The dangers of travelling the Trail - disease, animals, and even death.

Cholera
Accidents
Deaths
Indians
Animals

Perils along the way caused many would-be emigrants to turn back. Weather related dangers included thunderstorms, lethally large hailstones, lightning, tornadoes, and high winds. The intense heat of the deserts caused wood to shrink, and wagon wheels had to be soaked in rivers at night to keep their iron rims from rolling right off during the day. The dust on the Trail itself could be two or three inches deep and as fine as flour. Ox shoes fell off and hooves split, to be cured with hot tar. The emigrants' lips blistered and split in the dry air, and their only remedy was to rub axle grease on their lips. River crossings were often dangerous: even if the current was slow and the water shallow, wagon wheels could be damaged by unseen rocks or become mired in the muddy bottom. If dust or mud didn't slow the wagons, stampedes of domestic herd animals or wild buffalo often would.

Cholera
Nearly one in ten who set off on the Oregon Trail did not survive. The two biggest causes of death were disease and accidents. The disease with the worst reputation was Asiatic cholera, known as the "unseen destroyer." Cholera crept silently, caused by unsanitary conditions: people camped amid garbage left by previous parties, picked up the disease, and then went about spreading it, themselves. People in good spirits in the morning could be in agony by noon and dead by evening. Symptoms started with a stomach ache that grew to intense pain within minutes. Then came diarrhea and vomiting that quickly dehydrated the victim. Within hours the skin was wrinkling and turning blue. If death did not occur within the first 12 to 24 hours, the victim usually recovered.

The cholera outbreak along the Oregon Trail was part of a worldwide pandemic which began in Bengal. Cities throughout the United States were struck, and the disease reached the overland emigrants by traveling up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. The epidemic thrived in the unsanitary conditions along the Trail, peaking in 1850 as it was stoked by the immense numbers of prospectors and would-be gold miners on the overland trails in 1849 and '50. Adults originating from Missouri seemed to be most vulnerable to the disease. Fortunately, it was prevalent on the Great Plains, and once past Fort Laramie, overlanders were largely safe from cholera at the higher elevations.

Accidents
Accidents were caused by negligence, exhaustion, guns, animals, and the weather. Shootings were common, but murders were rare -- one usually shot oneself, a friend, or perhaps one of the draft animals when a gun discharged accidentally. Shootings, drownings, being crushed by wagon wheels, and injuries from handling domestic animals were the biggest accidental killers on the Trail. Any one of these four causes of death claimed more lives than were lost to sharp instruments, falling objects, rattlesnakes, buffalo hunts, hail, lightning, and other calamities.

Deaths
Deaths along the trail, especially among young children and mothers in childbirth, were the most heart-rending of hardships:
"Mr. Harvey's young little boy Richard 8 years old went to git in the waggon and fel from the tung. The wheals run over him and mashed his head and Kil him Ston dead he never moved."
- Absolom Harden, 1847
Starvation often threatened emigrants, but it usually only killed their draft animals and thinned the herds they drove west:
"Counted 150 dead oxen. It is difficult to find a camping ground destitute of carcasses."
- J.G. Bruff, 1849
"Looked starvation in the face. I have seen men on passing an animal that has starved to death on the plains, stop and cut out a steak, roast and eat it and call it delicious."
- Clark Thompson, 1850

Indians
Looking back from the Twentieth Century, it is clear that Indians were usually among the least of the emigrants' problems. They were mostly peaceful, and actually helped the emigrants gain direction, among other kind things they did.
The overlanders certainly thought otherwise at the time. Tales of hostile encounters far overshadowed actual incidents, and relations between emigrants and Indians were further complicated by trigger-happy emigrants who shot at Indians for target practice. A few massacres were highly publicized, further reinforcing the myth. The Ward Train, for instance, was attacked by Shoshones who tortured and murdered nineteen emigrants. One boy escaped with an arrow in his side.

Animals
Animals were not so much a danger as something to slow down a wagon train. Buffalo stampedes could hinder traveling for hours, and it was something of a harrowing experience. Men usually could not resist hunting down a buffalo, though the carcass was much too large to carry along, and much of it was wasted. Snakes usually didn't bite unless given reason to - such as being stepped on. Fear of rattlers and other poisonous snakes was mostly unfounded, because if they were careful, encounters with snakes could be safely managed without either party being injured or killed.

The Oregon Trail is this nation's longest graveyard. Over a 25 year span, up to 65,000 deaths occurred along the western overland emigrant trails. If evenly spaced along the length of the Oregon Trail, there would be a grave every 50 yards from Missouri to Oregon City. Medicine kits the pioneers carried to treat diseases and wounds included patent medicine "physicing" pills, castor oil, rum or whiskey, peppermint oil, quinine for malaria, hartshorn for snakebite, citric acid for scurvy, opium, laudanum, morphine, calomel, and tincture of camphor. It's a wonder that only one in every ten emigrants died along the way.

Taken from: http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/

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"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom;
Lead me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home..."
-- John Henry, Cardinal Newman