Which type of draft animals were most frequently used by overlanders?
“John Unruh, Jr. and Merrill Mattes, the two premier scholars of westward migration, are in general agreement that oxen were much preferred, with horses and mules considerably less favored. Unruh is content to make the general observation that more than half of all overlanders’ wagons were pulled by oxen, while Mattes cites diary excerpts that suggest a figure closer to two-thirds or three-quarters … The cost of a yoke of oxen during the last half of the 1840s varied from a low of $25 to a high of $65.” [Robert L.
