagon with their things, but you're walking and you're carrying and the animals are pulling all of your things and just how much what that would take out of you and how you would want to see all the junk on the trail. I think that's a really powerful image. And then the second point about the enforcement of reciprocity on the trail and the stealing, quote-unquote of livestock by native Americans, I think that's such a great indicator of this sort of clash of worldviews. Like you're in my land, going through my land with your animals, and you're wrecking it and you're leaving all of this junk behind. So you owe me something. And then from the perspective of the immigrants, this is stealing. I think it really speaks to the difference of how people are looking at things and also just the complexity of the interactions along the trail. It's not just unprovoked violent attacks.

Dr. Fisher (21:24)
Yeah. These kinds of clashes, of course, had happened before in places like New England. It happens to Lewis and Clark when they're making their way down the Columbia through the Dowels. This bottleneck in the river where the local tribes, people like Veloscos and the Wish Rooms, had long served as middlemen in trade going up and downriver. And Lewis and Clark are coming through, and they want horses and they want native people to help them portage their canoes and their cargo around the falls and the Rapids, but they don't pay them. And so a lot of the people along the river take items, and this makes Liz and Clark really mad. And so these ideas about native people being feverish and particularly certain tribes being thievish, it becomes part of the paranoia, the fear that pioneers carry with them as they go. But the other point you make is also a good one, that this is a really arduous journey. For the most part. People are riding the wagons because they don't have any suspension, and you're not really traveling on roads. It's a very rough trail, so it would be bone-jarringly bumpy to ride for very long in the wagons. They're mostly for carrying cargo, and people will ride horses if they have them. But a lot of people walk and they're walking miles, sometimes 15, 20 miles or more a day. And then having to push and pull your wagons up slopes and fjords, rivers, and streams would have been exhausting.

Mary (23:22)
Yeah. It really is a story of a strong will, like, you're really going to get there and you're going to exert yourself and sort of uproot yourself to do it. I think it's sort of mind-blowing to me. That's why I'm fumbling around a little bit, because I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's 2000 miles, like walking with all of your things in this dust and mountains and not being sure what might come next and all these dangers that it's crazy. And I think I'm sort of leading myself into my second original question that I posed was why does this trail resonate so much today? And I think we touched on that a little bit, or it's emphasized more than, say, the California trail. I think the game is a part of that because it was such a clear memory from my childhood. And it comes to find out where I am, part of the Oregon Trail generation, which is a real thing, apparently the micro-generation between Generation X and the millennials. So it's not just me, but I think the game itself just sort of puts you in the position of making decisions that have a real impact, like what supplies you're going to bring when you're going to leave, how fast you're going to go. And I think that connects at least it connected with me and my classmates. And so that's sort of what made it stick out. But I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

Dr. Fisher (24:47)
I think the game is definitely part of it. I mean, it's been around for 40, 50 years. So you have multiple generations of schoolchildren from all over the country growing up playing this. It's also, as I said before, a big part of popular culture generally from the early 20th century on. You know, you have things like the Wild West shows that feature Indian attack on a settler's cabin or an attack on attack on a wagon train. You have Western films that pick up and carry this narrative forward into the present. But that process of memory-making begins even earlier in the 19th century. An interesting person in connection with that is Edison Meeker, who was born in Ohio, and after he married, he moved to Iowa and thought it was too cold. So he and his wife, Eliza Jane, in 1852, I think, packed up and went west on the Oregon Trail. They ended up ultimately actually in what is now Washington and in his old age, in his 70s, near the end of the 19th century. He was one of this pioneer generation who made it his business to tout the accomplishments of his generation in settling the west and claiming the Oregon country for the United States. He traveled the trail multiple times to market. He raised funds to put in place signs and plaques and ultimately interpretive materials that would direct modern Americans to these sites of memory, like Chimney Rock and the other Register rocks along the way where pioneers had carved their names. He met with Teddy Roosevelt, who had written a book called The Winning of the west and saw himself as a man of the west, although, like me, he was actually from New York.

Mary (26:57)
New York, right?

Dr. Fisher (26:58)
Yeah. He ultimately not only walked the trail multiple times, he also drove along it in a car and flew over it in a biplane. And as the United States became modern, he and other pioneers didn't want Americans to forget their roots and to forget the accomplishments of his pioneer generation. So there's quite a conscious effort to cement the Oregon Trail in American memory well before the game. But I think ultimately why this story resonates is because this is part of a larger narrative of how the United States was made, not only in a territorial sense but like Frederick Jackson Turner suggested, this is the story of rugged pioneers going out and conquering the wilderness and becoming rugged, individualist Americans in the process. And this whole idea, although it's very problematic, we now recognize, of free land and a battle between civilization and savagery, had great appeal for earlier generations of Americans, and many Americans still today prefer to remember it that way. And the Oregon Trail is very central to it because unlike some of the other trails, the Oregon Trail is about settlement. It's about settler colonialism. It's about making Oregon part of the United States and the people who go there are Americans.

