The Oregon Trail Book Report

Words: 1357
Pages: 6

The Oregon Trail is an autobiography written by Francis Parkman about his journey on the Oregon trail with his friend and relative Quincy Shaw Adams. It was first published in a New York monthly magazine, called the Knickerbocker as about 21 entries. Later, the book was published in 1849, being written after he got back from studying the Sioux tribe in the great plains of the west. Throughout the book you learn about the struggles of their trip throughout the Rocky Mountains and back, the fun they had, and the band of people they picked up along the way. Francis Parkman was a great historian, that didn’t see the full potential of his book until later in his life, he was brave and very adventurous to have made this journey and to have lived to write about it.
In the spring of 1846, on April, 28th, Francis Parkman and Quincy Shaw Adams departed from St. Louis, Missouri to embark on a tour of the Rocky Mountains. They traveled on a train called the “Radnor”, and 500 miles later they reached Kansas. After that, the rode by wagon to Westport, in Westport they hoped to acquire horses
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I think this book is very useful to me as an American History student. It is very enlightening because it is an actual person’s encounters with things that actually happened on the Oregon trail all those years ago. It shows how they had to become fast friends with the people they are traveling with, they help each other out, and have to fight for food to survive, I knew it took a long time to get to places in those days because they obviously didn’t have cars but I had no idea exactly how long it would actually take and this book helped me gain a perspective on that. I would definitely recommend this book to people wanting to learn more about the early frontier and our American