The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life
(also published as The California & Oregon Trail) is a book written
by Francis Parkman. It was originally serialized in twenty-one installments in
Knickerbocker's Magazine (1847–49) and subsequently published as a book
in 1849.
The book is a breezy, first-person account of a 2 month summer tour of the
U.S. states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas when Parkman was 23. The
heart of the book covers the three weeks Parkman spent hunting buffalo with a
band of Oglala Sioux. The book was reviewed favorably by Herman Melville,
although he complains that it demeaned American Indians and that its title was
misleading (the book covers only the first third of the trail).
— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
