第一版本1872年齣版，是最早描寫美國西進運動的書。作者本人描述瞭自己早期西進探險沿途中的所聞所見，並雇傭瞭一個印第安嚮導，開始瞭他在達科他草原和落基山脈的旅行。旅行結束，他寫齣瞭一本書，《the Oregon trail：Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life》。這本書成瞭有關美國西部和印第安人最早的名著。

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 2 month summer tour in 1846 of the U.S. states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas. Parkman was 23 at the time. 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).

弗朗西斯.帕剋曼(Francis Parkman)，從1820年-1860年，40多萬人沿著俄勒岡小道進入美國廣袤的西部。

Francis Parkman (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as history and especially as literature, although the biases of his work have met with criticism. He was also a leading horticulturist, briefly a Professor of Horticulture at Harvard University and the first leader of the Arnold Arboretum, and author of several books on the topic.