The Oregon Trail (1847)
On April 28, 1846, Francis Parkman, who had already decided that he was going to write the history of the settling of America, and Quincy Adams Shaw set forth from St. Louis up the Missouri River for a "tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains." They traveled some 1700 miles, meeting trappers, gamblers, woodsmen, soldiers and Indians and Parkman eventually spent three weeks hunting buffalo with a band of Oglala Sioux. The following year he published this travelogue which remains one of the great books ever produced by an American and embarked him on a career as one of Americaís first great historians.
On their trip, they were accompanied by Henry Chatillon, a hunter & guide, and Deslauriers, a muleteer. Parkman, in a passage which nicely illustrates his mastery of descriptive technique, sketches them as follows:
Deslauriers was a Canadian, with all the characteristics
of the true Jean Baptiste. Neither fatigue,
exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair his cheerfulness
and gayety, or his politeness to his
bourgeois; and when night came, he would sit down
by the fire, smoke his pipe, and tell stories
with the utmost contentment. The prairie was
his element. Henry Chatillon was of a different
stamp. When we were at St. Louis, several gentleman
of the Fur Company had kindly offered to
procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our
purposes, and on coming one afternoon to the
office, we found there a tall and exceedingly well-dressed
man, with a face so open and frank that it
attracted our notice at once. We were surprised
at being told that that it was he who wished to
guide us to the mountains. He was born in a little
French town near St. Louis, and from the age of
fifteen years had been constantly in the neighborhood
of the Rocky Mountains, employed for the
most part by the company, to supply their forts
with buffalo meat. As a hunter, he had but one
rival in the whole region, a man named Simoneau,
with whom, to the honor of both of them, he
was on the terms of closest friendship. He had arrived
at St. Louis the day before, from the
mountains, where he had been for four years; and
he now asked only to go and spend a day with
his mother, before setting out on another expedition.
His age was about thirty; and he was six feet
high, and very powerfully and gracefully moulded.
The prairies had been his school; he could
neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement
and delicacy of mind, such as is rare even in
women. His manly face was a mirror of uprightness,
simplicity, and kindness of heart; he had,
moreover, a keen perception of character, and a
tact that would preserve him from flagrant error in
any society. Henry had not the restless energy
of an Anglo-American. He was content to take
things as he found them; and his chief fault arose
from an excess of easy generosity, not conducive
to thriving in the world. Yet it was commonly
remarked of him, that whatever he might choose to
do with what belonged to himself, the property of
others was always safe in his hands. His bravery
was as much celebrated in the mountains as his skill
in hunting; but it is characteristic of him that in
a country where the rifle is the chief arbiter between
man and man, he was very seldom involved in
quarrels. Once or twice, indeed, his quiet
good nature had been mistaken and presumed upon, but
the consequences of the error were such, that no
one was ever known to repeat it. No better
evidence of the intrepidity of his temper could
be asked, than the common report that he had killed
more than thirty grizzly bears. He was a proof
of what unaided nature will sometimes do. I have
never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better
man than my true-hearted friend, Henry
Chatillon."
Any man would consider his life well spent if he could inspire that portrait. But lest you think he's too pedantic, he also writes with great humor, to wit:
Whiskey, by the way, circulates more freely in Westport
than is altogether safe in a place where
every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket.
or try this remark on setting out from Fort Leavenworth:
Thus we bade a long adieu to bed and board, and the principles of Blackstoneís commentaries.
Parkman's later work, The French and English in North America, was one
of the first works published by the Library of America and it was the first
great work of history produced by an American. It is also epic in
length, numbering some 2000 pages or so. For a little easier introduction
to his work, try The Oregon Trail.
(Reviewed:09-Jun-99)
Grade: (A)
