Sitting Bull's Boss: Above the Medicine Line With James Morrow Walsh

by Ian S. Anderson

James Morrow Walsh can rightfully be called the original Mountie. In late 1873 he led the first troop of scarlet-coated policemen toward the great Canadian prairie. In the summer of 1875 he was assigned to construct Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills above the Canada-U.S. border. Below the border, or medicine line as the Sioux Nation knew it, 15,000 Native Americans were drawn a year later to the camp of Sitting Bull on the Little Bighorn River. By 1877, newspaper headlines from Chicago to New York tweaked the curiosity of millions by referring to Walsh as "Sitting Bull's Boss." The years leading up to those headlines and the times that followed were the most dramatic era in the history of the west.

238 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

By age six, Australian Ian Stuart Anderson already knew what he wanted to be when he grew up — a red-coated Canadian Mountie. By the age of seven, he also knew he wanted to be a writer.

Anderson served in the RCMP for 16 years. He returned to Australia, where he worked as a private investigator and wrote his Scarlet Rider Series - seven novels of the historic North-West Mounted Police, beginning with CORPORAL CAVANNAGH.

He published his first three books in Canada under the name Ian S Anderson. Zebra Books later reprinted the first titles and added four new ones, releasing them under the name "Ian Anderson."

In 2000, he published SITTING BULL'S BOSS, an account of the friendship between the Lakota war chief and Major James Walsh of the Mounted Police.

Reviews

[John Hooker · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1876, not long after the Battle of Little Bighorn, James Walsh rode with just six men into Sitting Bull's camp in Canada to meet with him for the first time. In the council lodge he told the Sioux chiefs all about the laws of the "White Mother" (Queen Victoria) and what would happen to them if they broke any of them. Sitting Bull invited them to dinner and to spend the night at the Sioux camp. The following day, Walsh and his men noticed a war chief and two warriors of the Sioux's allies, the Assiniboines driving a string of stolen horses into the camp. He waved some leg-irons in the face of the war-chief and told him that he was going to confiscate the horses. Walsh and his men rode out of the Sioux camp taking the stolen horses with them. You will have to read the book to discover how Walsh was able to accomplish such an unlikely feat.

The rebuilt Fort Walsh (which was given its name even before Walsh started to build it) lies in south-western Saskatchewan near the Alberta border at the eastern end of the Cypress Hills. There is something very peaceful about the area. I remember thinking it would be nice to live there. In my home town of Calgary, some of the names in Anderson's book have been given to local places: McLeod, Crowfoot, names from that time that are familiar to every Calgarian. And we all retain some of the attitudes of Walsh and his men: a certain independence of spirit, a distrust of the distant Federal Government.

Anderson came out here to join the Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). James Walsh is sometimes called "the first Mountie". Back then, there was no Alberta or Saskatchewan. It was all in the Northwest Territories and the RCMP was the North West Mounted Police.

Walsh liked to be called "Major or "Captain" by his men rather than "Inspector". He was more soldier and statesman than policeman. The Sioux called him "The White Forehead Chief" because the brim of his hat kept his forehead from getting as tanned as the rest of his face. Long after their first meeting, Sitting Bull presented Walsh with his own war-bonnet.

Ian Anderson's book is not just a thoroughly enjoyable history of that time, it also reveals how that history has been absorbed into the attitudes of the people of this area and how Walsh's spirit still lives within the RCMP. I worked as an operative for the RCMP Security Services (Canadian Intelligence) back in the early seventies. It was disbanded, soon afterwards, by the Federal Government because of its rather "independent" way of doing things. That independent attitude started with James Morrow Walsh. If you are familiar with the RCMP and my geographical area, you will realize how it all came about from reading this book. Mark Twain said "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes". Sitting Bull's Boss confirms that. If you are not familiar with these things you will think about other related historical events and how they might have been handled better.

It is the sort of book you will want to read more than just once.

John Hooker

[Brian Burhoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

While working on an article about the friendship between Sitting Bull and Inspector James Walsh of the Mounties for Wild West Magazine, Anderson decided to “broaden the article into a book.” The result was "SITTING BULL’S BOSS: Above the Medicine Line with James Morrow Walsh," Heritage House, 2000, an excellent study of the subject...

For more, see "The GREATEST AUTHORS OF NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE FICTION" at https://www.CivilizedBears.com/Greate...