George Colpitts presents us with a fascinating study of the pemmican trade on the northern prairies and plains stretching west from the Red River of the North and Lake Winnipeg. This study brings the pemmican trade, often treated as an adjunct of the nineteenth-century fur trade in Western Canada, to the center of the region’s economic, cultural, and environmental histories. From a bioregional perspective, such an approach is understandable, because the trade for pelts and hides on Canada’s Great Plains was not as enduring as the pemmican trade. Indeed, as the fur trade moved west and north into more promising fur territories in the Rocky Mountains and the subarctic, bison remained the caloric engine of that trade by providing the rations necessary to sustain traders in relatively inhospitable conditions.
One of the values of this study, according to the author, is that it allows for a comparison of the commercial...
