# History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13
Earliest Oregon Songs
From all accounts, there was much singing among the emigrants on their slow way, with many evening camps, across the plains.
It is not too much to expect that, as the long cow-columns kept moving westward, there would have been developed an Emigration Song, or several of them, but if there was such a covered wagon anthem, it cannot be located.
Other indigenous songs that may have been composed after the emigrants arrived and made their homes in Oregon in the 40's and 50's, if they were composed and sung to any extent, have not been preserved in the principal libraries of the state. No clues of their present existence could be secured from the good recollectors among the prominent second-generation pioneers still surviving in Portland and at Oregon City; historians could recall nothing in the way of actual songs from their wide reading or numerous interviews; the leading musicians, in their familiarity with folk songs, had no acquaintance with Oregon Trail or Oregon pioneer ballads. Music has been a neglected field of research among state historians; no one has been interested enough or well enough informed to give it anything like the attention that almost every other topic has received in books, in newspaper articles or in the Quarterly of the Historical Society. It looks very much as though it is too late now ever to do much about the folk music of early Oregon, ​since all those who knew it first-hand are dead and since it has apparently not been recorded and is not remembered by their descendants.
It is possible to get books of the songs of each of the American wars, and even presidential campaigns have produced their separate books of ballads, like the rollicking Tippecanoe minstrelsy and The Grant Songster. But you will not find a volume devoted to the songs of the great trail to Oregon, or those sung during the first two decades of settlement.
The California Trail and the forty-niners, yes. There are at least three of these: California Songster, 1855; The Gold Digger's Song Book, no date; and The Pacific Song Book, 1861. These songs were not always very refined, but they were marked by originality. In many instances, they were not merely paraphrases or adaptations, but fresh ballads springing out of new experiences. Does this mean that the gold-hunters were a group with creative outlook, while those coming out for homes in the great earlier caravans of 1843, 1844 and 1845 were not? Or did the latter likewise have a collection of original songs, which have simply been lost?
We have plenty of evidence that they sang and played the fiddle around the campfires but what, exactly, were the songs they sang? Were any of them composed en route that were popular not only with that train but with the trains that crossed later? Was there one of them spontaneously provoked by all situations—while fording the streams, from dusty throats through the alkali, in the descent of Laurel Hill?
​Only in a fragmentary way do diaries and reminiscences give us an answer.
The first camp of the Emigration of 1843 was at Elm Grove and this was described by Peter H. Burnett in a letter which he sent from Linnton, O. T., on January 18, 1844, to the New York Herald:
The moon shed her silvery light upon the white sheets of sixty wagons; a thousand head of cattle grazed upon the surrounding plain; fifty camp fires sent up their brilliant flames, and the sound of the sweet violin was heard in the tents.... At the rendezvous, as well as elsewhere, we were greatly amused by the drolleries of many a curious wag. Among the rest was J. M. Ware, a most pleasant fellow, droll, original, like no one else.... The whole camp were constantly singing his songs, and telling his tales. Among the rest he sang—
And also—
Jesse Applegate, in his famous essay A Day with the Cow-Column, described a typical evening of the same emigration:
It is not yet 8 o'clock when the first watch is to be set; the evening meal is just over.... Before a tent near the river a violin makes lively music, and some youths and maidens have improvised a dance upon the green; in another quarter a flute gives its mellow and melancholy notes to the still night air, which, as they float away over the quiet river, seem a lament for the past rather than a hope for the future....But time passes; the watch is set for the night; the council of old men has broken up, and each has returned to his own quarter; the flute has whispered its last lament to the deepening night; the violin is silent, and the dancers have dispersed;...
​Mrs. Catherine S. Pringle, who crossed the plains as a girl with the Emigration of 1844, put her recollection of the music of the trail in the following paragraph:
   Soon everything went smooth and our train made steady headway. The weather was fine and we enjoyed the journey pleasantly. There were several musical instruments among the emigrants, and these sounded clearly on the evening air when camp was made and merry talk and laughter resound ed from almost every camp-fire.
