Life of a Pioneer By Annabelle F.

Close your eyes. You are in the middle of nowhere with a wagon and your family. The sun is beating down on you in broiling hot waves. Your feet feel a dull ache also moving in slow waves across the bottom of your foot. Your legs have developed a rhythm that is even more dull than the ache in your foot. They are still burning from the miles you have already walked. Creak, stomp, creak, stomp. The oxen pulling the wagon next to you are just slightly louder than the wagon itself. Many more of these constanogas have the same dilemma in front and behind you. So, where are you? You are in a wagon train searching for new life and new land miles away in the great american desert.

First things first, why would people decide to travel this journey that would make anyone nostalgic about the way their life was back home? The Homestead Act. What is the Homestead Act? Good question, I was about to answer that, next time ask your questions at the end please. Okay, way back when America was not all states, the section in the middle of the continent, sometimes referred to as the great american desert, didn’t have enough people to become a state, it didn’t have any people for that matter. Of course, this is a problem, so what did congress do to fix it? In 1862, congress declared the Homestead act. What did the Homestead Act do? It offered anyone 160 acres of free land east of the rocky mountains and west of the Mississippi river if they lived there for at least five years. The house you built had to be at least 12 by 12. It did not specify whether it was 12 feet or 12 inches, so sometimes people would make one house 12 inches by 12 inches, then go on to create their other house. So would we have children that didn’t want to live with their parents running off to live there? No, you would have to be at least 21 years of age. Sometimes, when there was a particularly amazing plot of land, people would run in a crazy race for that plot of land. This was called a land rush. Here’s one connection to modern times. It was totally free to get a plot of land, right? WRONG! There was an 18 dollar fee to file the application to get the plot of land. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed about people. The homestead act is an important part of pioneer lives.

Second step, once they knew they were leaving on a trip, what did they bring? One thing that they would definitely bring is food. What did they bring for food? No, they didn’t bring cake. Or cookies. No pie either. They brought flour, bacon, rice, beans, yeast powders, and coffee. To cook this food, they brought a coffee pot and a skillet. They may have used buckets to transport food, but I don’t think that counts. They brought a lot of food. These constanogas, sometimes prairie schooners, could weigh up to 2,500 pounds, and most of that was food. So what pulled those 2,500 pounds of constanoga or prairie schooner? The people obviously, they took shifts. Just kidding. They had to have oxen to pull it, because they could not pull that thing across the prairie. Of course, they didn’t just bring food and things to cook it with. They also brought candles for lighting, because they didn’t have light bulbs, and once it got dark, they would want something to help them see. They would bring a rifle because they couldn’t bring meat, so they would have to get it along the journey, and you can’t hunt with a blade of grass. Do you have an item that you couldn’t bear to lose? A cherished family heirloom? An expensive set of china? A phone? The pioneers had these special items too. They couldn’t always bring them, and even when they could, they might need to drop something to lighten the load, and they can’t just go throw the rifle out. Pioneers had to spend a long time packing for the trip.

Finally, what happened when they actually got there? There were several problems I think I need to adress. Way out on the plains, very few trees could be found, so they couldn’t make their traditional log cabins. There was a thick layer of sod on the ground in the plains, so they would cut that into blocks and make houses out of that.



Sod houses “soddies,” are the kinds of houses people would make out in the prairies, they were made out of sod, granting them their nickname.


They also had to improvise with the fire. They would use dry dung from the oxen. There were bigger natural problems that many people would call natural disasters. Dust storms, blizzards, tornadoes, locusts, droughts, wildfires. Will the problems ever end? Dust storms may be the most well known problem on the plains, high winds would blow dust across the plains at high speeds, destroying anything that stood in its way. I say, don’t go outside in one of these, but if you want to get whipped and blinded by dust, okay, than sure. What about blizzards? Like a dust storm, but instead of blowing the dust around, it blew the snow around at high speeds. Don’t go outside in one of these either, I mean, if you want to get lost and die of pneumonia, than, that’s what you should do. Tornados! These speeding funnels of wind would rip your house and barn apart, while scattering about the remains of your crops. Don’t go above ground in one of these, you WILL die if you stay in your house. Just don’t go in this one, loss of limb and death are not things most people would suggest you do.Locusts can’t harm you, but they will eat all your crops and when they die, they smell. The only way to get rid of these pests is to burn the infested crops, and even then, they come back.


Locusts could snap a branch with their combined weight, they would cover the ground so thickly that you couldn’t avoid stepping on them.

Droughts will kill your crops by dehydration, and in a very bad case, maybe even you too. Wildfires, you want to know what these killed? EVERYTHING! I hope you can see why the pioneers thought these were pretty big problems.

Your journey has finally come to an end and you can see where your house will be. You’re ready to collapse into bed, but there is still work to do. I did not give you all the information you could get on pioneer life, and more research would probably do you good. The pioneers had several chores, and you may need several sources in your research journey.