One of the books I read last summer was Ordeal By Hunger, an historical account of the journey of 87 pioneer men, women, and children who set out from the plains of Kansas for California in 1846.
This book is required reading in some high school social studies departments. It is a thoroughly researched account by historian George R. Stewart, who reconstructed their harrowing journey through desert, thick forest, and the Sierra Nevada mountains in winter, following a barely-explored route to California aggressively promoted by a way-too-mavericky explorer.
I found it to be a brilliant account of the human psyche in the face of every-increasing stress, disappointment, fear, and possible death. How do they keep their courage up in the face of adversity? How do they deal with disappointment? How do they cope with scarcity? How do they work together as a group when faced with daunting tasks? How do families and family groups treat each other on the long, hard journey? How do they help or hurt each other? Stewart details their heroism, skiving off, hoarding, sharing, selfishness, selflessness, risk-taking, risk-avoidance, alliance, betrayal, and—in the worst possible circumstances—cannibalism. Where The Grapes of Wrath is a fictional account of a poor family’s migration to California during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl days, this is an historical account no less gripping and heartbreaking (and probably more so because it’s nonfiction). My edition includes numerous appendices including correspondence and diary entries from some members of the party, as well as an analysis of an early journalist’s attempt to gather information about the journey by interviewing survivors, sometimes decades after the events.
This particular chapter in American history is valuable in my opinion because it highlights a number of issues that Americans encountered as they drifted westward: exploitation by those who were supposedly interested in “helping” the emigrants travel and settle; the vulnerability of a group of plains farmers with no mountaineering or military skills to aid them when faced with the Sierra Nevada in December and American Indians who relied in part on scavenging off of pioneer cattle for their sustenance; and the inability to rouse much assistance for the settlers trapped in the snowy mountains while California was being hotly contested in the Mexican War.
From a human standpoint, it is both heartbreaking and inspiring to see the increasing discouragement and disappointment as they cached their belongings along the road, cut their way through dense thickets and woods, traveled for days without water and watched their cattle go mad from dehydration. The survivors lucky enough to make it to California alive lost nearly all of their possessions, and usually family members to hypothermia, disease, and starvation. Most heart-breaking was to read of parents as they lost their children and children as they lost their parents and to the life-and-death decisions on part of families to split up in order to try to get help, wondering if they’ll ever see each other again.
I’m a Westerner by birth and upbringing. We learned in school about Lewis and Clark, the pioneers, and the Oregon Trail. We took field trips from school to see the forts built to shelter the pioneers and visited Indian reservations that preserved for the public the history and culture of their native population. But never before did I fully appreciate what some pioneers and their families encountered when traveling west. Never had I read about how this population, too, was preyed upon by self-serving profiteers and snake-oil salesmen. And I had rarely heard about the far-reaching effects of one of the U.S.’s least-studied wars (despite the fact that a third of the continental U.S.—including the entire southwest and Texas—was acquired as a result of it).
It’s yet another example of why I am grateful to live in this time and place, when my own family’s toughest obstacle in moving to California was abandoning our broken-down Cadillac on the shoulder of Interstate 10 in the Mojave Desert, and riding the rest of the way in our un-air-conditioned station wagon with the wind in our hair and the dog’s breath in our faces.
It’s also why from now on I will think twice before saying “I’m starving” when it’s only been a few hours since I’ve eaten.
Shimshonit 
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