The Indians
Ever since James Fenimore Cooper made use of frontier life in his novels, the Indian has been romanticized in fiction as the noble savage. But Cooper’s Indians did not bear much resemblance to the real Indians who were, after all, savages living in a primitive environment. A good observer of Indians as they actually were was the eminent historian Francis Parkman, who spent the summer of 1846 traveling as far as Wyoming on the Oregon Trail. Here is his account of one of the tribes living on the plains: