The Oregon Trail

I began to read this book in childhood because it was in our house (sent as a present from an Aunt living in America) and it intrigued me by the title and the illustrations of buffalos, coyotes, bears, the landscape, rivers, canyons, and the covered wagons in a circle with people and their belongings, bedding down by campfires under the starry skies […] The episodes easily captured my attention. Parkman is documenting the first settlers crossing the Mid-West Plains towards the Rockies. This is really ‘a page turner’ and classic of travelogue adventure, even though I had never heard the… show more.

Published in 1849 to popular acclaim, this is the memoir — part travelogue, part bildungsroman — of a 23-year-old Harvard grad who went west in the summer of 1846. Parkman only made it as far as the Rockies before turning back, but he packed a great deal of adventure into those two months. While Parkman’s portrayal of the Sioux will strike readers today as ungenerous, if not racist, his descriptions remain fascinating as a first impression of the west by a young easterner.