Along The Trail: What does the player encounter along the way?

How does the player perceive his progress along the way? Once the journey begins, the screen pans out to an enlarged map of the territory the player passes as his wagon covers it in a moving red line, connecting by dots to mark key resting spots such as river crossings, trading posts, and large hills or mountains. The player must make such key decisions as whether to ford or caulk the wagon across turbulent waters based on their depth and current, whether to hunt when meat is running low, and if so, whether to waste bullets on hard targets like birds or to wait for the occasional lumbering bear, whether to rest for a given number of days when Tommy has a cold or not, and whether to search abandoned wagons along the way or not. Here again, while many of these scenarios are entirely valid and harmless, others are not [1]. For instance, throughout the trail one often approaches “unfamiliar Indians” and is presented with three very specific choices in how to deal with their presence: “approach them,” “be suspicious of them,” or “continue at a distance” [1]. The game’s guidebook is careful not to portray Native Americans as the frontierman’s enemies, but this caution is “selfish and goal-driven: emigrants should care about indigenous people only insofar as they need to avoid ‘misunderstanding’ and incurring the wrath of potentially hostile natives” [2]. For example, the guidebook warns against approaching Native Americans for fear that such encounters would lead to undesirable misunderstandings and also cautions the player not to over hunt the game in any one area, as “few things will incur the wrath of the Indian peoples more than an overstayed welcome accompanied by the egregious waste of the natural resources upon which they depend” [1].

As a result, the student is forced to identify only with white settlers and to understand themselves as the norm to the exclusion of other groups. Furthermore, the choices presented in dealing with Native Americans imply that by leaving them alone, neither party is hurt and the white settler can continue guilt-free on his journey. Just as in the case of the cheery pop-up of the young black girl who advises the party to move on, race is presented as a non-factor, when in reality, it mattered very much [2].

[1] The Oregon Trail II. Minneapolis, Minnesota: MECC, 1994.

[2] Bigelow, Bill. "On the Road to Cultural Bias: A Critique of The Oregon Trail CD - Rom. Lanugage Arts, Vol 74, Feb 1997.