Francis Parkman 203 



or the Mexico of Montezuma ! That phase of so- 

 cial development has long since disappeared. But 

 fifty years ago, on our great western plains and 

 among the Rocky Mountains, there still prevailed 

 a state of society essentially similar to that which 

 greeted the eyes of Champlain upon the St. Law- 

 rence and of John Smith upon the Chickahominy. 

 In those days the Oregon Trail had changed but 

 little since the memorable journey of Lewis and 

 Clark in the beginning of the present century. 

 In 1846, two years after taking his bachelor de- 

 gree at Harvard, young Parkman had a taste 

 of the excitements of savage life in that primeval 

 wilderness. He was accompanied by his kinsman, 

 Mr. Quincy Shaw. They joined a roving tribe of 

 Sioux Indians, at a time when to do such a thing 

 was to take their lives in their hands, and they 

 spent a wild summer among the Black Hills of 

 Dakota and in the vast moorland solitudes through 

 which the Platte River winds its interminable 

 length. In the chase and in the wigwam, in 

 watching the sorcery of which their religion chiefly 

 consisted, or in listening to primitive folk tales by 

 the evening camp fire, Parkman learned to under- 

 stand the red man, to interpret his motives and his 

 moods. With his naturalist's keen and accurate 

 eye and his quick poetic apprehension, that youth- 



