THE OREGON TRAIL

[This account of the Oregon Trail experience was taken from pages 402-412 of the Story of Sioux County by Charles L. Dyke.
The story was transcribed by Beth De Leeuw of the Greater Sioux County Genealogical Society.]

They had not been long in their new homeland when the war between the states, generally called the Civil War, broke out, and after President Lincoln’s call for volunteers was not responded to by a sufficient number of men to put down the rebellion, the drafting of men eligible to military duty began. But there were many men who were not citizens of the United States and to those the law did not apply, for an alien could not be drafted. But the general public contended that all who enjoyed the benefits of this free government should also be compelled to fight for its maintenance, and to settle this vexatious problem, Governor Kirkwood issued a proclamation that all aliens in the state of Iowa were given the choice of becoming citizens of the United States or leaving the state.

“Therefore,” said Mrs. Bogaard, daughter of Cornelius Jongewaard, late of Orange City, “my father was between two fires. He came to Iowa at the age of nineteen with the Reverend Mr. Scholte, had married in the meantime and had a wife and three children, but he was not a citizen of the United States. The two fires were: enlistment in the army or an overland wagon trip across the Great Plains by way of what was called the ‘Oregon Trail’ to the state of Oregon. After due consideration and conversation and deliberation with others who were in a similar position and state of mind, they chose what they considered the lesser of the two fires, and decided to leave Iowa and go to Oregon.”

The names of most of the persons who went on this trip have been lost and our three informants, Mr. John Ellerbroek, Mrs. H. B. Bogaard and Mrs. Mary Ellerbroek-Hornstra, can recall only the following: Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Jongewaard, and three children; Mr. and Mrs. Geert Jot; Mr. and Mrs. Theunes Burggraf; Mr. and Mrs. Lutje Mars and step children Isaac De Vries, Peter and John and Mary Ellerbroek, and children Simon and Alida; Mrs. and Mrs. John Stoutenburg; and Mr. and Mrs. Rysdam. As Cornelius Jongewaard had made the trip once before, the travelers selected him as their captain. Mr. Jongewaard had two wagons in the train. One he drove himself and the other Mrs. Jongewaard drove. They left their homes near Pella on May 1, 1864.

Writes Mr. John Ellerbroek: “My father and mother came from The Netherlands. Gerrit Ellerbroek, my father, was one of the first settlers of the Pella community, and mother with her first husband, Isaac De Vries, came two years later. They had two children, Isaac and Johanna, but Johanna died during the trip and was buried in the sea. They came across the ocean in a sailing vessel in sixty-five days. After the death of Mr. De Vries, my mother married Gerrit Ellerbroek of which union I was born on February 29, 1853, and my brother, Peter, several years older, and a sister, Mary, several years younger. After almost unbelievable hardships, father died in 1859, and after two years mother married Lutje Mars. Mars and my mother had three children, Peter, and twins, Simon and Alida. Mother had a farm near Pella, but she sold it in order to join the wagon train to Oregon.

“Some of the big wagons, known as prairie schooners, were drawn by horses and mules, but most of them by oxen of which there were plenty. When we started on our journey, I was ten years of age and would be eleven on February 29, 1865. We had five yokes of oxen on our big wagon which was heavily loaded for the long trip. As some of the oxen were not very well broken in, they would make a break once in a while, and we experienced this before we started out. Once, when crossing a bridge near Pella, the oxen pulled to one side and the wagon fell over and almost on me, but I was quick and jumped out of the way and across a ditch from the wagon and no one was hurt. I thought it was fun, but it scared my folks.

“When we went through Pella on our way to the West, it was raining and the roads were very soft. But we had plenty of oxen and we did not stop for mud. If one of the wagons in the train got stuck in a muddy spot, we put on more yokes of oxen and pulled it out. Sometimes the wagons would sink down to the axles, but out they came when enough yokes of oxen were put on. We crossed the Des Moines river at a place called Rider Rock, and from there we went to Council Bluffs, where we saw the first Indians of which there was a large band. Council Bluffs was so named because the white men held council here with the Indians on the bluffs. It was there we crossed the Missouri river, where is now Omaha. There was no town, but only a large warehouse where they sold new wagons.

