Toll Roads

I've been having fun reading original historical documents at the Benton County Historical Museum in Philomath. I'm working on a children's article about life along the Oregon Trail.

Yesterday and last Friday yielded great tidbits of information that have nothing to do with the experience of children along the Oregon Trail but I figure I'll use it someday in an article or book.

One entry that caught my eye yesterday was about toll roads along the Oregon Trail. Along the Platte River, the Sioux Indians spread out four buffalo robes on the ground and told immigrants they needed to pay a toll for crossing through their territory. Ingenuity at work. Those wanting to pass needed to give a quart of flour and a pint of sugar for each person. For each yoke of oxen, a certain amount of tobacco, bullets, and gun powder was needed. The flour was placed on one robe, sugar on another, tea and coffee on a third, powder and bullets on the fourth.

I've read more than one account of jokesters along the Oregon Trail. It seems that pioneers thought that Native Americans shared the same sense of humor. They found out that what was said in jest was taken seriously. Offers to trade women and children for horses were responded with horses brought and expectations that the trade would be made. This caused havoc on more than one occasion when pioneer men tried to get out of this oral contract.

An interesting legend with the Flathead Indians near Astoria was about salmon. Any salmon that was caught by a pioneer was followed home by an Indian who proceeded to cut out the heart of the salmon and burn it. They believed that if the heart of the salmon was not burned, the spirit of the fish would go back to the ocean where it lived and tell the other fish how it was caught. They believed that if this was not done, there would be no fishing the next year. So maybe this is why wild salmon is becoming scarce in the northwest. Some fishermen are forgetting to burn the heart of the salmon and the spirit of the wild salmon has gone back to tell how they were caught. Makes perfect sense to me. We don't respect the land anymore or take care of it so there are consequences.

Oh, the fun of history. The most fun is when there are stories about people. I was a social science major in college. I was planning on teaching high school history. My degree is from Oregon College of Education, which is now Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

Things don't always go as planned. I took one class that changed the way I saw education forever. In a class called the Exceptional Child about the full range of difference, I learned about the Institute of the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. This changed how I regarded the potential of parenting to make a difference in the lives of my own children.

It's been fun at the museum library to see books written by one of my favorite professors, Dr. Kenneth Holmes, a gentle and kind man. He was a history professor who wrote countless books and articles. I took a writing class from his son, Donald. I was invited over for lunch one day and was served chicken in orange sauce by Mrs. Holmes. A wonderful family who I remember with great memories.