The California and Oregon Trail: Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life

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Cosimo, Inc., 01.09.2007 - 328 Seiten
The firsthand account of a personal journey through Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas in the 1840s, this classic work of American adventure is not only an excellent resource for eyewitness observations of Native American culture in the mid 19th century but also an essential document of the cultural attitudes and prejudices of Eastern European-descended Americans of the era.Criticized by contemporary reviewers, including Herman Melville, as demeaning to Indians, Parkman's tale nevertheless remains a fascinating and entertaining read. Originally serialized in Knickerbocker's Magazine and first published in book form in 1849, this replica edition returns to print a previously hard-to-find work of American history.American horticulturist and historian FRANCIS PARKMAN (1823-1893) helped found the Archaeological Institute of America. He is the author of The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century and the eight-volume France and England in North America, both considered among the great masterpieces of historical literature.

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Inhalt

THE HUNTING CAMP
181
THE Trappers
201
A MOUNTAIN HUNT
213
PASSAge of the MOUNTAINS
223
THE LONELY JOURNEY
238
THE PUeblo and Bents Fort
255
TETE Rouge the VOLUNTEER
262
INDIAN ALARMS
266

SCENES AT FORT LARAMIE
88
THE WAR Parties ΙΟΙ
101
SCENES at the Camp
120
ILL LUCK
136
HUNTING INDIANS
142
THE OGALLALLA VILLAGE
163
THE Chase
277
THE BUFFALO CAMP
283
DowN THE ARKANSAS
297
THE SETTLEMENTS
312
Urheberrecht

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Seite 210 - To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
Seite 255 - Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them."2 On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance.
Seite 51 - Half a dozen yellow-visaged Missourians, mounted on horseback, were cursing and shouting among them ; their lank angular proportions, enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut and adjusted by the hands of a domestic female tailor. As we approached, they greeted us with the polished salutation : ' How are ye, boys ? Are ye for Oregon or California...
Seite 202 - Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried, And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide, The exulting sense...
Seite 34 - A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Seite 7 - French cart, of the sort very appropriately called a ' mule-killer,' beyond the frontiers, and not far distant a tent, together with a miscellaneous assortment of boxes and barrels. The whole equipage was far from prepossessing in its appearance ; yet, such as it was, it was destined to a long and arduous journey, on which the persevering reader will accompany it. The passengers on board the Radnor corresponded with her freight. In her cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators, and adventurers...
Seite 58 - We all drew rein, and sat joyfully looking down upon the prospect. 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.
Seite 103 - ... 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...
Seite 281 - The buffalo began to crowd away from the point towards which we were approaching, and a gap was opened in the side of the herd. We entered it, still restraining our excited horses. Every instant the tumult was thickening. The buffalo, pressing together in large bodies, crowded away from us on every hand. In front and on either side we could see dark columns and masses, half hidden by clouds of dust, rushing along in terror and confusion, and hear the tramp and clattering of ten thousand hoofs. That...
Seite 94 - The long poles used in erecting the lodges are carried by the horses, being fastened by the heavier end, two or three on each side, to a rude sort of pack-saddle, while the other end drags on the ground. About a foot behind the horse, a kind of large basket or pannier is suspended between the poles, and firmly lashed in its place.

Autoren-Profil (2007)

Early in his youth, this Boston-born historian was infected with what he called (in language offensive to today's readers) "Injuns on the brain." For the rest of his life, he dedicated himself to writing what he had called at the age of 18 "a history of the American forest." In 1846, following the completion of his studies at Harvard College, he set out in company with a cousin on an expedition from St. Louis over the Oregon Trail to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, a journey that brought him into close contact with the Lakota Indians. Back in Boston, he turned the journal that he had kept on the trail into a series of sketches that were published in the Knickerbocker Magazine and afterwards as a book, The California and Oregon Trail, Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life (1849), now better known by the abbreviated title of a later revised edition, The Oregon Trail. By this time, Parkman had well underway the historical work that would occupy him during the rest of his life, an account of the French and English in North America, the first installment of which was his History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac and the War of the North American Tribes against the English Colonies, published in 1851.

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