Sir Cecil Edward Denny, Indian agent, author, and archivist, was also a North West Mounted Police officer. This memoir reveals Denny's sympathy for the Native people - mainly Blackfoot and Cree - as they struggled to adjust to a changing world. Denny's views are not those of today; he believed that assimilation was necessary and supported drastic means, such as residential schools, to achieve it. But he was an advocate of gradual change, not a quick alteration of the Native world to so-called civilization. Today he is remembered as the author of this book, a valuable account of the early years of the NWMP and of his attitudes as one of its officers. Denny's view of the police as responsible for the peaceful settlement of the Canadian west is in accord with, and has actually helped shape, the traditional heroic view of the Riders of the Plains.
