Pioneers, part 5: Plants, Animals and Routes
Monday: Timeline
Have your student add to his timeline: 1843: More than 1,000 settlers left Independence, Missouri for Oregon.
Tuesday: Research: Plants and Animals Along the Trail
Have your student research and find the names of plants the pioneers may have seen in each region. Have him find pictures and sketch at least one of these plants.
Have your student research and find the names of animals the pioneers may have encountered in each region. Have him find pictures and sketch at least one of these animals.
Wednesday: Mapping the Route
Land Routes
On a map, have your student mark in four colors the following routes the pioneers took:
Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley. Label this Oregon Trail.
Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City, Utah. Show where this followed the Oregon Trail and where the route differed. Label this the Mormon Trail.
Show the route(s) the Overland Forty-Niners took. Be sure that he shows where the trails to California moved away from the Oregon Trail.
Show the route from New York City to the states in the Midwest. Label this the Orphan Train Trails.
Sea Routes
A large number of pioneers traveled to California by sea rather than on land. Have your student locate and mark the following routes, each in a different color, on a world map;
Panama Route: New York, Boston or Charleston to the port of Chagres in Panama, along the Chagres River to the town of Gorgona, then overland to San Francisco.
Nicaragua Route: Eastern cities to San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua, up the San Juan River, across Lago de Nicaragua, then a ship to San Francisco.
Mexican Route: New Orleans, Galveston, Corpus Christi, New York and Philadelphia to Tampico or Veracruz on Mexico's east coast, trek over mountains and deserts to the Pacific Coast, and then a ship to Acapulco, San Blas or Mazatlan, Mexico, then a ship to San Diego And Then San Francisco.
Cape Horn Route: New York or Boston to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Cape Horn, then to Valparaiso, Chile, V then to Callao, Peru and then a ship to San Francisco.
Have your student find information on advertisements for sea travel to the west. How believable and how reliable were the ads? Why did many pioneers choose to go west by sea? What did they expect the trip to be like? What were they actually like?
Thursday and Friday: Writing A Westward Travel Guide
Pioneers relied on Travel Guides written by others who had made it out west successfully to make their way across North America. Your student will begin to make a similar guide using the information he has learned over the past few weeks. He will continue to add to it each week (I suggest doing this on Mondays) as he learns more. Before he begins, discuss with him about how accurate he thinks this sort of guide was and who wrote them.
He might include some of the following things:
Wagons: what type you need and what supplies you need.
Tools and ammunition you need.
Amount of food you need for each person.
Description of landmarks along the trail.
Distances between landmarks.
Description of the rivers and where and how to cross them.
Tips on how to stay healthy on the trail.
Suggested remedies for illnesses.
How to treat snake bites.
What kind of medicines to take with you and what they do.
Plants that can be found on the trail, what they do and where to find them.
Suggestions for cooking along the trail.
What kinds of weather to expect, on the Prairie, in the dessert, and in the mountains.
How to take wagons up and down steep mountainous areas.
Include a map, but have him sketch it without looking at his notebook.
