biographical opinion, that Parkman alone was responsible for
most of those textual changes and expurgations which have
hitherto been charged to his friend Charles Eliot Norton. The
original collations of the texts of The Oregon Trail and many
of the excisions and variant readings restored in the textual
notes in this edition show conclusively that Parkman was a
literary stylist of considerable ability at the very beginning of
his career and that he strove, then and afterwards, for clarity
of detail and stylistic refinement in his several major revisions
of the book.

The inspiration for this edition of The Oregon Trail came
from the director of my doctoral dissertation, Professor Ed-
ward H. Davidson of the University of Illinois, without whose
constant interest and encouragement it would never have
been completed. Professor Robert M. McColley of the Uni-
versity of Illinois Department of History gave largely of his
knowledge and friendship during every step of the preparation
of the original manuscript. I am also indebted to Professor G.
Blakemore Evans of the Department of English of Harvard
University and to Professors Walter B. Rideout, Merton M.
Sealts, Jr., and Herbert F. Smith, all of the University of
Wisconsin Department of English, for scholarly criticism and
counsel. Professor Robert W. Rogers and the Research Coun-
cil of the University of Illinois made it possible for me to
examine manuscript collections at Cambridge and Boston;
the University of Wisconsin Graduate School materially as-
sisted me in the revision of my original manuscript with a
summer research grant in 1966.

The staffs of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston
and the Houghton Library of Harvard University placed at
my disposal Parkman's Oregon Trail notebooks and letters
and the Charles Eliot Norton Letterbooks; I acknowledge
with thanks the permissions of both institutions to quote
from published and unpublished Parkman and Norton mate-
rials. The libraries of the University of California at Berkeley,

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