第一版本1872年出版，是最早描写美国西进运动的书。作者本人描述了自己早期西进探险沿途中的所闻所见，并雇佣了一个印第安向导，开始了他在达科他草原和落基山脉的旅行。旅行结束，他写出了一本书，《the Oregon trail：Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life》。这本书成了有关美国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).