Back The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac

Francis Parkman: The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac

Edited by William R. Taylor

“Like Thucydides, Francis Parkman conceived of historical inquiry as a literary enterprise of the highest order, requiring both scientific method and the art of rendering a story. As he narrated the sufferings of the French explorers, he studied early maps in order to imagine the wilderness as seen through their eyes. The ideal historical narrator, Parkman felt, ‘must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he described.’ He wrote as though he were a fellow-explorer at Champlain’s side.” — The New Yorker

Overview

Overview

“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. Parkman traveled through the West in 1846 after graduating from Harvard. 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. His descriptions of natives’ buffalo hunts, feasts and games, feuds, and gift-giving derive their intensity from his awareness that he was recording a vanishing way of life. Praised by Herman Melville for its “true wild-game flavor,” The Oregon Trail is a classic tale of adventure that celebrates the rich variety of life Parkman found on the frontier and the immensity and grandeur of America’s western landscapes.

In The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), Parkman chronicles the consequences of the French defeat in Canada for the eastern Native American tribes. At the head of the Native American resistance to the Anglo-American advance in the 1760s was the daring Ottawa leader Pontiac, whose attacks on the frontier forts and settlements put in doubt the continuation of western expansion. A powerful narrative of battles and skirmishes, treaties and betrayals, written with eloquence and fervor and filled with episodes of heroism and endurance, The Conspiracy of Pontiac captures the spirit of a tragic and tumultuous age.

William R. Taylor, volume editor, is professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and former program director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He is the author of Cavalier and Yankee and In Pursuit of Gotham: Culture and Commerce in New York.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Francis Parkman: The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac is kept in print by a gift from Andrea Stillman to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.

32.00 List Price: $45.00 (Save: 29%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #200552

ISBN: 978-0-94045054-7 951 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 53 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America LOA N°147

Francis Parkman: France and England in North America: Volume Two LOA N°12

Washington Irving: Three Western Narratives LOA N°146

Capt. John Smith: Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America LOA N°171

Francis Parkman: France and England in North America: Volume One LOA N°11

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Francis Parkman: The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.