Living with Strangers: The Nineteenth-Century Sioux and the Canadian-American Borderlands

Living with Strangers: The Nineteenth-Century Sioux and the Canadian-American Borderlands

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David G. McCrady
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division © 2009
World Rights
200 Pages
Paper
ISBN 9781442609907
Published Nov 2009
$21.95
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Now in paperback, Living with Strangers tells the story of the Sioux who moved into the Canadian-American borderlands in the later years of the nineteenth century. David G. McCrady's award-winning study crosses national boundaries to examine how Native peoples on both sides of the border reacted to the arrival of the Sioux. Using material from archives across North America, including Canadian and American government documents, Lakota winter counts, and oral histories, McCrady reveals that the nineteenth-century Sioux acted with spirited self-interest across the Canadian-American border.

The Sioux's shifting tactical use of the Canada-United States boundary helped them to create cross-border trading competitions, to open negotiations with both governments to determine which country would accord them better treatment, and to use the border as a shield in times of war with the United States. Living with Strangers takes readers beyond the traditional dichotomy of the Canadian and the American West to reveal significant and previously unknown strands in Sioux history.

David G. McCrady is an independent historian living in Winnipeg.

CONTENTS

 List of Illustrationix
 Prefacexi
 A Note on Sioux
Groups and Leaders		xv
1.Introduction:
Partitioning Sioux History		1
2.From Contested Ground
to Borderlands, 1752-1862		8
3.The Dakota Conflict of 1862
and the Migration to the
Plains Borderlands		17
4.The Migration of the Sioux
to the Milk River Country		31
5.The Sioux, the Surveyors, and the
North-West Mounted Police, 1872-1874		49
6.The Great Sioux War, 1876-187761
7.The Lakotas and Métis
atWood Mountain, 1876-1881		76
8.The Failure of Peace
in Canada, 1878-1881		86
9.Overview: The Northern Borderlands103
 Notes115
 Bibliography145
 Index159

'There is much to compliment in Living with Strangers. It shifts the historical border focus from Canada-United States national studies by uncovering northern Sioux border history and explaining tribal relationship with the international boundary.'

Richmond L. Clow, Journal of American History

'Living with Strangers serves as a valuable corrective lens to the national blinkers that limit some historians' vision. It suggests the need for further studies of Native peoples divided by European-imposed boundaries in North America and on other continents.'

William A. Dobak, American Indian Culture and Research Journal

'This [book] will work well for courses on the Northern Plains, the North American West, and Native American/First Nations history. Especially useful for class settings will be the introductory and concluding chapters that spell out reasons to study comparative and transnational history ... [Living with Strangers] presents a deep sense of place and adds significantly to historians' growing understanding of the borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests.'

Sterling Evans, American Historical Review

'In this intensively researched and tightly executed book, David McCrady illuminates important aspects of the much-neglected history of Sioux people living in the Canadian-American borderlands in the late-nineteenth century ... Living With Strangers not only makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the Sioux, it challenges all historians of North America to overcome the limitations of remaining on one side of the continent's national borders.'

Jeffrey Ostler, Western Historical Quarterly