The narrative starts with Mrs Munkers describing the amount
of families that came together to move westwards. She says that there are fifty
families that are ready to make this journey including her family which
consists of her dad, ‘his invalid wife…three married sons…one married daughter…five
younger children’. Mary was ten years old when this event happened, it seems
like a big family and already you can imagine the difficulties that lay ahead
of them. Not only because of the harsh landscape but also the fact that there
is a large number of them and the mother isn’t able independent due to her
unfortunate situation.
Mary and the rest of the party were one of the first
pioneers to travel across this path and she says that there were no bridges across
the streams, if there wasn’t suitable timbre to build rafts the family had to
use their beds as floats. This shows how difficult the journey westwards was,
especially for the first emigrants. Another hazard that Mary faced as well as
other parties was the weather, Mary was in the middle of a storm and although
no one was hurt in this situation storms and other natural hazards were serious
problems that the pioneers faced.
Eventually the family settled in Mill Creek which was four
miles East of Salem. The father wanted to secure this piece of land as there
were a good amount of resources nearby which was appropriate due to the mother
condition. The four brothers became miners which allowed the family to become
wealthy. Mary acknowledges that her journey west wasn’t the most difficult in
comparison to others, she recalls hearing stories of Indians attacking whole
parties, diseases such as cholera affecting individuals and also livestock
dying leaving families stranded on the plains. The journey west was full of potential
danger not only from human factors but also other factors ranging from storms
to disease.
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