The medicine line

by Beth LaDow

Along the border between Montana and Saskatchewan lies one hundred miles of hard and desolate terrain, a remote place where Native and new American nations came together in a contest for land, wealth, and survival. Following explorers Lewis and Clark and Alexander Mackenzie, both Americans and Canadians launched the process of empire along the 49th parallel, disrupting the lives of Native peoples who began to traverse this imaginary line in search of refuge. In this evocative and beautifully rendered portrait, Beth LaDow recreates the unstable world along this harsh frontier, capturing the complex history of a borderland known as "the medicine line" to the Indians who lived there. When Sitting Bull crossed the boundary for the last time in 1881, weary of pursuit by the U.S. cavalry and the constant threat of starvation, the region opened up to railroad men and settlers, determined to make a living. But the unforgiving landscape would resist repeated attempts to subdue it, from the sche