Oregon Trail Picture Clip Art Things They Would Bring

Die of dysentery, or cholera? Caulk a wagon, or ford the river? Consequences were dire, but in "Oregon Trail," the selection was left up to your eager ten-year-old self to brand.

Since the game's 1971 inception, more than 65 million copies have been sold, and it is considered to be the most widely distributed educational game of all fourth dimension. Even 48 years later, cornball adults yet scour the Internet for versions of "Oregon Trail" that can be played in-browser.

Here in the Bay Area, some even travel to the Video Game Museum of Oakland to play. It's one of the simply museums on the w coast where visitors tin can experience their favorite games of yesteryear. Main operating officer Kyle Dean says that Oregon Trail is i of the most commonly requested games at the non-turn a profit facility.

"There'southward a lot of nostalgia around it. Information technology was the de facto thing yous wanted to exist doing in the computer lab," he explained.

And sure, if yous weren't playing "Oregon Trail" in elementary schoolhouse, you lot'd exist improving your typing speed with games like Mavis Beacon or blowing upwardly multiplication equations with a laser in Math Blaster.

But "Oregon Trail" had something more to offering.

"Kids enjoyed information technology because it gave them control over a scenario, which tin can be actually appealing for a 10-twelvemonth-old," Dean said.

"It involved themes that seemed to be historically accurate, but likewise more than mature. They were able to go a feel for that sense of machismo and making choices, while being immersed correct in the center of the game instead of observing the activeness."

But how historically accurate was the game, really?

A TRAIL EXPERT WEIGHS IN

Lee Kreutzer has served as a cultural resources specialist and archeologist for the intermountain region of the National Park Service for over 16 years. She's an expert on all things existent life Oregon Trail, but interestingly, has never been asked to compare the history of the trail to the game.

So, of class, I sent her a link to play the game — she played it twice, and told me one particular inaccuracy stuck out instantly.

"Both times my entire party bit the dust before reaching Fort Kearney," she admitted. "That's pretty unrealistic – I retrieve if you were losing family members at that rate, you would but plow around and become home."

According to most researchers, Kreutzer added, i in ten settlers would die along the trail, amounting to roughly 65,000 deaths and burials total between 1841 and 1869. If evenly spaced forth the length of the trail, in that location would be a grave every 50 yards from Missouri to Oregon.

Graves were common on the existent Oregon Trail, but their etchings may not have been as funny as they were in the game.

Oregon Trail game

But would they have the means to produce bodily gravestones, like you see in Oregon Trail, forth the way? Kreutzer says it was probable, peculiarly if you had a rock cutter or blacksmith in your party.

"You might ask them to help you carve some words into a stone," Kreutzer said. A pile of stones or wooden crosses were also frequently used to marking graves, though they usually wouldn't last more than than a couple of years. In dissimilarity, some of the graves still stand to this mean solar day.

Most people died of dysentery in the "Oregon Trail" game, spawning a modern meme that at least one historian says was non entirely authentic.

The Nerd Patrol/Flickr

Dissimilar the game, which has spawned a meme out of dying of dysentery because it happens so frequently, virtually people likely died of cholera. The symptoms were alike, Kreutzer said, and the diseases were spread in a similar way – unremarkably through contaminated water. This resulted in some other frequent crusade of death: "the bloody flux," in which diarrhea was the master indicator. Measles were another common affliction.

Some of the other deaths Kreutzer described as downright freak accidents. Some women and children would become their dresses defenseless in wagon wheels and autumn underneath them. Some were struck past lightning. Gun accidents were commonplace, as were drownings.

It'south a common strategy (read: shortcut) in the game to choose to kickoff out as a banker, rather than a farmer or carpenter. Information technology typically allows players to start with more money for supplies and ultimately have a better chance at survival. Only Kreutzer said that the reality was the contrary: regardless of class level, they all had equal likelihoods of accidental death.

"People didn't accept germ theory at the fourth dimension – they merely didn't understand how diseases were spread," Kreutzer explained. "If a watering hole was contaminated, they would catch something if they didn't eddy the water first. And I don't know of anyone who did that unless they were making coffee or tea."

Kreutzer noted in that location were also people working in many other types of trades not offered in the game that took the trip Due west in real life. Amidst them were teachers, doctors, writers, preachers and missionaries.

Dissimilar the game, bankers unremarkably didn't embark on the journey. Kreutzer suspects they were financially comfortable enough already and wouldn't accept to take the risk. Instead, shopkeepers and lawyers were probable the most wealthy workers on the trail. Yet, equally the original game depicts, farmers had greater quantities of supplies and were probable more self-sufficient. They were also likely the most common.

