In the use of the Oregon Trail we first began to be great.

The chief figure of the American West, the figure of the ages, is not the long-haired, fringed-legging man riding a raw-boned pony, but the gaunt and sadfaced woman sitting on the front seat of the wagon, following her lord where he might lead, her face hidden in the same ragged sunbonnet which had crossed the Appalachians and the Missouri long before.

That was America, my brethren! There was the seed of America's wealth.

There was the great romance of all America--the woman in the sunbonnet; and not, after all, the hero with the rifle across his saddle horn.

Who has written her story?
Who has painted her picture?
They were large days, those of the great Oregon Trail, not always pleasingly dramatic, but oftentimes tragic and terrible.