Description:

On April 28, 1846, Francis Parkman left Saint Louis on his first expedition west. The Oregon Trail documents his adventures in the wilderness, sheds light on America's westward expansion, and celebrates the American spirit.

Review

Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail is one of the strangest books in the American canon—a work that performs its own internal contradictions so completely that reading it feels like watching a man dig his own grave while writing a lament for the people he is buried beside. It is a firsthand travel record, an ethnographic sketchbook, a sporting adventure, and a nationalist elegy, all stacked atop one another like the geological strata Parkman would later describe in his histories of colonial North America. The book has been read for more than a century and a half as a classic of frontier literature, but to read it now is to encounter a document whose every strength is shadowed by a corresponding blindness. Parkman set out in 1846 to observe a world he believed was vanishing, and his prose does preserve the smell of sagebrush, the dust of the Platte valley, and the intricate protocols of a Sioux hunting village. Yet the observing eye is never neutral: it is a Harvard-bred, classically trained, racially certain eye that frames the Ogillallah as “living representatives of the stone age” even as it records their hospitality, humor, and grief. The book mourns the buffalo while slaughtering them for sport. It laments the coming extinction of the Indian while scripting that extinction as the inexorable work of nature. The Oregon Trail is valuable not in spite of these contradictions but because of them: it is a nearly perfect artifact of the mind that justified conquest while elegizing the conquered.

The premises are laid out in the prefaces. Writing in 1892, Parkman sees barbed wire, parlor cars, and cowboy nostalgia where he once saw the “vast herds and boundless grazing grounds” of the buffalo, and he announces the book’s purpose as a work of memory: “The Wild West is tamed, and its savage charms have withered. If this book can help to keep their memory alive, it will have done its part.” The 1872 preface retrieves the younger man’s posture: “I went in great measure as a student… My business was observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising it.” These two sentences are the book’s generative tension. The student-observer gathers material for a later literary project on the French in North America; the elegist, half a century on, looks back at a world destroyed and says: I saw it, I can make you see it. Between them sits the narrative itself, shaped less by disinterested scholarship than by the conventions of the travelogue, the hunting yarn, and the racial treatise.

The journey begins in the spring of 1846, when Parkman and his friend Quincy Adams Shaw ascend the Missouri on the steamboat Radnor into the chaos of the frontier. The early chapters are thick with the comic and the practical: the party hires the French-Indian hunter Henry Chatillon and the Canadian muleteer Deslauriers, quarrels with an English naturalist named R and his dictatorial route-making, suffers smashed carts and drowned mules, fords the swollen Big Blue, and trudges through the “mud-soaked, mosquito- and snake-haunted trek” of the wooded belt beyond. A Delaware elder squints at the two young Bostonians and delivers a verdict Parkman records without vanity: “No good! Too young!” The line earns its place because Parkman is honest enough to admit that the judgment was correct. He is often sick, often a poor shot, frequently dependent on the skills of the men he has hired. That honesty is the book’s most durable literary asset. Parkman does not heroize himself; he freely confesses to missing antelope, slaughtering a yearling bull under the mistaken impression it was a cow, and violating “a standing law of the prairie” by missing a wolf at thirty yards. The romance of rugged independence is always being undercut by the narrator’s own avowed incompetence—a candor that makes the book feel more like reportage than mythmaking, even when the mythmaking is what it most obviously is.

The journey’s spine is geographical—St. Louis to Westport, Fort Leavenworth to Fort Laramie, the Black Hills to the Arkansas—but its heart is a long detour. At Fort Laramie, Parkman learns that the western Sioux are mustering under the chief known as The Whirlwind for a grand war against the Snakes

Notable Quotes

It was right welcome; strange, too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur, other than its vast extent, its solitude, and its wildness.

Parkman's first sight of the Platte River valley after weeks on the trail — landscape, wilderness, solitude, the sublime

The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and monotonous enough; and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement to the traveller.

Describing the valley of the Platte and its stark beauty despite apparent desolation — landscape, frontier, beauty in desolation

Skulls and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular indentations where the bulls had wallowed in the hot weather.

Skulls and bones scattered across the prairie landscape near the Platte River — buffalo, wilderness, impermanence

Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before but I see away yonder over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black — all black with buffalo.

Henry Chatillon expressing homesickness and melancholy before the buffalo hunt — loneliness, wilderness, nostalgia

Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking, in Indian file, with the utmost gravity and deliberation; then more appeared, clambering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill.

First sighting of a buffalo herd emerging from the hills — buffalo, nature, awe

It was by no means better than the others; indeed, it was rather shabby; for in this democratic community the chief never assumes superior state.

Parkman on the democratic nature of Ogillallah Sioux society — democracy, Native American culture, leadership, equality

They seemed like men totally out of their element; bewildered and amazed, like a troop of schoolboys lost in the woods.

