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

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The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life (also published as The California & Oregon Trail) is a book written by Francis Parkman. It was originally serialized in twenty-one installments in Knickerbocker's Magazine (1847-49) and subsequently published as a book in 1849.

The book is a breezy, first-person account of a 1700-mile summer tour of the U.S. states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas when Parkman was 23. The heart of the book covers the three weeks Parkman spent hunting buffalo with a band of Oglala Sioux. The book was reviewed favorably by Herman Melville, although he complains that it demeaned American Indians and that its title was misleading (the book covers only the first third of the trail).