Who hasn't asked themselves the question, "Could I have survived crossing the plains? Could I have made it?" Most people say "No way!" but it's more of a sissy response than anything else, because pioneers had to work so crazy hard, from sunup to sundown in all weathers. I think we must be feeling lazy. Maybe we prefer not to exercise all day, every day, just to get our next meal.It's not that we CAN'T do what the pioneers did; it's that we don't want to. We prefer to keep our cars, running water, flushing toilets and air conditioning. Who's with me? (Aahhh, washing machines...) Streets not covered in horse poop. Music, whenever we want it, as long as we want it, free. Inexpensive, ready-made clothing. Books. Audio books! Telephones! And... Medicine. We'll come back to that.
Are You Crazy? Hello! Wolves! (You Had to Be Smart)
Okay, so you have to be smart and skillful with a gun. You could learn that. Even the pioneers weren't born with frontier skills. They practiced.I will now explain how it's totally possible to adapt to a pioneer lifestyle and not very difficult, (although distasteful,) to learn old-fashioned skills and habits. For example, my life.
All My Crazy, Loveable Relatives (You HAD to Be Determined)
Honestly, my whole childhood was pretty pioneer. Sure, we had central heating, but Mom always kept the thermostat below sixty degrees Fahrenheit, so I spent a fair amount of time trying to keep warm. We had an air conditioner but it was always broken. Always. Nobody bothered to have it repaired. We didn't always have money for food, so we sometimes went hungry. (Mostly because we refused to do food-storage cooking.) We washed all of our dishes by hand, heated our own water when the water heater was empty and were in our element when the power went out. We dried our clothes on a clothesline in the backyard and my mom even made me haul water by bucket.We all had to work in the family business and children took on adult responsibilities very early. My brothers were expert at tools and repairs, and all of us learned to handle dangerous chemicals.
My brothers, and I hardly need add, all my sisters, were outdoorsy and learned to handle knives, axes and firearms. We could all build a fire using matches, cook our own food outdoors, set up tents, find our way in the mountains and even small children could take care of their own cuts and bruises.
Our creative pyro tendencies had plenty of outlet, as we camped often and had a wood-burning stove in the garage.
For play we built forts in the backyard, climbed trees, played with sticks and rocks and sewed our own doll clothes by hand. We spent very little time with study books and mostly ran wild during our free time. (It was awesome!) We explored, built things, rolled down grassy hills, and, if we were lucky, we got to ride a horse. (I liked these things so much that I encourage them in my children.)
And most importantly, we walked, and walked, and walked and WALKED! Pretty pioneer, right?I still think I would have died on the plains.
Yeah, I've since learned to knit, milk cows and goats, plow a field, make candles (in theory) clean a fish, and I'm sure that I could learn to hitch up and drive a team. There are blacksmith classes, ranches, apprenticeships, pioneer trek reenactments and endless opportunities to "go back in time." It's not about the skills, which I'm convinced we could all learn and even take pride in. But there are at least TWO main differences that keep these modern attempts from ever coming close to the real thing. These are, medical intervention, and a general knowledge of how disease is spread.
Really Poor Health Practices (You Had to Be Careful)
You probably know that immunocompromised people, such as the elderly and babies, should not be near sick people. You probably cook your meat thoroughly, wash you hands after touching animals and avoid contact with mosquitoes, for health reasons. Pioneers didn't know about those things.Although Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory was in existence before the Mormon pioneers, it was not widely known.
Humans aren't so daft as to not be able to realize that eating rotten meat would make them sick, and they had even learned that it was a good idea to wash before meals (their work made their hands visibly dirty.) However, there were still so many prevailing myths as to what caused contagious diseases (the night air, for instance,) and had very few resources to treat them. Since doctors were hard to come by, every household and neighborhood had to have someone with a medical knowledge. The pity was, doctors didn't have much better medicine than anybody else. They were still bleeding people!
The Doctor Can't Help You (You Had to Be Strong)
Diabetes was a death sentence, as was tuberculosis. Measles, malaria, scarlet fever, influenza and yellow fever were not much better. Clotting disorders and allergies, if detected, could not be treated. Surgery was likely to kill you, as the shock, untempered by intravenous fluids and oxygen and anit-anxiety drugs, might stop your heart. Organ transplants are a recent breakthrough. Blood transfusions were impossible. CPR unknown. Plus, the germs.Pioneer treks were a real-life example of Darwin's theory. Only the strong survived. This ensured that future generations would continue to be strong, as disease and the elements acted as a natural, if a cruel, weeding agent. If we were called on to live as pioneers again, now, today, I believe that would happen again. And I don't believe I would make the cut, even with our current knowledge of pathogens and better plumbing practices.
The Really Serious Part. Seriously (You Had to Be Lucky)
You'd have to have no complications or genetic disorders (and with the natural selection process having full sway, you probably wouldn't.) Most of us today do, though. My husband and his male family might have died of hernias before their children were grown, possibly before fathering any. My husband would be blind. My son would have no teeth and my own teeth would be so crooked as to have spoilt my looks. (And, if you think that's vain, pledge today to never dye your hair again.)I'm pretty strong, determined, careful, hopefully smart and generally healthy, but I would have died in childbirth. Without forceps, suction, Pitocin, episiotomy and oxygen, I would have died giving birth to my firstborn, with or without the epidural. My baby was stuck, cord around his neck, and after a 26-hour labor, I was too exhausted to push him out, even if my contractions had not ceased. His heartbeat had stopped, not that pioneers could have know that. And now, instead of dying, I have my sweet boy, going on nine years old, and a little sidekick to boot.
(Historically, women who couldn't survive multiple pregnancies would have to stay abstinent for the rest of their lives. How would you like that? The other option was dying.)
So, you had to be strong, determined, smart, careful AND lucky. I am lucky. Lucky to have modern medicine.
Most pioneer survival characteristics are within our control. So, you probably could be a pioneer, and live. (Even if you did start telling fairytales and singing ballads about toilets and washing machines and antibiotics.) But you probably wouldn't want to.