Mary (28:40)
One of the things that I think is really great about being a student of history in the present moment is that I grew up on sort of this myth of the west. I think I played the Oregon Trail. I loved Little House books. That narrative was really appealing to me. But it's almost like the older you get and the more you know, the more you know that narrative doesn't suffice anymore. And I think that should be welcomed, right? Because there's just more to learn and more to understand and more to appreciate. As you said, the game itself game, it's still around. You can still play the game today. So I wonder if you could add something to the game to make it a more complete story of what this trail was or what it meant. What changes would you make?

Dr. Fisher (29:36)
As you know, there's a new version. The newest version of the game was made in consultation with three Native historians. I know a couple of them. And it allows for the first-time players to take on the role of Native people and to play scenarios involving Native Americans to try and get at their perspective on this story. And I think that is an important addition because this narrative about the trail running west, which is a story of opportunity and freedom and hope, thanks to several generations of scholarship, now we know for Native people in particular is anything but that one person's opportunity, one person's free land comes at the expense of people who are already there and have been there for millennia. So it is a more complicated story, but it's also more complicated than just dispossession and death because contrary to the expectations of a lot of the pioneers heading west. First of all, many of them didn't see any Native Americans beyond perhaps the removed Indians from the Southeast who had been resettled in what became Indian Territory, stretching north from what is now Oklahoma into Kansas and Nebraska. So a lot of the people leaving Missouri saw what in some ways can be seen as the advanced guard of American settler colonialism, which has removed Indians from the Southeast and from the Great Lakes region, people like Delaware and Ottawa and other people who had been pushed west as they get out onto the planes, if they see Native people, oftentimes their interactions with them were amicable, if not friendly. They were at least peaceful. There's quite a bit of trade that goes on. There are cases where livestock are stolen and then returned by tribal leaders who fear the ramifications if there's retaliation. When they get even to Oregon, there are Native people willing to help them. So at least before they see that, the balance is clearly beginning to tip and that all these Americans or whites seem intent on displacing them. Native people, particularly when they're just passing through, don't automatically assume that their enemies to be killed or feared.

Mary (32:33)
We've talked about interactions between those traveling on the trail with American Indians. But what happens when settlers reach Oregon? What impact does that have on native people living there?

Dr. Fisher (32:48)
That's a very important question to ask because the Oregon Trail is ultimately about settlement and settler colonization of a region that had been occupied by diverse native Peoples for more than 10,000 years. So native people in the region, particularly those that remain in Olama Valley but also along the Columbia River, are increasingly dismayed by the number of people that are coming and the assumption they seem to have that the territory belongs to them. In fact, I had been among the warm strengths people in the 1850s asked the US government sent a letter to them saying these people are settling right among us and seemed to assume that the place belongs to them. And he asks, what's going to happen to us? Where are we going to live? And the government's answer to that ultimately is the reservation system. And in the mid 1850s, federal treaty commissioners would carve out multiple reservations on both sides of the Cascades for the region's Indigenous people. But even before that, they were beginning to experience the effects of colonization, particularly because of disease. While immigrants are dying of things like dysentery and cholera, they carry with them crowd diseases, very contagious maladies like measles and influenza, and those in many cases decimate Native Americans who had no previous history of exposure to them and no immunity. And this is an old story on the North American continent by this point. But people like the Caillus who lived near the Whitman mission in what is now Eastern Washington suffered terribly from measles epidemic in 1847. And that is the reason why they or a number of them decide to destroy the mission and end up killing the Whitmans who had come west earlier in the 1830s to try and convert them to Christianity.

Mary (35:12)
That story of disease really coming and doing sort of wreaking the first wave of havoc on American Indians is a story that we've talked about on other podcasts before, and it's a tragic story. But if you think about the losses that people are suffering from a disease where there is no immunity, like what that must do to your society and to your culture, and then to see all these people just keep coming and coming and coming, I think it really forces you to think from that perspective. We've talked about Anglo-American settlers, and we've talked about American Indians, but that's, of course, not the only two groups of people within the United States are there examples of African Americans and their experiences either on the trail or in Oregon Territory?

