Oregon trail

"May 23rd: Today we had our first death, that of a small child from whooping cough. Bad Camp. Poor grass and no wood."

"During all this time, farther to the north, another territory had been coming into being. The “Oregon Trail” had brought many men from the more crowded states of the North-East to find their homes and establish their farms along the undefined Canadian frontier to the Pacific. With the prospect of war in the South for the acquisition of Texas and California, the American Government was not anxious to embark upon a quarrel with Great Britain upon its Northern frontier. There was strong opposition by the Southerners to the acquisition of Oregon, where the Northern pioneers were opposed to slavery. Oregon would be another “free soil state.” Negotiations were opened with Britain, and in spite of electioneering slogans of “Fifty-four-forty or fight” the boundary was settled in June 1846 by peaceful diplomacy along the forty-ninth parallel. This solution owed much to the accommodating nature of the Foreign Secretary in Peel’s Government, Lord Aberdeen. The controversy now died down, and in 1859 the territory of Oregon reached statehood."

""The most significant thing that I did in terms of research was to find published accounts of the actual diaries of people who travelled the trail,” he explains. “I took several of those diaries and read them all the way through and kept track of the things that really did happen. I also kept score so I could get a sense of the frequency with which certain things happened: what percentage of the days were bad weather, what percentage of the days were they low on food and things like that.” Another consequence of the research was the sensitive portrayal of Native Americans. When reading old accounts Rawitsch was surprised by just how often Native tribes intervened to offer assistance to travelers that were struggling along the trail. This was something he hoped he could insert into the game to combat the negative stereotypes that were prevalent at the time in other media. “We were very concerned about the way Native Americans were portrayed, because the schools that we taught in had significant populations of Native American students. In the diaries I read I probably should admit to being surprised by how often people wrote about the help they received from Native Americans who helped them understand where the trail was, where it went, what kind of food along the way was edible and which would make you ill.” This manifested itself in the game as a new event that could occur when players were struggling. Native Americans would approach the party and offer help by sharing food or supplies with the settlers."