May 1, 1841 - The first wagon train, with forty-seven emigrants, leave for California from Independence, Missouri. The journey would take until November 4.
May 16, 1842 - The first organized wagon train on the Oregon Trail leaves with more than one hundred pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri. Although not welcomed due to company policy that discouraged emigration, they were offered food and farming equipment at Fort Vancouver by the Hudson Bay Company upon arrival. Independence Rock on the Oregon Trail. First mentioned by Parker in 1835, and carries an inscription on the rock with the names of early trappers and explorers.
May 22, 1843 - The first major wagon train headed for the northwest via the Oregon Trail begins with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.
June 4, 1843 - The Black Horse Troop of the 1st United States Dragoons from Fort Scott, Kansas join a military escort into Indian Territory along the Santa Fe Trail and apprehend Jacob Snively and his Texas freebooters.
July 4, 1845 - The Congress of Texas votes for annexation to the United States of America with the majority of voters in Texas approving a consitution on October 13. These actions followed the signing of a bill by President Tyler on March 1, authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.
December 2, 1845 - U.S. President Polk invokes the concept of Manifest Destiny, announcing to Congress that the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the setlement of the West should be aggressively pursued.
July 28, 1846 - The Army of the West, under the command of Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, travel down the Santa Fe Trail and arrive at Bent's Old Fort en route to the conquest of New Mexico.
July 24, 1847 - One hundred and forty-eight Mormons under Brigham Young settle at Salt Lake City, Utah after leaving Nauvoo, Illinois for the west on February 10, 1846 due to violent clashes over their beliefs, which included the practice of polygamy through the end of the 1800s.
January 24, 1848 - Gold was discovered in California by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in the town of Colona. Seven months later, on August 19, the New York Herald breaks the news of the gold rush to East Coast readers, prompting eighty thousand prospectors to flood California and the Barbary Coast of San Francisco in 1849
December 4, 1849 - Crazy Horse, Chief of the Oglala Sioux, is born.
Here are a few things to bring some perspective as to what was going on in the 1840's, and to which groups the Plainsmen may have sprung from...Somebody had to lead these folks across the prairies, and establish Forts and way points....Food For Thought...