Dr. Fisher (36:02)
Yeah. Again, contrary to the sort of mythic image of the Oregon Trail, there are African Americans who also see westward migration as a path to opportunity and freedom. Some of the people that go west don't go willingly. They are taken there as enslaved laborers by Southerners who intend to actually transplant the institution of slavery to places like California. But quite a few of the African Americans who make their way west were already free. Like a man named George Bush, he was no relation to presidents of that name. He was a Freeborn son of a black father and an Irish mother, and he headed west to the Oregon country in 1844 with his wife, and they had five sons. They hoped to escape the hostility that they faced in Missouri, which had been admitted to the Union as a slave state. So they joined up in a wagon party with four white families who were neighbors that respected Bush as a friend. They treated him as an equal. He was known as a very generous and kind man who would do things like provide wagons and supplies to needy families and would give them food when they needed it. But as their wagons neared the dowels in the Oregon Territory, they got word that Oregon's provisional government, it wasn't yet a territory even of the United States had enacted a lash law. It's a law providing for the punishment of enslaved African Americans. And so he decided to divert north of the Columbia River into what was then still territory controlled by the Hudson Bay Company. It's a British territory because the Oregon Question had yet been settled. And like Meeker, his family settled in the Puget Sound area, and they built a successful farm there and became friends with their neighbors, the native people of that area. But after the Oregon Country Question was settled in 1846, the US took over the Puget Sound region as well. And Bush found himself again in the crosshairs of Oregon laws that were aimed at excluding African Americans from the territory, whether they were a slave or free. One thing many people don't know is that Oregon, although it's admitted to the Union ultimately as a free state, held a referendum on the issue. And those who could vote, which was only white men, voted to exclude slavery from the future state by a narrower margin than they voted to exclude free Blacks. So the point of George Bush's story is that the free land of the west, as Turner called it, the Oregon Country is not equally available to all. And Bush had to fight very hard, and he had the help from some of his neighbors, but he had to fight very hard to prevent his property from being taken. After the Oregon Donation Land Act was passed in the Oregon Donation Land Act allowed every white settler and so-called half-breed Indians to legally claim land. And that language explicitly excluded African Americans. So if he didn't secure land legally, another settler could come in and take the farm that he and his family had built. So he managed ultimately to get, with the help of his white friends and neighbors. Congress to recognize his land claim in 1855. But it took a lot of extra work, and you can imagine a lot of anxiety to make sure that this idea that the Oregon country was for white men, it excluded or attempted to exclude African Americans from participating in that.

Mary (40:36)
That's a piece of the story I knew absolutely nothing about. And so hearing you talk about that and whenever we hear a story of, again, it's the idea of freedom and opportunity, but not for you, only for this group. It does make my heart sink. I can actually physically feel it in my body, just like just sort of the heartbreak and the pain of what else is going on at that time. And I think that it's important to learn it it's important to tell that story and to know these pieces of the puzzle because otherwise, you don't have a full picture. Speaking as a former high school history teacher, my kids would want to know that. They want to know. They want to know about everybody. Well, why don't we hear this story or what happened to the native people on the trail? Did they trade? Did they fight? They have all these questions. And I think that's what gives me hope, even in learning stories that make my heart sink like this example, even though he does hang onto his land. But as you said, after years of hard work, and I'm sure a lot of anxiety, but it gives me hope that people want to hear these stories, especially young people, and I think they want to know what's been left out and why. And so I know I really appreciate you making the time to chat with us today because I feel like I learned as someone of the Oregon Trail generation, I really learned a lot more about the Oregon Trail and what that really means and sort of all the different facets of that story that come together.

Dr. Fisher (42:14)
Thank you. I enjoyed it. And I agree that although some people consider this a divisive history that's being told now, it's simply a more complete and truer, fuller history, and we can embrace that and then move forward from there.

Mary (42:36)
You don't know what you don't know. And that's I know as a lifelong history nerd, I really enjoy learning new things, even if it does make my heart sink a little bit because I think that Fuller picture, that fabric is worth having as complete as possible. Dr. Andrew Fisher, thank you so much for being with us today. Again, you can find his book Shadow Tribe, The Making of Columbia River Indian Identity, wherever books are sold. He's also teaching history at the College of William and Mary, my alma mater. Shout out. Thank you so much again for being with us today. And listeners, if you have thoughts, comments, or questions, please. We'd love to hear from you. You can always reach us at comments@fabricofhistory.org. Leave us a review. Tell your friends and family about the US. We'd love to have more people in on our conversation. Until next time, everybody keep asking questions. Take care.

Intro/Outro (43:33)
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