The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life.

PARKMAN, Francis. Illustrated by Frederic Remington.

Item Number: 142850

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1892.

First Remington illustrated edition, fourth edition printed of Parkman’s classic account of his journey along the Oregon Trail. Second printing with the list of illustrations. Octavo, original publisher’s full suede with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panel, illustrated with numerous plates by Frederic Remington, tissue-guarded frontispiece. Provenance: from the library of Mabel Osgood Wright with her petite bookplate to the pastedown. Mabel Osgood Wright (1859-1934) was an American writer who wrote extensively on nature and birds. In very good condition.

Parkman set out from St. Louis in April 1846 and subsequently toured the High Plains of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas. His reasons for the journey were to restore his health, to learn more about Native American life, and to gather information for his planned history of the conflict between the French and British in North America. He traveled along the Oregon Trail, turned south and followed the eastern edge of the Rockies, then returned via the Santa Fe Trail. Along the way he lived with a band of Sioux, closely noting their habits and customs, and met with a number of famous frontiersmen, including the legendary Jim Beckwourth. Parkman’s account of his travels is part history, part travel narrative and part adventure story. It is one of the great literary and historical narratives of the American experience—“the classic account of the emigrant journey to the Rockies” (Grolier, American 58).