Across the Fence: The Cholera Corridor

Among the many causes of casualties that afflicted the flood of immigrants along the California, Oregon and Mormon trails, death by the so-called "savages of the plains" rank as the least deadly. In fact, it is said that the nearly 350,000 pioneers from 1841 to 1866 would have had a greater risk of accidental or premature death if they had stayed at home than at the hands of Indians. History tends to treat the brutal deaths of helpless travelers with far greater journalistic sensationalism than the more mundane accidents of pioneer travel, such as being run over by a wagon, shooting themsel...