Mule

The Mule is presented not as a single named animal but as a working creature within the transport and agricultural worlds surrounding the Truman family. In the book, mules share the burden of moving freight across immense distances, appear in the business of equipping and supplying settlers, and form part of the livestock raised on the family farm. Their recurring presence traces a practical history: movement across the frontier depended on animals, while settled life continued to depend on their labor and value.

Transport on the Frontier

During the migration into Missouri, mules were among the animals that made wagon travel possible. The settlers arriving in Jackson County joined a wider flow of people and goods moving along the Missouri River and onward by land. Independence became a busy outfitting center for emigrants bound for Oregon or Santa Fe, with wagons, pack animals, and trade goods passing through its crowded streets. Mules belonged to this mobile economy: they were not scenery separate from human activity, but part of the means by which people and their possessions could cross the prairie.

The scale of overland freighting gives that role its physical dimensions. Before the Civil War, Solomon Young made several wagon-train expeditions. A customary train consisted of forty to eighty large, canvas-covered freight wagons, each drawn by six yoke of oxen or mules and requiring two drivers. A wagon and team stretched ninety to one hundred feet; with wagons kept roughly a hundred feet apart, a train could extend across the prairie for as much as three miles. The account describes a system in which animal power, human labor, and distance were tightly joined. Mules appear as one of the possible draft animals in that system, though the evidence does not identify the teams of a particular expedition as mule-drawn.

Freight, Trade, and the Limits of the Evidence

Freighting could carry substantial financial stakes. The goods in a wagon train might be worth $30,000 or more, and Solomon’s recorded wealth rose from $5,000 in 1850 to nearly $50,000 ten years later. The book connects this prosperity to his work as a freighter and to the land and property he acquired. Mules belong to the broader transport system that made such long-distance trade possible, but the account does not attribute Solomon’s earnings or wealth to any one animal or mule team.

The distinction matters particularly in the account of Solomon’s 1860 shipment to Utah. He took forty wagons carrying goods and salt pork for the Army. A contemporary report described the wagons as coupled in pairs, with about six thousand pounds aboard each pair, and drawn by six pairs of oxen. The cattle arrived in good condition, and Solomon had lost no ox during the trip. When the officer at Salt Lake City refused to receive the goods, Solomon reached an agreement with Brigham Young, who accepted the shipment on credit. This specific account records oxen, not mules; alongside the more general description of mule-powered freight, it shows why the animals should not be treated as interchangeable in every episode.

A Commercial Animal

Mules also entered the local trade in livestock. In Lamar, Missouri, John Truman bought a barn across the street from his new home and opened a business there. His public notice offered mules for sale and invited customers seeking teams to call. The notice makes the mule’s commercial place concrete: it was an animal people might purchase as part of a working team, and its sale was one element of John’s livelihood in the market town.

That appearance connects the mule to the book’s account of settlement without making it a symbol detached from practical use. The animal turns up in a business announcement, while the wider narrative describes wagons and teams as necessities of travel and freight. There is no individual mule singled out for a name, biography, or distinctive action. Its significance instead comes from recurrence across different settings: first within the large-scale movement of settlers and freight, then in the ordinary buying and selling of working animals.

Farm Work and Recurrence

On the Truman farm, mules were one part of a varied livestock operation. Harry S. Truman did farm work throughout the day, including tending crops, doctoring horses, repairing equipment, and mending fences. The family raised registered short-horn cattle, sheep, mules, thoroughbred horses, and Hampshire hogs; Harry kept the farm books, recording what crops were sold, to whom, and for how much. Mules therefore belonged both to the physical work of the farm and to the practical management of its animals and products, although the account does not specify particular tasks Harry performed with them.

Across these episodes, the Mule’s narrative role is collective and material. It helps make visible the labor beneath frontier movement and rural enterprise: wagons had to be drawn, animals had to be bought and sold, and farms depended on managed livestock. The evidence distinguishes general mule teams from the oxen used on Solomon’s documented 1860 journey, and it does not assign mules individual personalities or actions. Their importance lies in this grounded recurrence, carrying the story from overland transport into commerce and the continuing work of farm life.