Publisher's Synopsis
'From boyhood,' wrote Francis Parkman, 'I had a taste for the woods and the Indians.' This Library of America volume, containing The Oregon Trail and The Conspiracy of Pontiac, brilliantly demonstrates this lifelong fascination. His first book, The Oregon Trail, is a vivid account of his frontier adventures and his encounters with Plains Indians in their final era of nomadic life. The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada, Parkman's first historical work, portrays the fierce conflict that erupted along the Great Lakes in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War and chronicles the defeats in which the eastern Native American tribes 'received their final doom.' The Oregon Trail (1849) opens on a Missouri River steamboat crowded with traders, gamblers, speculators, Oregon emigrants, 'mountain men,' and Kansas Indians. In his search for Natives untouched by white culture, Parkman meets the Whirlwind, a Sioux chieftain, and follows him through the Black Hills.
