CHAPTER I. Pioneer Days, Chapter I

APPENDIX B

Pioneer Days

The following chapters on "Pioneer Days" were prepared by Mr. Tolbert Carter, an honored pioneer of 1846, and for a great many years a resident of Benton County, and were originally published in a local paper of that county. At my earnest request, one of his sons copied the letters, and they are here presented for permanent preservation in the Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association. Mr. Carter was born in Missouri, on November 6, 1825, of English ancestiy. In early life he removed to Illinois, and started from Morgan County, in that state, to Oregon in March, 1846. He was married to Mrs. Martha Angeline Bileui on August 13, 1852, and made his permanent home afew miles north of the City of Corvallis. He was by occupation a farmer. He served a term in the state legislature with credit to himself and his constituents. He died on October 3, 1899, leaving an honored name as a heritage to a large family. --George H. Himes, Secretary [Oregon Pioneer Association].

CHAPTER I.

In response to your request I will give some sketches of my journey across the plains from Illinois to Oregon in 1846. I was in my twenty-first year, that being my first adventure from home with but little conception as to what was before me. Everything was new and unknown, having a very limited knowledge of both men and things in general. I will remark, however, that I have since in these long years learned a little of the world and something concerning mankind; I have become convinced that no experience was presented in the limit of an eight-months' journey across the plains to learn so much of the deep-seated and different shades of human nature as such a travel affords. And there is no trait in man's nature that is not thoroughly tested. First, his bravery; seconds, his manly impulses; third, his endurance, whilst all these qualities are thoroughly tested and fully exemplified, none perhaps is more required or none so requisite as his endurance and perseverance.

Now, imagine if you can, the condition of an inexperienced boy starting out on this terrible journey with all these necessary qualification to learn, and adapt himself to each new requirement. You may have something in your mind's eye of the disqualification of the one who is now going to give some noted and still remembered incidents that occurred on the latter part of that long and soul-trying journey. In doing this these incidents much be drawn from memory, having neither notes nor journal to write from. Fifty-two years is a long lapse of time to write from memory, yet these incidents are as fresh in my mind today as the events of the past year; strange, indeed, but true. My object in sketching these pioneer incidents is because there were no notes taken at the time, and I have seen no written account of any of them by any writer, consequently, with exception of what is written below, that long travel, with its attendant privations and misery, is entirely lost to history.