That there could be farms, that there ever might be homes, in
this strange wild country, was, to these early adventurers,
unthinkable.
Then we should picture the millions of buffalo which once covered
these plains and think of the waste and folly of their
slaughtering. We should see the long streams of the Mackinaw
boats swimming down the Missouri, bound for St. Louis, laden with
bales of buffalo and beaver peltry, every pound of which would be
worth ten dollars at the capital of the fur trade; and we should
restore to our minds the old pictures of savage tribesmen, decked
in fur-trimmed war-shirts and plumed bonnets, armed with lance
and sinewed bow and bull-neck shield, not forgetting whence they
got their horses and how they got their food.
The great early mid-continental highway, known as the Oregon
Trail or the Overland Trail, was by way of the Missouri up the
Platte Valley, thence across the mountains. We know more of this
route because it was not discontinued, but came steadily more and
more into use, for one reason after another. The fur traders used
it, the Forty-Niners used it, the cattlemen used it in part, the
railroads used it; and, lastly, the settlers and farmers used it
most of all.
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