G. W. Kennedy, in his book The Pioneer Campfire, quoted the following song as one of those sung on the way across the plains in 1853 to cure the "turn back" fever of the discouraged emigrants. "Stir up the fire, I'll sing you a song of the West, made by that poetry shark, called Morris." No reference to this particular song besides his own has been found, so its use may have been restricted to the caravan he was with.
One other Oregon Trail song, which sounds more authentic, was given from memory by an aged Portland woman. Dr. W. Claude Adams of Portland, knowing of this search for early Oregon folk songs, took down its words as it was sung to him by his 83-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Margaret Elizabeth Irwin. She said it was one of those she heard her father sing on the way across the plains in 1864:
The Diary of E. W. Conyers, a pioneer of 1852, contains a reference to "the Platte River poet" and quotes one of his verses but does not say whether his rhymes were sung:
June 15—Tuesday (1852) . . . We arrived in view of the Courthouse Block and Chimney Rocks about noon today while crossing the ruins of the "ancient bluffs". We have a splendid view of those noted rocks from our camp tonight, which brings to memory some verses composed by "the Platte River poet", one verse of which runs thus:
In the search for the first Oregon songs the old Barclay house on Water Street in Oregon City could not be overlooked. Built in 1850, it is not only one of the very oldest of pioneer residences, but has retained its original possessions largely intact, and the prospect that something might be found there was increased by the fact that Miss Kate Barclay had been an early music teacher. From four bound volumes of song books that had belonged to her, the following titles were taken of songs that were said to have been sung in Oregon from 1850 to 1870:
These are a few titles of songs familiar to our great- grandparents in Oregon. From aged residents and from early editions of The Golden Wreath and other books, a large collection of songs of this nature has been se cured. But these were all imported. The true Oregon folk song or Oregon Trail song was not among them.
Oregon City April 27 1856
Dear Friend Samuel
……I must tell you something about our singing School which I have attended over a year, we sung out of Florias Festival and on the Fourth of July we had a great time, we had a nice dinner and sung the Festival at two o clock p. m . the house was crowded to hear it. there were eighty singers, the boys wore white pantaloons and black coats, the girls were dressed in white with a wreath of Flowers on their heads, a month afterwards we went to the city of portland and had a Festival there, we went down on the Steamer Jenny Clark, they fired the Cannon as we landed, we sung the Festival in the evening in the methodist church, the Queen wore a Crown of Roses, the house was nicely deckorated with Flowers, we stayed there over night and came back the next morning to Oregon City distance 14 miles, and we had a great Concert last winter, our singing masters name is Mr. Newell
From your Affectionate Friend ALBION L. FRANCIS.
The very earliest folk songs of Oregon, if indeed we had any, would have been those of the voyageurs, but the great Columbia, like the great trail, seems not to have produced a song peculiarly its own. In The Voyageur by Grace Lee Nute there is a chapter entitled "Voyageur Songs", and songs are scattered through the other chapters, but not a single one of them refers specifically to the Columbia River.
​One could not be found elsewhere and is not mentioned by John Minto in correspondence in 1904 to the Oregonian on voyageur songs and other pioneer songs, from which the following statement has been condensed:
...from 1844 to 1847 the refrain of the Canadian boat song:
was not an uncommon sound on the great river, while "Hail to the Chief" (meaning the American citizen) was more often and more loudly sung on the river, and it was a dull camp indeed in which there was not singing of some kind at the firesides. It was all the music possible, except an occasional violin, until 1849.... And as to the violin, few companies crossed the plains without one.... There is not nearly as much use of folk song now as during the pioneer period. Instrumental music in homes and in churches has superseded it, but does not meet the want.
It is unfortunate that John Minto did not supplement his lament with the words of some of the songs so they could have been saved to us in the columns of the Oregonian. It is thus in the whole vast volume of pioneer reminiscence—references to indicate that the pioneers did a great amount of singing but scant record of the songs themselves.