Product Description
Presents accounts of a young man's travels on the Oregon Trail and his sojourn with the Oglala Indians. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Real Life
This is an interesting book. It gives insight into what the plains were like prior to the increased hostility between the white-man and the Indians. I reccommend it to anyone interested in western history.

Very Interesting
There are a great many things about Native American life on the plains that I did not realize before reading this narrative. The level of warfare for instance. I wonder if this was heightend at that time related to population pressures from the east ( other tribes and whites ) Anyway, the writer tells an amazing tale of risk and daring while describing the lives of the natives- and we find out some things about the attitudes of the newcomers also. Keeps moving along-- no slow spots.

I'm addicted to stories like this
I love to read about the daily living of people in history.I don't know what it is that drags me to it every single time.I liked this story alot.

a great read
Very enjoyable! You can't beat a first person report of traveling through Indian territory! The descriptions of the perils of the journey plus first hand experiences in dealing with the native population make you feel as if you are there, sitting in the teepee, watching as an Indian woman kills and cooks a puppy because you are an honored guest. Great descriptive writing; blood, guts, wildflowers, horses, sunsets, and the beautiful, healthy forms of our Native Americans while they were still free.

Pioneer Historian
As a young college student, Francis Parkman, the later noted historian of the early West, goes to the land of the Lakotas and experiences their life.This is a personal history of the travels of the author through the lands of the Lakota before the great American westward expansion. Tales of Indian life and their "wars" with each other. Also tells first hand of the author's maturation in this environment. Should be required reading for any "lover of the wild west" because "This Was The It Was". ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Product Description
The Oregon Trail traces a journey into the heart of the American Plains by Francis Parkman, who undertook his 1846 expedition in order to document the vanishing frontier; his keen observations and vivid style quickly established his reputation. Parkman depicts the hardships of travel across mountains and prairies, sketching vibrant portraits of his encounters with other sojourners as well as Western wildlife. Upon its original publication, this classic was reviewed by Herman Melville, who found it "excellent," with "the true wild-game flavor," "straight-forward throughout, and obviously truthful." This new Dover edition of one of the very greatest classics of American frontier literature is the lowest-priced edition now available. Unabridged republication of the eighth edition published by Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, in 1883.
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Customer Reviews (20)

The Oregon Trail

Francis Parkman lived from 1823 to 1893. The Oregon Trail, an account of his travels in 1846, was his first published book. Parkman's journey would have been much easier to follow if the book had a map tracing his route.

My reading edition of The Oregon Trail is that in The Library of America volume [53] containing both The Oregon Trail and Parkman's The Conspiracy of Pontiac; but since I haven't yet read the book on Pontiac, I'm placing my review under the present volume. The Library of America edition of The Oregon Trail (TLA.OT) is of Parkman's 1849 first edition published by George P. Putnam, with a correction of the title, restoring it to Parkman's intention. The book was revised and reprinted several times, the last edition, illustrated by Frederick Remington, in 1892.

The year 1846 is also the year of the Donner Party's attempt to reach California. In chapter 10 of the Oregon Trail, Parkman mentions them, although not by name. He has stopped at a place he calls Richard's trading-house (TLA.OT: 118) near Fort Laramie. A group of emigrants on their way to California are there, and Parkman is introduced to a Colonel R----- who is the emigrants' erstwhile leader.

"Fearful was the fate that months after overtook some of the members of that party. General Kearny, on his late return from California, brought in the account how they were interrupted by the deep snows among the mountains, and maddened by cold and hunger, fed upon each other's flesh!" (TLA.OT:121)

If Parkman actually talked with or recalled the face of anyone from the Donner Party, he doesn't mention it, and the above quotation is all he says of them. The Colonel R------ is William Henry Russell (1802-1873). The Donner Party was, in fact, part of the Russell Party before going off on its own via the Hastings Cut-Off after crossing the Continental Divide through the South Pass. At the time Parkman is speaking with him, Russell has been deposed as leader, but the Donner Party has not yet split off. "His men, he [Russell] said, had mutinied and deposed him; but still he exercised over them the influence of a superior mind; in all but the name he was yet their chief." (TLA.OT:121) Lilburn Boggs eventually took over leadership of the Russell Party (see, for example, Ethan Rarick's Deparate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, page 51), but Parkman does not mention Boggs. This narrative of Parkman's experiences on the Oregon Trail can then be read as concurrent (up to a time) with the tragic experiences of the Donner Party.

California emigrants took the Oregon Trail until after crossing the Continental Divide through the South Pass, and so spent part of their journey with emigrants to Oregon; but Parkman was not on the Oregon Trail as an emigrant at all. In fact, he doesn't appear to have even reached the Continental Divide. The book has no map of his travels, and he's not always clear, but he seems to have gotten only as far on the Oregon Trail as Fort Laramie. While there he learns of an upcoming gathering of "Dahcotah" Indians, waging war against the Snake Indians. An "Ogillallah" chief, called the Whirlwind, has lost a son in battle, and he is determined to "chastise the Snakes". Parkman learns that the gathering will take place "at 'La Bonte's Camp,' on the Platte. Here their warlike rites were to be celebrated with more than ordinary solemnity, and a thousand warriors, as it was said, were to set out for the enemy's country." (TLA.OT: 110-11) Parkman is overjoyed.