Parkman observing the timidity and indecision of the emigrants at Fort Laramie — frontier character, courage, observation

But the forest is the home of the backwoodsman. On the remote prairie he is totally at a loss. He differs as much from the genuine 'mountain-man' as a Canadian voyageur, paddling his canoe on the rapids of the Ottawa, differs from an American sailor among the storms of Cape Horn.

Contrasting the backwoodsman's competence with the emigrant farmer's helplessness on the prairie — frontier, competence, adaptation

Assume, in the presence of Indians, a bold bearing, self-confident yet vigilant, and you will find them tolerably safe neighbors. But your safety depends on the respect and fear you are able to inspire. If you betray timidity or indecision, you convert them from that moment into insidious and dangerous enemies.

Parkman's advice on dealing with Indians, reflecting on the emigrants' dangerous timidity — courage, danger, psychology of confrontation

The confusion was prodigious. The dogs yelled and howled in chorus; the puppies in the traineaux set up a dismal whine, as the water invaded their comfortable retreat; the little black-eyed children, from one year of age upward, clung fast with both hands to the edge of their basket, and looked over in alarm at the water rushing so near them.

The chaotic scene of Smoke's village crossing Laramie Creek to camp near the fort — Native American life, movement, chaos, vitality

I had come into the country chiefly with a view of observing the Indian character. 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.

Parkman explaining his purpose in coming west to observe Indian character — purpose, anthropology, immersion

There was an awful sublimity in the hoarse murmuring of the thunder, and the sombre shadows that involved the mountains and the plain. The storm broke with a zigzag blinding flash, a terrific crash of thunder, and a hurricane that howled over the prairie, dashing floods of water against us.

A description of a prairie thunderstorm breaking over the mountains — nature, storm, sublime

The clouds were broken and scattered, like routed legions of evil spirits. The plain lay basking in sunbeams around us; a rainbow arched the desert from north to south, and far in front a line of woods seemed inviting us to refreshment and repose.

The landscape after a storm clears, with sunbeams breaking through scattered clouds — nature, renewal, beauty

Pauline turned of her own accord, and pushing through the boughs, we found a black rock, over-arched by the cool green canopy. An icy stream was pouring from its side into a wide basin of white sand, whence it had no visible outlet, but filtered through into the soil below.

Parkman's experience finding a spring in the mountains during his solitary journey — wilderness, discovery, refreshment

It is a bad thing, to tell the tales in summer. Stay with us till next winter, and I will tell you everything I know; but now our war-parties are going out, and our young men will be killed if I sit down to tell stories before the frost begins.

The old storyteller Mene-Seela explaining his reluctance to share stories in summer — oral tradition, Native American culture, storytelling, superstition

Hand and foot, eye and ear, must be always alert. Frequently he must content himself with devouring his evening meal uncooked, lest the light of his fire should attract the eyes of some wandering Indian.

Parkman describing life as a trapper in the Rocky Mountains — frontier life, danger, survival

His glistening eyes turned up towards my face with so piteous a look that it was with feelings of infinite compunction that I shot him through the head with a pistol.

Parkman shooting an antelope that looked at him with pity as it stood unable to escape — hunting, compassion, killing, wilderness

I gained the top, totally spent, the sweat-drops trickling from my forehead. Pauline stood like a statue by my side, her shadow falling upon the scorching rock; and in this shade, for there was no other, I lay for some time, scarcely able to move a limb.

Parkman's physical collapse while climbing a mountain defile in pursuit of the Indians — illness, determination, physical endurance

Adieu! mes bourgeois, adieu! adieu! When you go another time to de Rocky Montagnes I will go with you; yes, I will go!

The final departure from Westport, with Deslauriers waving farewell from the riverbank — farewell, loyalty, journey's end

On the next morning we left town, and after a fortnight of railroads, coaches, and steamboats, saw once more the familiar features of home.

The last line of the book, Parkman's return to New England after months in the wilderness — homecoming, journey's end, civilization

Many and powerful as were the attractions of the settlements, we looked back regretfully to the wilderness behind us.

Parkman and Shaw's ambivalence upon returning to civilization after five months in the wilderness — wilderness vs. civilization, nostalgia, freedom

His tall athletic figure with its easy flexible motions appeared to advantage in his present dress; and his fine face, though roughened by a thousand storms, was not at all out of keeping with it. He had served us with a fidelity and zeal beyond all praise.

Description of Henry Chatillon's appearance in St. Louis at the journey's end — character, frontier nobility, farewell

He was a grim old veteran. His loves and his battles were over for that season, and now, gaunt and war-worn, he had withdrawn from the herd to graze by himself and recruit his exhausted strength.

An old buffalo bull facing Parkman in a solitary standoff on the prairie — nature, confrontation, respect

The players were staking on the chances of the game their ornaments, their horses, their garments, and even their weapons; for desperate gambling is not confined to the hells of Paris. The men of the plains and forests no less resort to it as a relief to the tedious monotony of their lives, which alternate between fierce excitement and listless inaction.

