The Last Buffalo Hunter is one of the few surviving oral accounts of the old North-West during the late nineteenth century, providing a valuable record of the spirit and romance of a way of life that ended with the demise of the once-vast buffalo herds.

Mary Weekes first Norbert Welsh - whose colourful life story is told here in his own words - in 1931 when he was eighty-seven. She was enthralled by this blind old man who had "a memory crowded with stories that belonged to the making of the West." He agreed to let her write about his experiences, and for the next several months Weekes recorded Welsh's tales about his life as a prominent Red River trader and buffalo hunter.

Originally published in 1939 and long out of print, this new edition of The Last Buffalo Hunter makes Norbert Welsh's life story available once again to a wide audience.

Born in Tracadie, Nova Scotia, in 1884, Mary Loretta Weekes (nee Gerin) trained as a nurse at Boston City Hospital in 1910. She served briefly at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital before moving to Regina with her husband in 1914. Following the birth of the first of three sons, she turned her hand to writing short stories. Her interview with Norbert Welsh in 1931 led to the book The Last Buffalo Hunter (1939), and her interview with William Cornwallis King in 1936 culminated in Trader King. Weekes's other books include Round Council Fires, Painted Arrows, and Great Chiefs and Mighty Hunters. Mary Weekes died in 1980.

Mary Weekes' profile page