In 1846, a young Harvard graduate named Francis Parkman set out to explore life in the uncivilized West. With his friend Quincy Adams Shaw, he traveled up the Oregon Trail to the camps of the Pawnee and the Sioux. Parkman's journal is an authentic record of life on the trail, an exciting eyewitness account of the Mormons and outlaws, trappers and Native Americans, pioneers and adventurers who tried to conquer the frontier.