It seems rather difficult to make sense of the postures about American international relations these days. History doesn’t offer any real lessons, but recalling previous border tensions might help give us some perspective on how Canada and the United States have charted their relationship.
The basic outline of the Cypress Hills Massacre should be relatively well-known to many readers of Borealia. In the late spring summer of 1873, a band of roughly twelve men left Fort Benton, Montana, in pursuit of “Indian” horse thieves. Travelling more than 250 kilometres north to the prairie oasis called Cypress Hills. There they encountered, threatened, and finally opened fire on a band of Assiniboine encamped in a coulee. Roughly thirty people were killed, and is reputed to be one of the most violent episodes of Canada’s annexation of the Northwest. Its exceptionality was explained by historians north and south of the border as American.
The men from Fort Benton, known to posterity as “American wolfers,” were in fact a mixed group. The involvement of “Canadians” in this group is an underappreciated aspect of this history. Did the news really spark a wave of anti-Americanism? The chronology is significant.
When they returned to Fort Benton news of the murder gradually trickled out through the newspapers and government channels. Negative characterizations of the killings did not begin until 1875 when the efforts by North-West Mounted Police to bring the men to justice were frustrated. News did not reach British officials until August 1873, two months after the event. The kneejerk reaction was to dismiss it. The Manitoba Free Press only reported on the killings in late August, and the initial Canadian public opinion matched American. In this era, the murder of Indigenous peoples along the border was not a legal issue and was dismissed.
Of greater contemporary interest was the criminal career of the Lord Gordon Gordon. In 1873, the papers were full of his adventures. Canada refused to deliver the notorious fraud artist wanted by the US government. This led to a kidnapping attempt, which was foiled when the “Manitoba police” arrested the kidnappers. In response, the Minnesotan militia nearly invaded Manitoba under the direction of the governor. The affair was resolved only when Gordon shot himself in Headingly just west of Winnipeg in August 1874. This context may have impacted American coolness towards extradition in 1875.