Arc of the Medicine Line

[cefil]

Arc of the Medicine Line: Mapping the World's Longest Undefended Border Across the Western Plains, by Tony Rees (University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

From the jacket:

Today the borderland between Canada and the United States is a wide, empty sweep of wheat fields and pasture, measured by a grid of gravel roads that sees little traffic and few people who do not make their lives there. It has been much this way for more than a century now, but there was a moment when the great silence shrouding this place was broken, and that moment changed it forever. Arc of the Medicine Line is a compelling narrative of that moment—the completion of the official border between the United States and Canada in 1874.

In late July of 1874, the Sweetgrass Hills sheltered the greatest accumulation of scientists, teamsters, scouts, cooks, and soldiers to be seen in this part of the world before the coming of the railways. The men of the boundary commissions — American, British, and Canadian — established an astronomical station and the last of their supply depots as they prepared to draw the Medicine Line across the final hundred of the nearly nine hundred miles between Manitoba’s Lake of the Woods and the Continental Divide. In the brief weeks the surveyors and soldiers spent in Milk River country, they witnessed, and played a singular part in, the beginning of the end for the open West. That hot, dry summer of 1874 marked the outside world’s final assault on this last frontier.

Reno commanded the military escort, which included two Companies of the Seventh: Weir's Company D and Keogh/Porter's Company I (Keogh missed the second season while on extended leave to visit family in Ireland).

This looks like an interesting study of events to the north during, among other things, Custer's trip through the Black Hills.

cefil

[elisabeth]

Hey, thanks for posting this, cefil -- I've wished for ages that there was more in print on this episode. Till now, all I'd been able to find was that one chapter or so in Nichols' In Custer's Shadow, and a fairly brief section in the Elliott Coues biography. This looks great.

From various Canadian websites, it seems the book covers the whole enterprise from 1872 through to the completion of the survey in 1874, so we might, with luck, get a reasonable Keogh presence after all. Should be fascinating for the non-Keoghcentric among us as well, though; it's sure to throw some light on Reno, and maybe on what condition Weir was in during those years, and how well or otherwise Porter handled Co. I on his own. Also on these two companies' interactions with Indians, especially while in winter quarters at Fort Totten; the priest there ran a school for the local Sioux, so D's and I's experience of Indians at this time will have been in striking contrast to Custer's Yellowstone activities. And ... well, the whole thing's going to be quite riveting. Great stuff.

Incidentally, while Amazon.com has it on pre-order, for release at the end of August, its earlier edition is readily available from the Canadian and UK versions of Amazon (as I've just discovered, to my delight). So for anyone impatient to get hold of a copy right away, that's where to go!

[cefil]

Unfortunately, Elisabeth, your hopes for a reasonable Keogh presence will be disappointed. He only garners three brief mentions: once when he's listed as the commander of Company I in 1873; again when he's mentioned as being away on extended leave in 1874; and finally, in the epilogue, as a casualty at LBH in 1876.

Reno, however, gets a fair amount of ink...from his disputes with Coues (which led to a quickly-dropped challenge to a duel by the latter), to his AWOL escapade in late '73 - early '74, to the denial of his request for leave to attend his wife's funeral. All in all, a portrait of a lonely, unhappy man.

By the way, Amazon.com has two listings for the book: the "pre-order" listing you mentioned (which, for some odd reason, shows the book not being available until August), and an "in-stock" listing showing the book as available for shipping now:

tinyurl.com/663cx9

(I ordered from this link, and the book arrived last week.)

cefil

[elisabeth]

Ah well ... thanks for the warning, anyway! At least I won't be shocked and disappointed when my copy arrives.

Glad to hear it's got plenty on the Reno/Coues feud, though, and Reno's other excesses. Great.

I think the answer to the two listings may be that it was originally published by Douglas & McIntyre, and this University of Nebraska printing due out in August must be a second edition ...

[elisabeth]

It arrived this morning. Excellent book.

