Jemmy Jock Bird: Marginal Man on the Blackfoot Frontier

By John C. Jackson

$24.95 sc
Available Now
ISBN 1-55238-111-0
200 pp.
6" x 9"
18 B&W illustrations, 2 maps

Native Studies/Biography

About the Book

Jemmy Jock Bird, the son of a Cree woman and a mixed-blood trader employed by the Hudson´s Bay Company, has become part of the mythology of the mountain man era. In this creative non-fiction account, Jackson meticulously reconstructs the life of this intriguing individual who was caught between opposing sides of a dual Metis heritage. Closely identified with the Cree and the Peigan, Bird´s trading activities and undercover work as a “confidential servant” of the Hudson´s Bay Company during the competitive period of the fur trade are explored using materials from the Hudson´s Bay Company Archives, the Montana Historical Society, and Birdís descendants living on the American Blackfoot Reserve in Browning. As an interpreter, Bird was later instrumental in negotiating the 1855 Blackfoot peace treaty and the 1877 Canadian Treaty 7. Jackson steeps himself in the sparse documentation of the fur trade era to shed some much-needed light on this historical figure´s adventurous career — one that straddled the international borders of the northern plains and mountain west and touched upon many aspects of western development.

About the Author

For twenty-five years, John C. Jackson has worked as an investigative historian assembling data and background on numerous historical figures that have been overlooked by conventional history. He has published widely on Native history and lives in Olympia, Washington.

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