Gifts from the Thunder Beings: Indigenous Archery and European Firearms in the Northern Plains and the Central Subarctic, 1670–1870

Abstract

Historians have long debated the impact of European technology, firearms in particular, on native peoples in North America. Roland Bohr's Gifts from the Thunder Beings is a promising new entry into this field. The heart of the book is a comparative analysis of “Indigenous and European distance weapons in big game hunting and combat from the beginning of the fur trade in the Hudson's Bay Company territory” over roughly a century from the late eighteenth century to the 1870s (p. xi). The primary subjects of the book are the Omushkego (Swampy) Cree, a subarctic native people, and the Blackfoot peoples of the northern … Language: en