Even w/ a clear desert sky hundreds of miles from the nearest city (e.g. middle of Nevada), the sky looks nothing like these pictures. Astrophotography uses exposure times many multiples--and usually several orders of magnitude--longer than the human eye.

Can you see the Milkyway? No, not really; not without prompting. If you have no idea what to look for, the disc is just a barely imperceptible, slight increase in otherwise meager (relative to astrophotographs) star density. I've never seen it, nor other constellations, because I don't really know what to look for, though I've spent many hours staring up at the sky from various places, including extremely remote desert and mountain locales--Western U.S., Northern Mexico, Mongolia, Ecuador, Chile, etc.

Of course, there's no way to understand the awe and wonderment somebody lacking our knowledge, experience, and expectations may have experienced. Especially if they had never seen an astrophotograph.

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if astrology, navigation, and astronomy might have developed more slowly if the human eye had greater fidelity. With only several thousand stars visible (much fewer readily discernible, especially if you're not an adolescent w/ fresh corneas), the motion of stars probably stands out more. Imagine trying to recognize and track the planets on a background as dense as an astrophotograph. Where to start? Would you even recognize the relative motion? People had much fewer distractions during nighttime back then, but it still seems substantially more daunting.