“Before we went on our way to the West, our wagons were inspected. If a wagon was rejected as untrustworthy, the owner was compelled to buy a new wagon. As luck would have it, Stepfather Mars’ wagon was rejected and he had to buy a new one, which cost $140.00. I do not remember that he got anything for his old wagon. Everything here was made ready before striking out on the way where for fifteen hundred miles there was hardly a settlement.

“We went through the Nebraska sandhills and followed the Platte river to Fort Laramie. It was a great treat for us boys for we saw many Indians and something new every day. It was a great sight for us to see the fort and the many Indians there. After we left Fort Laramie, we saw an Indian buried in a tree, with all his belongings: his bow and arrows, an old gun, and other things. Brother Peter and I wanted the bow and arrows very badly, but our captain told us not to touch them, for if we did we might all be killed, and we left them in the tree. We had a fine tent to sleep in, but stepfather and mother and the little children slept in the wagon. Mother baked bread in a skillet over a hot fire and it was fine.”

Mrs. Bogaard relates that once a week they stopped a day to wash and bake, and that her mother baked bread in an iron pot. When they camped, the wagons were driven into a circle which made a corral for their cattle, horses and mules. The milk they did not drink, they put in a jar with a lid on and the shaking of the milk while the wagon was moving churned it and the butter would float on top. After shaking it, it was ready for use; fresh butter every day.

“We had exciting times when crossing rivers and with the Indians,” says Mr. Ellerbroek. “Some of the Indians were friendly and some were not. There was a small wagon train ahead of us and the Indians swooped down on them and took every hoof they had, so that they could go no farther. As there were some of our countrymen with them, they were waiting for us to come along and pick them up. One of their party had caught an Indian pony and he rode back on the dangerous trail to inform us of their plight. When we came up to them, they were camped on a river and we took them along. This occurrence put us on our guard more than ever. We passed several places where there were graves by the roadside with a little piece of board stuck in the ground with the words on it, ‘Killed by Indians,’ and the date when it had happened. As we went on we put out a double guard during the night, and in the daytime we were already ready for a fight.

“Going along, we came to a river where there was a fine place to camp with plenty of grass and water and we stopped there, and as usual, the captain put out a double guard during the night. There was a deep gulch on one side of the camp and the Indians seemed to have spied us and had hidden in the gulch. When in the morning the guard came in for breakfast while they let the horses and mules and cattle graze, the Indians came like a windstorm and stampeded all our horses, mules and cattle, except a few. Some of the animals were picketed but they pulled the pickets out or broke the ropes or the Indians cut them, and we had only three horses and two mules left. But three of our men jumped on the horses and went after them. Jongewaard also hastily ferried several men across the river, two on a horse, and they also went after them. The horsemen went as fast as they could with the men on foot following. As the Indians could not keep the animals together our men soon overtook them, and they had a gun fight which sounded in the distance like the firing of a bunch of firecrackers, for we boys had followed the men to see what was going on. The Indians shot the bridle from the horse Arie Jongewaard was riding and shot it in the leg so that it spurted blood at every jump but they tied a bandage around it as soon as they could and it was all right. Another horse was so badly wounded, that it fell dead when near the camp. While the fighting was on, my stepbrother, Isaac De Vries, went around a little hill to head the Indians off, and they all came his way, but they did not see him, as he hid behind some big rocks. Before they came to him, they stopped to give battle to the three men that followed them. So when Isaac saw them and they came on again, and were within range, he also began to shoot and he shot one who fell from his pony. But the other Indians put him on and tied him to his pony and they all got away as fast as they could, but the one he shot would flop from side to side on his pony as he went along. There was a good reason why they tied their wounded comrade to his pony. Horse stealing was not done by Indians alone, but there were white men among them who urged them to steal horses so that they could sell them to agents of the Southern states for the army. Therefore, the Union government had established small forts in the Indian country, and the soldiers were instructed to hang white and Indian horse thieves at sight. The horse thieves would therefore take their wounded comrades along, so that they would not fall into the hands of the soldiers and be hanged. There was a reward of five hundred dollars for the capture of a white horse thief.

