Stephen Aron

They're killing bison.

They're using up what scarce timber there is.

They're creating all sorts of

turbulence and tribulation, then things are not so happy.

But what really triggers the problems, the greatest of problems, is when Americans aren't, as you said earlier, just passing through, but they're settling down.

And once they start to settle down, as they had been in California or Oregon, so too then in the Great Plains does that become the point where warfare becomes much more general and where the United States Army gets called in to try to resolve matters.

I think some of the most familiar images we have, both in paintings of the American West and then in Hollywood depictions of the American West, are of these caravans of wagons moving across the plains or across the mountains.

That that has become such a stock and staple image, as has been the notion of, you know, conflict circling the wagons becoming a phrase that we all know, even if we don't quite know when and where these things happen.

I think for my

Students, the generations of students that I raised, oftentimes their images were forged less by Western movies than by the Oregon Trail game that you mentioned.

And there, I think it's actually interesting.

I once took a look at how the Oregon Trail game has, through its multiple editions, because this game is 50 plus years old now.

It really dates from almost the beginnings of where we think of computers getting their start.

You know, we all know these little stick figure versions in the earliest version game where you die of dysentery or you, you know, it actually, the game actually brings up some very fascinating points about when do you go, where do you go, with whom do you, who do you trust, et cetera, who do you trade with, what do you need, what do you need to get rid of in order to go faster, when do you get cholera, what do you do, et cetera.

All those things are in the game.

What's most interesting though to me as I looked at the game as it evolved through various iterations is in the initial game,

Native Americans are one of the great dangers to the Overland Trail migrants, to the Oregon Trail migrants.

In later editions, relatively early on even, that drops away.

Instead of being killed often by Native Americans and suffering a blow by a tomahawk, it's often robbers or bandits who are a danger to you.

And Native Americans are vital trading partners.