"I was greatly rejoiced to hear of it. I had come into the country almost exclusively with a view of observing the Indian character. Having from childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and having failed completely to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have recourse to observation. I wished to satisfy myself with regard to the position of the Indians among the races of men; the vices and the virtues that have sprung from their innate character and from their modes of life, their government, their superstitions, and their domestic situation. To accomplish my purpose it was necessary to live in the midst of them, and become, as it were, one of them. I proposed to join a village, and make myself an inmate of one of their lodges; and henceforward this narrative, so far as I am concerned, will be chiefly a record of the progress of this design, apparently so easy of accomplishment, and the unexpected impediments that opposed it." (TLA.OT:111)

So Parkman resolves to be at 'La Bonte's Camp' for the upcoming Dahcotah rendezvous. Several chapters cover his journey there and his adventures with the Dahcotah, including a buffalo hunt and time spent in the Black Hills. He and his companions eventually return to Fort Laramie and from there head south, down to Bent's Fort on the Santa Fe Trail. They hunt buffalo along the Arkansas river, and journey east towards Fort Leavenworth and civilization, essentially completing their circuit.

"We had met with signal good fortune. Although for five months we had been traveling with an insufficient force through a country where were were at any moment liable to depredation, not a single animal had been stolen from us. And our only loss had been one old mule bitten to death by a rattlesnake. Three weeks after we reached the frontier [by which he means the western edge of the United States as it stood in the midst of the Mexican War of 1846], the Pawnees and the Camanches [sic] began a regular series of hostilities on the Arkansas trail, killing men and driving off horses. They attacked, without exception, every party, large or small, that passed during the next six months." (TLA.OT: 337)

Hardly the Oregon Trail
This book was a disappointment to me and I should have researched it more before purchasing it. It was my hope to read about the settlers moving West on the old Oregon Trail but this book had nothing to do with that. Instead, it was an account of Parkman's experiences as he traveled in some of the Western areas of the U.S. (Wyoming area, Black Hills, etc.) Much of his time was spent with the various Indian tribes as he befriended them and learned much of their culture. He also spent a great deal of time hunting. My real problem with his story is that it was so repetitive. Many of the accounts were similar and it seemed like we were going over and over the same thing. I read almost every thing I can find on Western adventure and exploration but this one is sure not on the top of my list.

An Excellent Book - but misnamed
This is an excellent book giving the reader a first person view of the Frontier in the 1840s.The details make the reader feel as if they were living the adventure themselves.

If you are looking for a book that tells of a journey on the Oregon Trail, this is NOT the book for you.A better for the book title might have been "A Summer On The Frontier: Life Among The Indians and Explorers."The author follows the Oregon Trail until he reaches Fort Laramie, and then spends the rest of his time among the indians who inhabited the plains and badlands at the time.

If you are looking for vivid picture of life among the indians, buffaloes, and explorers, this IS the book for you!

Just what I expected
I ordered this book based on the film, " The Oregan Trail," which I enjoyed watching. The book is a good follow-up to the movie, making much of the content even more real for me.

The Wild West
Parkman's travelogue on the Great Plains is a major work of life among the Native Americans.His descriptions are honest and capture a society that was fading even while he was writing.The book had a major impact on the way that non-westerners saw the Great Plains.This was both good and bad.Parkman wrote through the lens of a Boston aristocrat and was full of prejudices against those who did not meet his standards.This was dangerous in that many who read about the "backwardness" of the Native Americans used this as justification for "civilizing" them.Although this was probably not Parkman's intention, it was a consequence of his writing.In addition, he promoted the hunting of buffalo for sport, which led to the decimation of the buffalo heards on the Plains.

Another major issue with this book is that, in spite of its title, it is not about the Oregon Trail.Parkman went no further than the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and he did all in his power to dissociate himself from the pioneers moving along the Oregon Trail.If you are looking for a history of the trail, this book will not satisfy your needs.

However, in spite of the misleading title and the prejudices that surface throughout the book, it is still a fine piece of writing that opens up a world that has been lost to today's readers.Read it and enjoy your travels into another time and place.
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Product Description

Best known as author of The Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman is now increasingly recognized as one of the greatest nineteenth–century American historians. In Pontiac, Pioneers, La Salle and Montcalm and Wolfe, Parkman, more than anyone else, first grasped the tragic element implicit in our pioneer heritage and placed the opening up of the great North American wilderness in broad historical perspective.

Handsome, brilliant, courageous, Parkman drove himself relentlessly. The result was a severe breakdown in his twenties, complicated in later years by other illnesses. This interpretative biography chronicles his triumph over these setbacks and sheds new light on the impressive histories that seem to become ever more contemporary with the passage of time.

Customer Reviews (1)

Parkman the Historian
This book is primarily a recounting of Parkman's life, but even more it's a commentary on the great histories he wrote. Parkman's life is somewhat familiar: the priveledged family, the early treks to the Mogalloway River in Maine, the Oregon Trail saga, the debilitating illness, even the champion horticulturist - Doughty deals with these biographical pieces well. But he is more interested in analyzing Parkman's books, especially his views as a historian of the epic battle of the wilderness between France and England. Parkman was one of our greatest historical writers, and Doughty makes us appreciate that in this book. ... Read more