"The people who really wanted to go on the trail were the laborers, the ones who wanted to do ameliorate," she said.

RIDING SOLO - A NO-Go?

At to the lowest degree in the first, playing Oregon Trail is a relatively serene feel. Your political party is on their own, with cipher just digital sagebrush equally far as the heart can run across. Only that's another myth debunked by Kreutzer.

"For ane, the Oregon Trail shared a corridor with the Gold Rush trail, which began in 1849," she said. "It was likely that you wouldn't go a mile without bumping into another a wagon." Traveling with deadening-moving oxen, most settlers would endeavor to cover at least twenty miles, moving for near 12 hours a twenty-four hour period.

Dixon Ford poses with oxen Zeus and Thor during a 2006 "Oregon Trail" reenactment at Alcove Leap. He raised and trained them from calves himself, using techniques he learned from his Mormon Pioneer grandad.

Tom Parker

No 1 traveled lone, though. About were better off on the journey with their families, or teaming upwardly with other workers. If a solo traveler got ill or injured, it was unlikely that other settlers would stop to aid them.

"So the game was pretty true to history in terms of making you travel with a family," Kreutzer said. Most were young – newlyweds, or parents with kids under the historic period of 15 – and groups of laborers banded together as well.

Notwithstanding, many men didn't desire to take their wives along. Kreutzer said she's read periodical entries of male settlers describing them equally "too much work" or "likewise much to take care of." Nevertheless, women on the trail contributed to a large share of the labor, waking up before the dominicus was up to haul buckets of water to the wagon and kickoff preparing food.

"They weren't just along for the ride," Kreutzer said. "They were the first ones up and last ones to bed." Much of their day-to-24-hour interval work as well consisted of gathering firewood, boiling water and cleaning laundry, tending to the ill and gathering their family unit's bearings before setting off each twenty-four hours.

SURVIVING ON THE TRAIL

In the game class of "Oregon Trail," meals are purchased at Matt's General Store in Independence, Missouri, and typically consist of coffee, beans, bacon and bread. This was what accurate, though Kreutzer points out that cattle were highly useful too. Many settlers brought herds with them in hopes of using them to brand coin once they arrived at their destination and began farming. On the trail, their milk was valuable for churning butter, and women gathered cow patties to fuel campfires.

Matt's General Store doles out similar appurtenances that people would accept eaten or purchased while on the real Oregon Trail.

Oregon Trail game

Kreutzer also recalls the diary of ane family whose small cow pulled their wagon all the way to Oregon. "That would have been a long journey," she said. "They can merely travel 2 miles an hr."

When information technology came to travel, though, the game accurately depicted a potent dependence on oxen. Unfortunately, they weren't much faster. When settlers traveled in the jump, the rain would cause mud to cake onto their hooves and the wheels of the wagon. For those who could afford them, mules were a viable, faster option.

"If people already had about of their supplies, they could afford that and nonetheless be able to survive on just a few hundred dollars – probably 4 or five thousand dollars in today'southward currency," Kreutzer said.

She said it was probably important to prepare for risky scenarios, though.

In certain points of the game, Oregon Trail players might achieve a river and be faced with a difficult decision: caulk the wagon by floating it beyond the river like a boat, or ford the river by using oxen to walk beyond seemingly shallow waters? Both could event in disaster – members of the player'due south political party might drown, and their supplies and cattle could also float abroad.

"It could exist very dangerous, but information technology was too highly dependent on the atmospheric condition," Kreutzer said. "Some people made it merely fine, while there were other cases of entire families drowning."

Weirdly, people unremarkably avoid the tertiary and final option: to pay for a ferry. The game makes it appear to exist a costly and time-consuming venture. Only Kreutzer said this pick was a worthwhile investment for most. People besides built their own rafts or hire big canoes – chosen bateaus – that were used primarily for fur trade.

Deciding on the correct time to leave was a critical decision. In the game, players can cull to leave betwixt March and July. They're warned that if they leave too early, their oxen won't have enough grass to eat. If they leave as well late, they may non go to Oregon until winter.

"Most people chose to go out in late April or early on May, and would usually be successful," Kreutzer said. "July was much also tardily."

Some parties who waited too long also got stuck in literal wagon traffic. Kreutzer said she'due south read about a railroad vehicle that was forced to wait in the mud for several days. Some people were then driven to anger, murdering other people in wagons. Others would be driven to insanity.

"I retrieve it's safe to say there was a lot going on out at that place," Kreutzer said. "Information technology wasn't an easy journeying."

PIONEERS, PROBABILITIES AND PERCENTAGES

Don Rawitsch, ane of the game's original developers, describes how he tried to bring this to life in the game. Initially, he had no idea Oregon Trail would achieve disquisitional acclamation – let solitary exist played outside of the classroom he was student-didactics at the fourth dimension.

