content: The Oregon Trail is an undeniable classic -- although overrated compared to other books written about the same time about the same subject. Parkman is a priggish, Boston snob who complains his way across the West. He despises the pioneers crossing the plains and has no interest in them -- a startling lack of consciousness for a historian. The Indians and the mountain men fare little better. A better, more generous book by a young man in the west is Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail by Lewis H. Garrard.Smallchief