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The “Medicine Line” was the name used by the Blackfoot to describe the American-Canadian border. John G. Spragge, a pilot who has lived in both the United States and Canada, writes, “Natives called the border between Canada and the United States the Medicine Line, because during the 19th century Indian wars American troops respected it as if by magic.”
“Fools Crow,” by James Welch, is a novel set in 1870 Montana. The book describes the lives of the southern Blackfoot, especially Fools Crow and his tribe, known as the Lone Eaters. Fools Crow eventually becomes the leader of the tribe.
“Fools Crow” received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and American Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
Reviewer Walter Stegner called it “a major contribution to Native American literature.” Lowell Jaeger, of the Flathead Valley Reservation, called “Fools Crow” rare and wonderful, because it portrayed Native American peoples as complex, in comparison to the stereotypes of Natives as “noble savages” or the bloodthirsty villains who “shot flaming arrows into Conestogas.” Dee Brown (“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”) said “Fools Crow” may be “the closest we will ever come in literature to an understanding of what life was like for a western Indian.”
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