“When the Indians fled, they took along the horses they could handle, but we got most of our horses back. However, we lost one of our finest horses, Young Prince. Our stepfather had bought him for brother Peter and me. He had a double mane, and we thought so much of him. But the Indians took him along and we never saw him any more. Captain Jongewaard lost his best team.

“After we got all our cattle and most of the horses back and the excitement was over, the men held a council and it was decided to send three men to one of the little forts and see if we could get the soldiers to help us get our horses back and three of our men volunteered to go to the fort. When they had gone about half of the way, they saw a big cloud of dust coming and our men wondered what it might be and decided to let it come close so they could see what it was. They were the soldiers from the fort, but they had a negro with them whom the men mistook for an Indian and they thought that they were Indians. As our men did not give the right signal and went back as fast as they could, the soldiers mistook them for horse thieves on which was a five hundred dollars reward a head as outlined above, and gave pursuit.

“The soldiers cornered the men in a bend of the river, but our men jumped into the river and swam across with the soldiers after them. But the horse on which Isaac De Vries rode would not jump and he tried to escape to one side, but the soldiers shot his horse and it stumbled and fell. His feet were out of the stirrups and he ran away as fast as he could. He looked once when he heard his horse whinny and that hurt him very much, but Isaac hid in a gulch and they could not find him. The soldiers again cornered the men in a bend on the other side of the river and again they jumped into the river and tried to get across. But the soldiers tired of chasing them to catch them alive, began to fire at them while they were crossing the river. The horse of one man was shot under him when they were across, and fell on top of his rider. The soldiers then came up and pulled him from under his horse and learned from him who they were. The soldiers quit chasing them, but took the saddles from the dead horses and went away. Isaac De Vries hid in the gulch and they could not find him, as he had covered himself with sand and peered at the soldiers from behind a shrub. The soldiers then said to the men, ‘Oh, he is all right. He will come out of his hole.’

“After the soldiers left, Isaac De Vries took to the brush and as he heard the Indians in the timber, he pulled off his boots for fear that they would make too much noise, and he got briers on his feet, which became swollen. For two days he wandered through the brush and along the river. During the night he would put his hand in the water to learn in what direction the water was flowing for he had an idea that the camp was down stream.

As the train had waited for him all this time and he had not returned, they gave him up for lost. But when Captain Jongewaard had given orders to break camp preparatory to move on, De Vries appeared on the river bank opposite the camp and signaled his people to get him. Then there was great rejoicing, and his stepfather, Lutje Mars, and another man each mounted a mule and, leading a horse for De Vries to ride, swam across the river to get him. But Isaac was somewhat dazed and too sore to manage a swimming horse, so Mars and the other man put him on Mars’ mule behind the saddle while Mars guided the swimming mule across the river. Although the situation had been serious, they all had to laugh at the funny sight of the long-haired and bewhiskered Mars on the mule with his long legs almost touching the ground and with De Vries behind him with his arms clasped around his body. There was much cheering and hurrahing when they came up the bank and into camp. All declared that it was the bravest deed that Lutje Mars had ever done. The horse De Vries rode in his encounter with the soldiers was lost. It was a race horse and the movers thought that the soldiers kept it for themselves. While the loss of the horses was much deplored, we had plenty of oxen and we could go on.

“That night another big wagon train came in and they wanted to help us to get our horses back with the aid of the soldiers. But the soldiers would not go, for they said that over the hills the Indians were thicker than flies. Then a number of hot-headed movers wanted to clean the soldiers out, but of course nothing was done. After adjusting the train to the changed conditions after the horse stealing, we went on.

“When we came to Utah, we wanted to see the Great Salt Lake but we were advised not to go as there had been some strange doings there. (Ellerbroek here seems to refer to the Mormon Danites who, disguised as Indians, would rob and murder emigrants), and we passed about forty miles north of the lake.

