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

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 Bulls Boss.” The years leading up to those headlines and the times that followed were the most dramatic era in the history of the west.