MUST SEE, MUST READ
SAM STEELE: A BIOGRAPHY
(2018, by Rod Macleod): Born with a name dime novelist Ned Buntline might have made up, Samuel Benfield Steele was among the founding fathers of the North-West Mounted Police, and his own exploits helped make it legendary. Macleod’s extensive research adds more to the overall life of the larger-than-life Mountie who preferred to keep his private life private.
BOOKS
The Great Adventure: How the Mounties Conquered the West (1996, by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths): If the colonization of Canada seems like the “Mild West” compared to the violent bloodbaths taking place south of the border, Ottawa largely has the North-West Mounted Police to thank. The husband-and-wife writing team Cruise and Griffiths describe that first critical 900-mile trek by 300 Mounties to establish authority in southern Alberta.
Sitting Bull: The Years in Canada (1973, by Grant MacEwan): For four years—May 5, 1877, to July 10, 1881—shaman Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa Lakota followers sought sanctuary in “Grandmother’s Country” (so named in honor of British Queen Victoria). There the victors over George A. Custer got along better with white authorities than with Canada’s First Nations tribes before making their fateful return to the United States.
Prairie Fire: The 1885 North-West Rebellion (1994, by Bob Beal and Rod Macleod): The largest, bloodiest conflict in the Canadian West pitted Louis Riel and his Franco-Indian Métis against the Canadian army, with some First Nations caught up in the violence. Prairie Fire offers a fair perspective on all parties involved in the nation-defining clash.
Gabriel Dumont Speaks (2009, translated by Michael Barnholden): Illiterate but able to speak Lakota, Cree, Blackfoot, Crow, French and English, Dumont dictated his memoir to friends in 1903. It stands as the sole firsthand account of a legendary buffalo hunter, Louis Riel’s adjutant-general during the North-West Rebellion and the “Prince of the Prairies” in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West.
ON-SCREEN
(1940, Paramount Pictures): Gary Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who trails an outlaw to Saskatchewan, where both get caught up in the North-West Rebellion. Francis Mc-Donald turns up as Louis Riel, Walter Hampden as Big
