Rainy Lake House: Twilight of Empire on the Northern Frontier

In September 1823, three men met at Rainy Lake House, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post near the Boundary Waters. Drawing on their combined experiences, Theodore Catton creates a vivid depiction of the beautiful and dangerous northern frontier from a collision of vantage points: American, British, and Indian; imperial, capital, and labor; explorer, trader, and hunter. Catton deftly crafts one grand narrative out of three and reveals the perilous lives of the white adventurers and their Indian families, who lived on the fringe of empire.. At the center of this

He is the author of Inhabited Wilderness: Indians, Eskimos, and Alaska’s National Parks and American Indians and National Forests.. Theodore Catton is an associate research professor of history at the University of Montana

"CATTON DOES IN THIS BOOK WHAT CONSCIENTIOUS HISTORIANS DO WELL" "CATTON DOES IN THIS BOOK WHAT CONSCIENTIOUS HISTORIANS DO WELL" 4-1/2) David Keymer CATTON, Theodore. Rainy Lake House: Thoughts of Empire on the Northern Frontier. Johns Hopkins. 2017. 432p, illus., maps, notes, index.Catton, associate research professor of history at the University of Montana, is the author of several books on the Old West, exploring our country’s national park system and forests and early relations with the indigenous natives. This book builds on his earlier published work but significantly expands the focus. Catton does in this book what conscientious historians do well: he takes an app. -1/2) CATTON, Theodore. Rainy Lake House: Thoughts of Empire on the Northern Frontier. Johns Hopkins. 2017. "CATTON DOES IN THIS BOOK WHAT CONSCIENTIOUS HISTORIANS DO WELL" 4-1/2) David Keymer CATTON, Theodore. Rainy Lake House: Thoughts of Empire on the Northern Frontier. Johns Hopkins. 2017. 432p, illus., maps, notes, index.Catton, associate research professor of history at the University of Montana, is the author of several books on the Old West, exploring our country’s national park system and forests and early relations with the indigenous natives. This book builds on his earlier published work but significantly expands the focus. Catton does in this book what conscientious historians do well: he takes an app. 32p, illus., maps, notes, index.Catton, associate research professor of history at the University of Montana, is the author of several books on the Old West, exploring our country’s national park system and forests and early relations with the indigenous natives. This book builds on his earlier published work but significantly expands the focus. Catton does in this book what conscientious historians do well: he takes an app. Jean Baldridge Yates said Rainy Lake House. Take special note of the title's second part: Twilight of Empire on the Northern Frontier. It will afford you a further glimpse into what this very thorough book is about.Rainy Lake House was a fur trading post which was most active on the border of Canada and the United States during the period of the late 1700s and the early 1800s.It was a place where the three main characters in this book, Dr. John McLoughlin, a Scottish native of Quebec and proprietor of Rainy Lake House, Major Stephen H. Long (who was an explorer for the US w. Fascinating read, dense but very accessible to the general reader I took this book because of my fascination and familiarity with the Boundary Waters. This is much more than a regional history. It is the story of 3 very different men from vastly disparate circumstances and how they intersect at a point in time. This book is a slow read but an enjoyable one; it is quite dense with information but the author has outdone himself to make that fact based content engaging. I learned a ton not only about the border region between Canada and the US but also about my state of WI and the whole Great Lakes

In this marvelously crafted book, he uses a quarrel over the custody of children in the early nineteenth century to reveal the fraying of the hybrid Indian/white world of the lands neighboring the Great Lakes. Written with clarity and energy, this book tells its story through the remarkable device of a triple biography." (Gregory Evans Dowd, author of Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier)"Catton makes me think that there must be a gene for historical writing. This is a deeply human story of a nineteenth-century world that was in the midst of great change. A compelling, surprising, and dramatic account that reads like historical fiction." (Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815) . "A journey into the complicated env