Not heavy on 7th Cavalry stuff, as its main focus is the British/Canadian side of the survey; the American side is covered in due detail too, but is much less rich in letter and diary excerpts. What it does illuminate is (a) the conditions they all had to cope with, and (b) exactly who was where, when, which is useful stuff to have ... Apart from that, little direct 7th Cav. interest (Reno's troubles are of course covered much more fully in the Nichols book) but a most fascinating story none the less.

Glad you alerted us to it.

There must surely be scope now for someone to do a book or paper on this episode specifically from a U.S. perspective. Even if there's not much to go on in the way of private letters etc. -- and from what Rees says about sources, it sounds as if most of the available U.S. records are official NARA stuff, with no treasure-trove of letters or diaries known -- there has to be something to be gleaned from, say, Reno's reports and orders. For instance, was Weir behaving himself, or were there already signs of his decline? Did everything go like clockwork, or were there deserters, punishments, men put in confinement, etc.? An image of the day-to-day workings of a unit under Reno's command could help form a more rounded picture of his abilities and state of mind, perhaps. We've got the fretful report about troopers being used to help surveyors, we've got the Coues spat, we've got the AWOL episode ... but there must be more, one would think? Hope somebody tackles it, one of these days.

[tonyrees]

I tripped over these posts while Googling something else related to my book. Thanks for the kind comments!

There seems to be some confusion regarding availability:

The Canadian version, published by Douglas & McIntyre, and the U.S. version, published by the University of Nebraska Press, are identical. It's not a second edition.

As to the "available" dates shown on Amazon.com, I'm at a loss to explain why one entry says March and another says August. As far as I know, it was released by Nebraska in March. I've asked my Canadian publisher to look into the matter and get a definitive answer.

As you have pointed out, the book does not treat the commissions' military escorts in any great detail. This is probably because they saw no serious action.

I guess I was more interested in looking at the ways in which the presence of military escorts revealed differences in the U.S. and Canadian/American attitudes toward the indigenous peoples along the 49th Parallel.

[tonyrees]

Oops! First post -- first mistake: Obviously, I meant to write "...U.S. and Canadian/British attitudes..."

[markland]

Jun 10, 2008 1:17:30 GMT -6 tonyrees said:

Oops! First post -- first mistake: Obviously, I meant to write "...U.S. and Canadian/British attitudes..."

Tony, with the two endorsements from respected board members and your presence, inadvertent perhaps, you have sold another book.

Be good,

Billy

[cefil]

Tony:

Thanks for stopping by...Your book is a terrific read, and a fascinating glimpse at an all-too-little known (well, to me, at least) episode in the history of the Northern Plains. (Do you call them the Southern Plains in Canada??)

cefil

[tonyrees]

Cefil:

Thanks for your kind remarks.

The whole business of nomenclature is a real minefield for anyone writing about the North American west, particularly if one is writing for audiences on both sides of the border.

The most obvious problem is, of course, that Canada uses the metric system while the US retains the "old" imperial measures. I chose to use the old system since that's what the surveyors used, but for any contemporary subject, it is a genuine annoyance and I hate texts clogged with parenthetical conversions. They can also become ridiculous where idioms are concerned. I have actually seen things like "Walk a mile (1.61km) in my shoes."

The names of the aboriginal peoples are troublesome, too. In the US, they are "Blackfeet", in Canada, "Blackfoot". Similarly, there are "Peigan" north of the 49th., but "Piegan" on the south side. In the US, they live on "reservations", in Canada they are "reserves".

It seems a little thing, but if a writer is seriously concerned about the literary quality of his work, it is an issue that must be addressed somehow. I guess a similar question would be how should a British writer, writing about the US, spell "tyres" and "kerbs".

As for the short answer to your actual question, Canadians don't usually use the word "plains" at all. We call that part of the west the "prairies" (and know Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta as "the Prairie Provinces") even though, to be biologically and meteorologically accurate, they aren't prairies at all. Their southern halves are the northern limits of the great plains while their northern halves are mostly parkland. And on and on it goes...

Suffice to say, anyone who is planning to write a work of fiction or non-fiction which he hopes will be read across the border (or the Atlantic) needs to make some difficult decisions very early in the process. Otherwise, both the editorial and literary consequences can be dire.