Kootenai Brown: Canada's Unknown Frontiersman

Michael Payne is head of the research and publications program, Historic
Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Develop- ment, and
co-author of A Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

This biography of John George “Kootenai” Brown was first published
in 1969. At the time it won several awards for nonfiction writing, but
in some respects this biography has not worn well. For example, it
offers a rather simplistic analysis of the Métis in 1869–70, and on
several occasions it suggests that Indians and Métis had an innate
reluctance to farm. An introduction placing this reprint in
historiographical context would have been helpful.

That said, there is still much to commend this book, and it is easy to
see why it was so well received when it was first published. Rodney is a
skilful biographer, and he brings a healthy skepticism to his account of
Kootenai Brown’s life and of the tall tales that have grown up around
him. Although the cover suggests that Brown might be a Canadian Davy
Crockett or Daniel Boone, this book is a more careful exercise in
biography than are most accounts of Crockett or Boone.

Kootenai Brown began his career in the British army in 1857, but with
few prospects of promotion he sold his commission and traveled first to
Panama and then to British Columbia in 1862 in search of gold. When gold
eluded him, he traveled across the Rockies in 1865 and became the
consummate plainsman. At various times he worked as an express rider for
the U.S. army, a buffalo and wolf hunter, a guide, and a trader. In
later years he settled on land in what is now Waterton National Park. He
was not entirely a wilderness man, however, and he played a key role in
the first oil boom in Alberta, which occurred near Cameron Lake in
1889–90. Clearly concerned by the results of this boom, Brown was then
instrumental in having perhaps Canada’s most beautiful mountain park
set aside as a wilderness reserve. In his final years, Brown served as
the park ranger in Waterton, becoming an early and effective advocate of
wildlife conservation before his death in 1916. His was, as Rodney
concludes, “a full and fascinating life.”