• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

The West was a lawless domain when Jerry Potts was born into the Upper Missouri fur trade in 1838. The son of a Scottish father and a Blood mother, he was given the name Bear Child by his Blood tribe for his bravery and tenacity while he was still a teen. In 1874, when the North West Mounted Police first marched west and sat lost and starving near the Canada-U.S. border, it was Potts who led them to shelter. Over the next 22 years he played a critical role in the peaceful settlement of the Canadian West.

 

Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts tells the story of this legendary character who personifies the turmoil of the frontier in two countries, the clash of two cultures he could call his own, and the strikingly different approaches of two expanding nations as they encroached upon the land of the buffalo and the nomadic tribes of the western Plains.

Rodger D. Touchie was first attracted to writing when his MBA thesis was published in three parts by Canadian Business magazine. Rodger continued writing, including books on BC history and travel, before becoming the owner/publisher of Heritage House in 1995. He and his wife, Pat, divide their time between Nanoose Bay and Victoria, BC.

Rodger D. Touchie's profile page

Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts

Although Bear Child is a biography, it is equally a history of the nineteenth century development of Western Canada, particularly the southwest prairie region. The author weaves the narrative of Jerry Potts’s life as a trader, hunter, scout and interpreter. The book includes the history of the trading empires, the negotiations between the Aboriginal people and their European contacts, the Aboriginal devastation by European diseases, the establishment of the North West Mounted Police, the effects of American policies on Western Canada, the coming of the railway, and the Northwest Rebellion. Sidebars provide additional biographical information, timelines and events.

Touchie has also written Vancouver Island: Portrait of a Past.

Caution: The word “Indian” is used in its historical context.

Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts

Although Bear Child is a biography, it is equally a history of the 19th century development of Western Canada, particularly the southwest prairie region. The author weaves the narrative of Jerry Potts’s life as a trader, hunter, scout and interpreter. The book includes the developmental history of the trading empires, the negotiations between the Aboriginal people and their European contacts, the Aboriginal devastation by European diseases, the establishment of the North West Mounted Police, the effects of American policies on Western Canada, the coming of the railway, and the Northwest Rebellion. Sidebars provide additional biographical information, timelines and events.

Touchie has also written Vancouver Island: Portrait of a Past.

Caution: The word “Indian” is used in its historical context, but not in a derogative or degrading sense.