[.ca] Oregon Trail Stories: True Accounts of Life in a Covered ... (ISBN 076273082X)

Respectable, educative of western emigration:
I always enjoy reading personal accounts of the Oregon/California Trail. Taken from actual diaries, letters, memoirs and reminisces, these are true to life experiences from the pioneers themselves. A few to mention, without being overly exhaustive would be: Catherine Sager Pringle and her six siblings becoming orphans of the trail when in the course of twenty six days both parents died. They were then taken to and raised at the Whitman Mission in Washington. Lucy Jane Hall Burnett's account of taking the disastrous Stephen Meek Cutoff. The insightful David Campbell reminisces traveling to California. After burying their dead, they would have the cattle trample over the ground to deter any Indian tendencies of digging them up for clothing. Also, numerous brief battles in California for statehood are well described. Patrick Breen's day to day experiences of being stranded for months in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with the Donner Party are harrowing. James Longmire's memoirs of traveling over the continent are both entertaining and perceptive. Excellent.