| Francis Parkman learns firsthand from the Indians--and not from the remnants of eastern tribes, what Plains Indians are like from his personal journey on the Oregon Trail. It was his own fortitude and perseverance-perseverance under the most grievous physical afflictions-that made it possible for Parkman to see as much of the West as he did, to experience at first hand the life of the explorer and the trapper and hunter, and even of the Indian. And it was his arduous preparation, his intellectual curiosity, his talent for observation, his enthusiasm, his gift for dramatic narrative, that enabled him to reconstruct from his fragmentary Journals what he had seen and to convey it with such youthful exuberance to generations of readers. |
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