Lucena Pfuffer Parsons took pains to record not just her impressions of the new sights surrounding her, but she also took careful note of the graves she passed by. A macabre task to set oneself to, but perhaps also a way to memorialize those who had died along the trail.
This passage struck me as particularly poignant, but also amazing in its matter-of-factness. In nearly the same breath, she describes graves dug up and bodies torn apart by wolves, and then the quality of feed they found in the area for their stock. That\’s one hell of a circle of life.
July 18 [1850]
This morning the wether is hot, too hot to go far. We only made about 12 miles. Stoped some 2 or 3 hours in the hotest part of the day. The sheep seem nearly done over with the heat. We have passt some 12 graves & I am told there is a burying ground near here of 300 graves. If so it must be a general camping ground for near these I find the most graves. I see some painfull sights where the wolves have taken up the dead & torn their garments in pieces & in some instances the skulls & jaw bones are strewed over the ground. Feed very poor what we find is on the river in low places. Wether dry as yet.
Parsons, Lucena Pfuffer, 1821-1905, Diary of Lucena Parsons, July, 1850, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 2: 1850. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, pp. 294.
red paper boat 