Francis Parkman

The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac

This volume presents The Oregon Trail and The Conspiracy of Pontiac, the first two works by Francis Parkman to appear in book form.

Parkman began work on The Oregon Trail in mid-October 1846 at the age of 23, soon after his return from his tour of the West. In February 1847 the first installment appeared in Knickerbocker Magazine under the title "The Oregon Trail: Or A Summer's Journey Out of Bounds: By A Bostonian." The series of 21 monthly installments ran through February 1849, with four breaks: there were no installments in March and November 1847 and September and November 1848. After his return from his strenuous western trip, Parkman's health, never very good, had broken down completely; among other difficulties, he was unable to use his eyes. Instead of writing the serial installments by hand, he dictated them to various family members and friends using as a guide the detailed journal he had kept during the trip. In September 1848, as the serial publication drew near its close, Parkman wrote his friend Charles Eliot Norton that he had not sent an installment in that month because he wanted "the book to be out before the appearance of the last chapter, for fear of piracy."

Parkman arranged for the book to be published by George P. Putnam early in the spring of 1849 and gratefully accepted Norton's offer to help with the proofreading (no one seems to have proofread the Knickerbocker installments before they were published). Parkman's health improved somewhat, and he was allowed to use his eyes for limited periods of time. With Norton's help, Parkman corrected errors, removed some extraneous adjectives, added a new Chapter X, "The War Parties," and created a new Chapter XXIV, "The Chase," from material that had originally appeared in Chapter XXV, "The Buffalo Camp," and in Chapter XXIII, "Indian Alarms." (The installments in the Knickerbocker were titled but not numbered.) The book was published by George P. Putnam in March 1849 under the unauthorized title of The California and Oregon Trail: Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life.

Putnam reprinted the book in 1852 under a new title, Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life; or, the California and Oregon Trail, and with a "Preface to the Third Edition" written by Parkman. The text of the book, including the original engraved title, was printed from the same plates as the 1849 edition. A new edition (described as the "fourth"), extensively revised by Parkman, was brought out in 1872 by his Boston publishers, Little, Brown and Company, under the title The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. A note about the change of title is included in the 1872 edition: Parkman explains that the publisher had added "California" to the title without his permission and he was restoring it to its original form. The subtitle remained substantially the same, with only the word "Being" dropped. Parkman added a dedication to Quincy Adams Shaw and a new preface. The text itself was stylistically revised and shortened: colloquial expressions were made more formal; all of the epigraphs were dropped; some passages of personal biography were removed, as well as descriptions of other people, including Shaw, Chatillon, and the English travelers. By 1872, Parkman had established a reputation as an important historian and felt that his youthful work had been too outspoken. (Some examples of these revisions are indicated in the notes to this volume.) A new edition, illustrated by Frederic Remington, was brought out in 1892. Parkman made additional revisions for this edition but they were not as extensive as those he had made in 1872. A new preface was added, some words were changed, and spelling and punctuation were modernized. Because The Oregon Trail is a personal narrative, the present volume prints the text of the 1849 Putnam edition, with the restored title, as the one that best represents the young Parkman who wrote it.

The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Parkman's first work of history, was the product of several years of research and travel devoted to collecting necessary documents and inspecting the sites of the events to be described. Because of persisting problems with his eyes, it was necessary to find people who would read documents to him. He made notes using a special box with wires strung across it to guide his hand so that he could write without using his eyes. The manuscript was then dictated to an amanuensis, usually his wife. On the advice of his friend, the historian Jared Sparks, Parkman decided to pay for the stereotyping of the book himself and then offer the plates to an American publisher for printing. Dr. George E. Ellis, Charles Eliot Norton, and other friends helped him with the proofreading. Little, Brown and Company of Boston, beginning a long association with Parkman, published History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the War of the North American Tribes Against the English Colonies After the Conquest of Canada in September 1851. Richard Bentley agreed to publish an edition in London; but because the English edition had to appear simultaneously with the American for copyright reasons, the errors discovered by Norton at the last minute were not corrected in the English edition.

Immediately after the first printing, a correspondent, Samuel G. Drake, gave Parkman access to relevant material he had not seen before (Captain Thomas Morris's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, containing a further account of his adventure than the journal Parkman had used). When a second printing (called a "second edition") was scheduled for 1852, Parkman added a few footnotes and a new section to Appendix F based on the new information. No changes were made in the next printing (called the "third edition") in 1863. (A small edition of 75 copies was made from type set by John Wilson in 1866, but no corrections were made in the text.) During the years after the 1852 printing, additional relevant material was discovered, in particular the anonymous Diary of the Siege of Detroit, now known to be by Lieutenant Jehu Hay, and a short journal kept during the siege by Major Robert Rogers. A fourth printing (called the "fourth edition") was made in 1868, for which Parkman wrote a new preface dated September 1867. For this printing Parkman added or expanded a number of notes and footnotes, occasionally shortening some lines of text to make room for the additions. A fifth printing (the "fifth edition") in 1869 contained no emendations.

In 1870, Little, Brown and Company decided to have new plates made to conform to the style of Parkman's other historical works. For this two-volume edition (called the "sixth edition") Parkman extensively revised the text, making changes on more than half of the original pages. His access to the Bouquet papers deposited in the British Museum had furnished him with more information, and now for the first time he could rectify some of his earlier opinions, insert into the text some of the material he had previously placed in footnotes and in Appendix F, and add new information (examples of some of these changes are indicated in the notes to the present volume). He also wrote a new preface, added more firsthand corroborating material to the footnotes, and changed the title to The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Conquest of Canada. Although there were many printings made from the plates of this edition, called the "seventh edition," "eighth," "ninth," and so on, no revisions or actual new editions were made until after Parkman's death. The 1870 edition thus contains Parkman's fullest and most accurate account, and the text of that edition is printed here.

This volume presents the texts of the original printings chosen for inclusion here but does not attempt to reproduce features of their typographic design, such as the display capitalization of chapter openings. The texts are printed without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features, and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular.

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