The Oregon Trail.

PARKMAN, Francis. Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton.

$175.00

Item Number: 146546

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1945.

Signed limited edition of Parkman’s classic account of his journey along the Oregon Trail. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth, pictorial title page, illustrated with numerous plates by Thomas Hart Benton. One of one thousand numbered copies signed by the artist on the limitation page. In near fine condition with very light rubbing to the crown of the spine and a faint stain to the front panel.

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).