Publisher Description

'The target audience for this book is middle and high school students. However, its information will appeals to a far broader audience...A useful introduction to trail travel and associated incidents' - ""Journal of the West"". 'A little gem of a book' - ""Overland Journal"". Theirs has been called America's single largest voluntary, historical migration. From the late 1830's to the mid - 1870's a span of just over forty years nearly half a million ordinary folk left farms and families, friends, and all that was familiar and turned their faces west to Oregon, to California, to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and to the gold fields of Montana. All 'saw the elephant' along the Oregon Trail. Whether viewed from the perspective of Manifest Destiny or through the vision-dreams of tribal elders, this mass overland migration to the 'Land of Milk and Honey' forever changed our nation and forever altered the way Americans saw themselves. The clash of cultures and beliefs that followed left its mark upon the American spirit as indelibly as the Oregon Trail rutted the land over which it crossed. ""Seeing the Elephant"" lets the people of the Trail speak for themselves and their times. Drawn from first-hand accounts in diaries, journals, and letters and interpreted by the author of the much acclaimed Sacagawea Speaks, their voices ring true. From Narcissa Whitman, who made an amazing trek into the unknown in 1836, through Lucy Alice Ide, who proclaimed her own modern passage in 1878, each voice of ""Seeing the Elephant"" is infused with character and instruction and the immediacy that comes only from living history. ""Seeing the Elephant"" leaps from our nation's historic archives into the imagination. This title covers timelines, maps, photographs, and historical illustrations that enables readers young and old to trace Trail migration chronologically and geographically.

Author Biography

Joyce Badgley Hunsaker is an award-winning historical interpreter, storyteller, and author who currently resides in Kanab, Utah. Her thoughtful and carefully researched programs have won her national acclaim as both actress and historian. She has performed across the country in schools, museums, on national television and radio, as well as for Disney, with the NBA Portland Trailblazers, at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and at the Smithsonian Institution.
Her family bloodlines include Cherokee and Sioux, English, French, and Scots-Irish. Several tribes have honored her with ceremonial names.

Table of Contents

Wagon Train By-Laws, 1849 Articles of Agreement, 1864 Outfit for Oregon, 1847 From Emigrant's Guide to California, 1849 From The Prairie Traveler: Handbook for Overland Travelers, 1859 From Ox Team Days on the OregonTrail, 1852 History and Interpretation Narcissa Whitman, Into the Unknown, 1836 Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Go West, Young Man! 1839 Jesse Applegate, A Boy's Grand Adventure, 1843 Catherine Sager, Oregon Trail Orphan, 1844 Abigail Scott, Where Many Fond Hopes Have Been Laid, 1852 Ezra Meeker, The Trail Was a Battlefield, 1852 Helen Stewart, Oh Dear, Oh Dear! This is Going to Oregon, 1853 Fincelius G. Burnett, Army Indian Fighter on the Overland Trail, 1865 Mrs. Lucy Alice Ide, Trail's End--Thus We All Are Scattered, 1878

Prizes

Commended for Spur Awards (Children-Y/A Nonfiction) 2004

Details