“As we traveled on, I had an accident. While my brother and I were riding on our big wagon, our hired man who drove the oxen was having a lot of fun with one of the women we had picked up, and Peter said to him, ‘Let me drive awhile with the whip,’ and the hired man let him do it. When Peter had driven for some distance, I said to Peter, ‘Let me try it once,’ and Peter gave me the whip. As I swung the long whip out, trying to crack it, I lost my balance and fell on the tongue of the wagon and then on the ground and the front wheel went over me. I was still conscious and tried to crawl away, but could not, and the rear wheel went over me, too. They picked me up for dead. It is a wonder that I lived to tell it, for it was the big wagon of stepfather Mars which he bought at Omaha, and it had two and a half tons of freight on it. They noticed that I still lived, and they made a soft bed for me in the family wagon, where I lay for many days. Mother made a bandage around my body and wet it with salt and vinegar and kept it wet all the time. I was unconscious for a long while and when I regained consciousness, the memory of the last thing I lost came to me first. In falling off the wagon I lost my hat, and when consciousness returned, the first words I said were, ‘My hat.’ And when mother put it on my head, I was satisfied. At first I could not move a finger, but gradually I began to move about a little. My mother was a true Christian woman and I heard her pray that I might get well and her prayers were answered, I said, I will get well,’ and I did. And the strange thing was that when I lay in the wagon, the same thing happened on a wagon train that was ahead of us. A boy also fell out of a wagon and under the wheels and he was instantly killed. We passed them when they were burying him. His intestines were crushed and he lived but a few minutes. It is a wonder that I pulled through. I therefore positively believe that there is a God, and that He answers prayer if we have faith in Him, but without faith there is no answer.

“As we traveled on, our captain who had a field glass, saw a large band of Indians in the distance ahead of us and he said, ‘I will watch them and their movements and if they seem dangerous we must prepare for the worst.’ When we got a couple of miles closer he stopped the train and again watched them and called all men to arms. He gave orders that every one who had a gun should fire it and reload so that every man would be sure that his gun was in good condition and that the Indians should hear it. He also gave orders how to fight and how to drive the wagons in a circle to form a corral for the horses and cattle and a protection for all of us, and that we could shoot from behind the wagons if the Indians attacked us. When he got through he had a special word and told us not to be excited.

“’We can easily whip them, if every man gets his Indian. Then they will soon retreat.’ The Indian camp was along a lake and the road ran between the lake and the river. It was a dangerous place for us to go through for it would be hard to form a corral before the fight, or to get away if the Indians attacked us. It did not look good to our captain, but there was no other way. We went on, every man and boy carrying his gun, ready for action. We passed them in the afternoon. There were about three hundred Indian men sitting along the road and they did not look very friendly. But when they saw all those guns and revolvers, they seemed to think it would be a hard fight and that when white men shoot they hit the mark, and they did not molest us. Farther on, we saw another camp of Indians by the roadside, and as it was towards evening and time to camp, our men hardly knew what to do. But the Indians seemed to be friendly and our men talked to the chief and asked him where there would be a good place to camp, and the chief, pointing to a grassy place not so far away replied, ‘Right over there is a good place. Just camp there and do not fear. My people will not hurt you.’

They did as the chief advised them to do. The following morning the Indians came to trade beadwork for food. Squaws also came carrying their papooses. Mrs. Bogaard relates that they came to her mother when she sat near the wagon with her baby in her lap. The white child seemed to be quite a curiosity to the squaws and Indian girls. One girl carrying a papoose with a beautiful beaded blanket around it, seemed to particularly admire the white baby, while Mrs. Jongewaard admired the beautiful blanket. As Mrs. Jongewaard and the girl could not understand each other, they conversed with signs and gestures, and the Indian girl understood that Mrs. Jongewaard wanted to trade her baby for the papoose. The girl not seeming to be the mother of the papoose went quickly away and talked with a squaw who supposedly was the mother, and soon came back offering to trade. But she had taken the beaded blanket off the papoose, so that it would not be included in the trade. Mrs. Jongewaard had a hard time to make her understand that there would be no trading. The squaw and the girl seemed to think more of the blanket than of the papoose. Still it may have been an orphan, as there were always many orphans among the Indians whose parents had been killed in battles with other tribes and with white settlers or had died from natural causes. She may have thought that the papoose would be in better hands with Mrs. Jongewaard than with her own tribe.

