Interesting and informative!

This book was an incredibly interesting and informative synthesis of historical, archeological, and anthropological sources that painted a vivid picture of life in and around Fort Clark during the mid-nineteenth century. Topics of particular interest that it explored include Indigenous agriculture as practiced by the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara and the continued "French" presence in the Missouri fur trade even after the withdrawal of the HBC and Nor'West companies.

Having said that, for a book that purports to discuss the fort as a sort of "contact zone", relatively little attention is paid to the hybrid cultures that occupied the space, or how they informed individual experiences. Historical in this personages are generally parsed as either "Euro-American" or "Indian". This is problematic, as many of the "French" and "Canadians" named in the narrative are, in fact, of mixed descent. These include individuals like Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Peter Garrioch, Alexander Kennedy, and "Halcrow", and the members of the Bellehumeur family (to name a few). Charbaneau aside, all of these individuals are Métis, though so much is never mentioned. Similarly, although the authors mention that Fort Clark and its contemporaries absorbed many employees who had formerly worked for the HBC and Nor'West Company following their merger, the staff at the Fort are generally characterized as "Euro-Americans" living far from their homes. Analysis of employee rosters in other fur trade milieus does not bear this out. By 1829, over half of the HBC's staff were local Métis or Indians, and there is no reason to think that number was significantly different in the Missouri, /especially/ if fur interests in this region absorbed a significant proportion of individuals who had worked for the Nor'West Company prior to 1821. In addition to the Métis, other hybrid communities, such as the Muskrat French and French-Sioux, were known to have been active in the upper Great Lakes and along the Missouri. As such, life at the fort was likely to have been more hybrid than is portrayed in this text. The authors can be excused for this, as even scholars familiar with Western Canadian history often mischaracterize Métis individuals as "white" unless their ethnicity is explicated. However, this does not change the fact that dealing with historical actors almost exclusively as "Euro-American" or "Indian" results in the significant loss of narrative nuance.

Regarding the performance, between the southern accent (which seems out of place in a narrative set in the Upper Missouri), and constant mispronunciations, particularly of French words, it was a challenge to get through. Notwithstanding these critiques, the text itself is well worthwhile.

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