This is the story of Irish-born Henry Ross Halpin, who by the age of 16 began a long association with the fur trade and Canada's native peoples, was thrice employed by the Hudson's Bay Company, and became an Indian agent (18851901). Halpin's work took him from Fort Garry, Manitoba, to Fort York on the shores of the Hudson Bay, and across the Prairies to British Columbia. This book is based on Halpin's previously unpublished menoirs, Hudson's Bay Company post journals and correspondence, the 1885 Rebellion trials where Halpin was a witness, and the reports and correspondence of the Department of Indian Affairs.

Editor David R. Elliott lives in Parkhill, Ontario, and is an authority on Western Canadian history and the fur trade. His great aunt, Annie Elliott, was Halpin's first wife. Halpin was an Indian agent at the time of his first marriage in 1886.