Mrs. Hornstra told us that the Indians also came to trade at the Mars’ tent when they were at breakfast. As Mars was a devout man, he was praying earnestly and long in a sonorous tone of voice with his face uplifted and his eyes closed, and the Indians were astonished and did not know what to make of it. They could not understand why Mars was talking to some one with his eyes closed for then he could not see anyone.

Mrs. Bogaard further relates, that when going through the mountains, the Indians shot at them from behind the rocks with bows and arrows. But except for wounding a couple of oxen, they did little damage. They had lined up the canvas wagon covers with their feather beds so as to protect the women and children, and while the arrows penetrated the canvas, they sank harmlessly in the feathers.

After that, they had no more trouble with the Indians, or horse thieves, but before they reached their destination the feet of their oxen were so sore from walking on the rocks that they made them shoes of rawhide. But these did not last long, and when they reached Portland, Oregon, on October 28, 1864, the oxen could hardly go any farther. They had been six months on the road.

After the trip was over, the Jongewaard family and some of the others returned to Pella, Iowa, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, New Orleans, and up the Mississippi river to Keokuk. They saw some queer sights on the way. The blacks walked around stark naked, which shocked the modest Hollanders, especially the women. Others of the party stayed in Oregon until they heard the glowing tales about the opening of Sioux county to settlers, and returned to Omaha by the Union Pacific Railroad, which was completed on May 10, 1869, the time when Hendrik Jan Van Der Waa and his associates were on the road to found a colony in northwestern Iowa and landed in Sioux county. Cornelius Jongewaard and almost all the people he captained on the Oregon Trail came to Sioux county a year or two after the Holland settlement in eastern Sioux county was established. Of those mentioned in this story, all have joined the silent majority at this writing, September 27, 1940, except Mrs. Janna Cornelia Jongewaard Bogaard, Mrs. Mary Ellerbroek Hornstra and Simon Mars.

John Ellerbroek, our chief informer, after working on the farm for a few years, opened a toy and fancy goods store in Orange City, where we became acquainted. We were in his store on a Fourth of July and greatly admired a little organ that played with perforated rolls. It played “Pull for the Shore Sailor, Pull for the Shore,” and other gospel hymns, which were then being introduced under the name of Moody and Sanky Hymns. We thought that it was wonderful, but were unable to buy it by reason of a shortage of funds. A young fellow offered him money for it but Ellerbroek wanted more and they did not make a deal. His son Gerrit told us the other day that they still had the little organ when they came to Sioux Center.

After being in business for a while at Orange City, Ellerbroek, true to the family tradition, with brother Peter, Lutje Mars, Mary Ellerbroek Hornstra and many others of the Oregon Trail answered the “Call of the West”, and went to Douglas county, South Dakota, and opened another toy and fancy goods store at Grand View, an inland town. But when the railroad came, he moved his store to Armour. When the drought caused repeated crop failures, he returned to Sioux county and opened a restaurant in Sioux Center, where he remained until he retired from business. After losing his wife, he went to live in the Sheldon, Iowa, Home for the Aged. He married Miss Jennie Markus, another inmate of the home, and died there on September 28, 1932.

