Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 21

Whisky, Horses and Death:
The Cypress Hills Massacre and its Sequel

by Philip Goldring

Abstract

For about three years before the establishment of Fort Walsh in 1875, the Cypress Hills had been a haven for whisky traders. Their activities are chiefly remembered for the slaughter inflicted in 1873 on a band of Assiniboine by some of the traders and a passing band of white men from Montana. The immediate cause of the massacre was the supposed theft of a trader's horse, but the case gave rise to wide controversy about the value and application of the law to native peoples on the frontier of white trade and settlement.

Submitted for publication 1973, by Philip Goldring, National Historic Parks and Site Branch, Ottawa.