Parkman describing the gambling culture of the Ogillallah village at night — Native American culture, gambling, human nature

Suddenly darkness gathered in the west, and a furious blast of sleet and hail drove full in our faces, icy cold, and urged with such demoniac vehemence that it felt like a storm of needles.

A weather description showing the sudden violence of prairie climate — weather, nature, hardship

The sons of civilization, drawn by the fascinations of a fresher and bolder life, thronged to the western wilds in multitudes which blighted the charm that had lured them.

1892 preface reflecting on the transformation of the West — colonialism, wilderness, nostalgia, environmental destruction

The buffalo is gone, and of all his millions nothing is left but bones. Tame cattle and fences of barbed wire have supplanted his vast herds and boundless grazing grounds.

1892 preface lamenting the extinction of the buffalo — extinction, environmental destruction, progress, loss

He could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and delicacy of mind, such as is rare even in women. His manly face was a mirror of uprightness, simplicity, and kindness of heart.

Description of the guide Henry Chatillon — natural virtue, character, class, frontier identity

I have never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better man than my true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon.

Parkman's tribute to his guide — friendship, virtue, frontier life

A long train of emigrants with their heavy wagons was crossing the creek, and dragging on in slow procession by the encampment of the people whom they and their descendants, in the space of a century, are to sweep from the face of the earth.

Emigrants passing an Indian encampment at Horse Creek — colonialism, genocide, manifest destiny, displacement

Bursting with a terrific crash directly above our heads, it roared over the boundless waste of prairie, seeming to roll around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful reverberation.

Description of prairie thunderstorms along the Platte — nature, sublime, prairie landscape

The prairie teemed with life. Again and again I looked toward the crowded hillsides, and was sure I saw horsemen; and riding near, with a mixture of hope and dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed into a group of buffalo.

Parkman lost on the prairie after his first buffalo chase — wilderness, solitude, perception, danger

War is the breath of their nostrils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation.

Describing the martial culture of the western Dahcotah — war, tribal conflict, Indigenous culture, violence

When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away.

Parkman on the Dahcotah's total dependence on the buffalo — ecology, dependency, extinction, prophecy

Better to die here, in the saddle to the last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber; and a thousand times better than to drag out life, as many have done, in the helpless inaction of lingering disease.

Parkman reflecting on his illness while riding with the village — death, endurance, illness, masculine stoicism

Neither their manners nor their ideas were in the slightest degree modified by contact with civilization. They knew nothing of the power and real character of the white men, and their children would scream in terror when they saw me.

Parkman describing the Ogillallah as uncontacted people — first contact, Indigenous isolation, cultural purity

Assume, in the presence of Indians, a bold bearing, self-confident yet vigilant, and you will find them tolerably safe neighbors. But your safety depends on the respect and fear you are able to inspire.

Parkman's advice on frontier diplomacy with Indians — frontier diplomacy, power dynamics, fear, survival

Soft-hearted philanthropists may sigh long for their peaceful millennium; for, from minnows to men, life is incessant war.

Watching fish engage in cannibalism in a mountain pool — war, nature, competition, social Darwinism

Great changes are at hand in that region. With the stream of emigration to Oregon and California, the buffalo will dwindle away, and the large wandering communities who depend on them for support must be broken and scattered.

Parkman predicting the destruction of Plains Indian civilization — prophecy, colonialism, extinction, displacement

In a community where, from immemorial time, no man has acknowledged any law but his own will, Mahto-Tatonka raised himself to power little short of despotic.

Describing how the elder Mahto-Tatonka achieved chieftainship — power, leadership, democracy, tyranny

The whole power of an Indian's nature would be summoned to encounter such a trial; every influence of his education from childhood would have prepared him for it. But when he feels himself attacked by a mysterious evil, before whose assaults his manhood is wasted, the boldest warrior falls prostrate at once.

The White Shield abandoning his war-party due to illness — courage, superstition, illness, psychology

It was a scene of silence and desolation. Little was visible except beetling crags and the bare shingly sides of the mountains, relieved by scarcely a trace of vegetation.

Hunting in the Black Hills with Reynal — landscape, desolation, mountains, wilderness

There is a spirit of energy in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach them.

Parkman gazing at the Black Hills from camp — nature, mountains, spiritual energy, landscape

To him all nature is instinct with mystic influence. Among those mountains not a wild beast was prowling, a bird singing, or a leaf fluttering, that might not tend to direct his destiny.

Observing Mene-Seela in prayer before a pine tree — Indigenous spirituality, animism, nature, religion

The wild Indian is turned into an ugly caricature of his conqueror; and that which made him romantic, terrible, and hateful, is in large measure scourged out of him.

1892 preface on the destruction of Indigenous cultures — colonialism, cultural destruction, assimilation, loss