PETER ELLERBROEK

Peter Ellerbroek had little schooling until he came to Sioux county at about the age of twenty. He attended the public school at Orange City and did the work of several years in one. He then taught school for a few years. He taught us the three R’s in the Rensink school, a mile east of Newkirk, for a year. He studied chemistry under Dr. De Lespinasse, became a druggist, opened a drug store in Orange City and did very well until, also true to the family tradition, he answered the Call of the West and went to Harrison, South Dakota and started a drug store, and later engaged in the independent life of an agriculturist. But on account of the drought and other reasons too numerous to mention, Mr. Ellerbroek’s farming was not a success. He abandoned the farm and with one half of the family hoard, five dollars, he bought and sold books in Sioux county until he obtained a job for the Warder Bushnell and Glessner Company, Champion Binder and Mowers, and later for the McCornick Company with headquarters at Sioux City. As he was a good salesman, he was very successful, later entering the real estate business. He used to visit at our home in Orange City and was a very interesting man. After losing his wife, the former Carrie Sleyster, he lived with his daughter Johanna, where he died at the age of seventy-nine. He was a member of the Presbyterian church and a thirty-second degree Mason, and was buried from that church with Masonic rites and honors.

Mrs. Mary Ellerbroek Hornstra told us that as her stepfather, Lutje Mars, was very devout and very orthodox, he would read long dry sermons to the family, of which the children understood little or nothing. But she married Cornelius Hornstra whose folks were all Unitarians which is the extreme on the liberal side. There was consequently a wide religious gulf between them, but they compromised and joined the Congregational church which they considered a providential half way station between the two extremes. She still belongs to the Congregational church.

Lutje Mars was one of the most peculiar and interesting characters that ever inhabited Sioux county. He was over six and a half feet tall, and slender, with shoulders sloping at an angle of about forty-five degrees. He had a small head and a sad and sorrowful look. He always had long hair that tufted over his ears, a ring beard under his jaw and a medium long beard under his chin. He was a born rover and walked all over Sioux county, for like Asahel of holy writ, he was as light of foot as a wile roe, and every Hollander in Sioux county knew Lutje Mars. He never stayed long in one place and after a few years in Sioux county he went to Harrison, South Dakota. His wanderings were not for the purpose of improving his financial condition, for making a living was a secondary consideration with him, and he left that mostly to his wife and children. But he loved the Christian Reformed Church and liked to talk theology, and was an elder in that church no matter where he lived. A Christian Reformed Church without Lutje Mars as elder, if he lived in the community, was unthinkable.

He acted the role of a minister without a charge, and would often interfere with the work of the ministers of his church to the embarrassment of the man of the cloth. But no one doubted his sincerity and he cheered and comforted the sick and brought hope and peace to the dying. Once he married a couple, and after a few weeks of connubial bliss, they discovered that they were not married at all and the job had to be done over again. As Mars was not an ordained minister nor an officer of the law, his marrying did not hold. As stated above, Mars did not stay long in Sioux county, but with his stepsons, Peter and John Ellerbroek, Leendert Van Der Meer, Dirk Van Den Bos again answered the Call of the West and went to Douglas county, South Dakota. As in Sioux county, he would visit the several Holland colonies there on foot, and once walked from Harrison, South Dakota to Sioux county, Iowa. he died in South Dakota.

CHILDHOOD IN PIONEER DAYS

[This story was taken from pages 429-430 of the Story of Sioux County by Charles L. Dyke. The story was transcribed by Beth De Leeuw of the Greater Sioux County Genealogical Society.]

Among my earliest recollections were the many good people of the Van Der Meer clan. They were among the first settlers as they all lived within the three-mile radius of Orange City. This large group before coming to Iowa had been in Oregon. Being sincere believers in the admonition that “Ye who live by the sword, shall die by the sword,” they had migrated during the Civil war. Theirs was certainly a most kindly religion without being either aggressive or dictatorial.

This clan of peace-loving Hollanders after arriving in the West had settled somewhere in the vicinity of Salem which was the capital of Oregon. At that time, the frontier was truly a wilderness and much of the land in this section was swampy. There were many deaths among the faithful little band, resulting from the fever and ague which was prevalent. There was no church of their own denomination where they might have received spiritual encouragement and after gradually losing hope and faith in their future in the Northwest, they came to Iowa and after a short stay at Pella settled in and around Orange City.

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