The Oregon Trail and When Rivers Were Trails: A Comparison

There are instances in video games where the real world is incorporated or referenced in some way. During the past week, I played two video games that explore US history. US history has had a long trend of leaving out Native American Peoples. Whenever Native American peoples were mentioned, they would often be relegated to the stories of Tisquantum and the English pilgrims in the US. Other times, they would be seen as peoples of conflict that would raid settlements and kidnap women, especially without providing context as to why these raids took place. This has affected the way Native American peoples are portrayed in films and video games as well. Even some of the more friendly depictions of Native American peoples have one stereotype or another (i.e, Pocahontas, “What makes the red man red” of Peter Pan, Dances with Wolves etc.)
In terms of video games, there were two video games which I played as a part of the course. One was a version of The Oregon Trail video game while the other was a video game titled When Rivers Were Trails. One has had a few versions made while the other was made by people from a Native American group. One tells it’s story from a settler perspective, while the other gets it’s narrative from a Native American perspective. These two games though different, share some important insights in terms of the way Native American peoples are depicted in media.
The portrayal of Native American peoples is very similar with some notable differences. In The Oregon Trail, Native American peoples tend to be in the background and assist with hunting. Apart from that, they aren’t really featured in the game that much since players can only play the game through the lens of settlers traveling along the Oregon Trail. However, as I never played the video game before, it took me a while to get used to the gameplay and actually get into the video game itself. During the gameplay I didn’t end up interacting with any Native American peoples in the game, I did come close. I was running low on food and I saw a pop up text that said something along the lines of “Native Americans are offering to help you hunt”. I clicked the spacebar hoping it would accept the offer but the game ended up revealing that my character declined.
The second game, When Rivers Were Trails had certain improvements over The Oregon Trail. For one, the player actually played as a Native American character. Along with this, there is a specifically named Native American people this time around. One plays as an Ojibwe man who is fleeing from his home because of settlers coming into Minnesota. As the player flees and heads to another reservation where he would be safe, the player encounters others of the Ojibwe that the player can talk to. Throughout this game, one can also hear stories from the Ojibwe people such as the story of the wolf (Ma’iingan). I was rather disappointed that there wasn’t a wolf clan that one could play as in the game since gray wolves play such a key role in the Ojibwe people’s creation story. There are also times where one must hunt to replenish their food and on the second attempt I was able to take down a rabbit and a deer however, I failed to take down any ducks (mallards). There were also points where I traded something from my inventory for something else. There were also times where I came across Indian Agents and I had to ask for advice on what to do. One involved an Indian Agent carrying a bible and I offered to teach about Ojibwe Medicine. However, the agent just sighed and confiscated it as if believing that my character was lying. During these particular encounters, I wanted things to go smoothly, so I asked for assistance on what to do. However, this game has a lot more potential considering it was made by people from the Ojibwe, thus it could help give insight to new generations of children as we aren’t as far from the boarding school days as many would assume.