"It was 1971. No one knew there would be PCs or a software marketplace," he said.

Rawitsch was a higher student wrapping up his senior twelvemonth. Upon graduating, he hoped to go a social studies educator. When his supervisor assigned him to a classroom to teach a unit on the Western movement in the 19th century, he thought he could engage students by creating a lath game. But two of his young man teachers, Nib Heinemann, Paul Dillenberger, told him to throw away the dice and cards. They thought Oregon Trail would be better suited for the classroom's mainframe calculator. And they were correct.

The game was a hit, merely afterward the semester was over, Rawitsch didn't wait it to reach a wider audience. Things changed when he was hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC).

From left to right: Oregon Trail game creators Don Rawitsch, Nib Heinemann, Paul Dillenberger pose (in jean jackets, naturally) with the code for the game in 1995.

Courtesy of Don Rawitsch

"Their purpose was to deal with the fact that nosotros could see computers were coming into popularity and mean solar day-to-twenty-four hours apply. They wanted to be ready for that," Rawitsch said. Shortly after he was hired, he offered to load the code for the Oregon Trail game into the computers of a Minnesota schoolhouse district.

Rawitsch admits that considering the first version of the game had to be made in just two weeks, there wasn't much time for historical research. This fourth dimension, though, he set out to improve the accuracy of the new model – first, past obtaining a detailed map of the trail.

"I took downwardly everything: mileage, the landmarks that settlers came upon in their trails, including forts, rivers and mountain ranges. I wanted to brand sure that people were encountering these landmarks in places that made sense, geographically speaking," he said.

Commodity prices were also a topic of interest. Finding them wasn't like shooting fish in a barrel, but Rawitsch hit the jackpot while researching at the University of Minnesota library. He came across reprinted versions of actual diaries from settlers who traveled along the trail.

Leafing through their pages, Rawitsch began to sort through the frequency of events like broken wagon wheels, outbreaks of affliction and rainstorms. He tracked how many times those things happened over the form of a six-month journeying and calculated them into percentages. Then, he manually entered those probabilities into the game's code.

"It didn't just rain randomly in the game," he stated matter-of-factly. "It rained x percentage of the time for 10 percent of a histrion's turns." He used these probabilities to determine the "20 or and so things" that could happen to a player during the game, from losing supplies to having a family fellow member fall ill and dice.

A Changing PERSPECTIVE

Rawitsch recalls watching old Westerns on Tv set in the 1950s and 60s. Ofttimes, he would discover episodes in which Native American characters would come thundering out of the mountains on their horses. They were depicted in a villainous fashion, prepare to assail, while the white pioneers – the "heroes" – served as their innocent counterparts merely passing by on trains.

As he learned while reading the diaries of people who traveled along the trail, this portrayal was highly inaccurate – and seemingly created with a white audience in mind.

Kreutzer agrees. "Most encounters between settlers and Native Americans were peaceful and didn't erupt into violence. But the settlers didn't write about the mundane, they wrote well-nigh arguments, threats and conflict, which may accept changed some perceptions," she said.

When conflict did arise, information technology was unremarkably for good reason. Settlers brought forth deadly diseases like measles and pocket-sized pox. They besides caused resources forth the trail to dwindle. Animals such as bison were hunted for their meat alone – a waste in the optics of Native Americans, who considered every part of the animal to be sacred. They were then forced to peel bark off trees and feed it to their ponies and so they wouldn't starve.

When writing the game, Rawitsch attempted to show Native Americans pointing settlers in the correct direction on the trails, too as helping them find and abound nutrient. He didn't entirely omit their hostility – a decision that upset some critics.

"Certainly considering the settlers were taking over land that didn't belong to them, there was reason for the Native Americans to exist upset," he said, likening parts of the settlers' journeys to thinly-veiled trespassing.

This particular subject is the but thing Rawitsch would change if he made a new "Oregon Trail" game today — he said he would similar to work with others to create a version from the Native American perspective. For at present, though, he acknowledges the game'south strengths and weaknesses, hoping that other educators practice the aforementioned. He encourages them to utilize the game as a starting bespeak, and integrate it with other types of educational activity.

"Why not go a concord of ane of those Westerns from the 1960s and enquire students if that's an accurate portrayal of life in the West? Or if information technology'south from the imaginations of telly companies? It would allow kids to think critically and do their ain research on what's accurate and what isn't," he said.

Amanda Bartlett is an SFGate editorial assistant. Email: amanda.bartlett@sfchronicle.com

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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/game/article/Is-Oregon-Trail-game-historically-accurate-14287886.php

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