Settling the Canadian-American West, 1890-1915

This “anthropological history” tells the story of homesteading and community organization in the Canadian-American West through personal reminiscences and locally written histories. John W. Bennett and Seena B. Kohl interpret those stories through the lenses of history and social science, and they present a view of settlement experience as one phase of the evolving postfrontier society and culture of western North America. Settling the Canadian-American West, 1890–1915 contains a synthesis of Canadian and U.S. settlement experiences giving, to the extent possible, equal space to both sides of the international boundary. The experiences of people in these adjacent territories were virtually identical, with emigrant populations from the same countries and socioeconomic strata. Among other aspects of the homesteading experience, the authors explore the “interactive adaptation” that developed in the West. Networks of mutual aid, reverently remembered by the voices found in these pages, eased the inevitable hardships.