The Banker and the Blackfoot: An Untold Story of Friendship, Trust, and Broken Promises in the Old West by Edward Chamberlin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Banker and the Blackfoot: An Untold Story of Friendship, Trust, and Broken Promises in the Old West by Edward Chamberlin David M. Craig The Banker and the Blackfoot: An Untold Story of Friendship, Trust, and Broken Promises in the Old West. By J. Edward Chamberlin. Katonah, NY: BlueBridge; Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2018. 233 pp. Illustrations, sources and endnotes, index. $24.95, cloth. J. Edward Chamberlin, professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at the University of Toronto, recounts the friendship between Jack Cowdry and Crop Eared Wolf in order to tell the story of Fort Macleod, Alberta, and the High Plains borderlands between 1885 and 1905. The friendship at the heart of this study began one spring day in 1885 on the town's main street with their conversation about horses and what brought Cowdry to Blackfoot territory. Cowdry had come to Fort Macleod with hopes, but no specific plans. [End Page 334] Inspired by a rancher friend's stories about his 300-mile journey to Helena, Montana, to go to a bank, Cowdry started Fort Macleod's first bank and thus became important to the region's prosperity. Crop Eared Wolf, who would become chief of the Blood tribe, had come to town from the nearby Blood Reserve, one of three reserves resulting from the 1877 Treaty Seven between the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Canadian government. For Cowdry, who became a much-respected mayor, the territory and town were the common homeland for the Blackfoot and the settlers during the critical years when openrange cattle ranching had replaced the buffalo. Chamberlain, who is Cowdry's grandson, argues that the settlers and the Blackfoot could have realized the spirit of Treaty Seven as they tried to fashion a commonwealth, but their efforts were undone by Ottawa's broken promises. Chamberlin, formerly a senior research associate with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, skillfully interweaves the history and customs of the Blackfoot, especially of the Sun Dance, as the tapestry against which Cowdry and Crop Eared Wolf's friendship emerges. He includes chapters on Treaty Seven, the North-West Rebellion of the Métis, and the residential school system, which was so destructive to the First Nations' culture. The quirt (riding whip) that Crop Eared Wolf gave Cowdry embodied their friendship, its Blackfoot iconography recording the warrior's tribal heritage and his own horseraiding exploits. The quirt became for Cowdry a promise whose terms were never explained, but when understood and kept could "redeem" the future. In explicating the quirt and its gift as stories, Chamberlin personalizes the thesis of his praised book, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Chamberlin's affectionate account of Cowdry and his friendship with Crop Eared Wolf is limited by its sources—family stories and reminiscences. While he can describe climbing into his grandfather's lap to hear these stories, he does not have the necessary resources to illuminate his heroes' inner lives. Instead Chamberlin invokes Owen Wister's The Virginian, whose protagonist is based upon an Alberta cowboy whom Jack Cowdry knew, to depict his grandfather's values and motivations, thereby romanticizing a crucial element of this account of the Old West. David M. Craig Department of English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages Montana State University Billings Copyright © 2021 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln