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The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac
“Like Thucydides, Francis Parkman conceived of historical inquiry as a literary enterprise of the highest order, requiring both scientific method and the art of rendering a story. As he narrated the sufferings of the French explorers, he studied early maps in order to imagine the wilderness as seen through their eyes. The ideal historical narrator, Parkman felt, ‘must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he described.’ He wrote as though he were a fellow-explorer at Champlain’s side.” — The New Yorker