"In Blackfoot Crossing," the author says, "I have tried to take an honest look at a period so obscured by hokum and flag-waving, that it may shock those with preconceived ideas about the winning of the Canadian West. Not all of my white men are models of altruism, and my Indians are also human beings. The imaginary episodes are wound in and around real people, places and events which took place prior to, during and immediately after the occupation of what is now southern Alberta by the North West Mounted Police. It is perhaps several stories within one. Of course, it is a love story wherein two young people seek and find fulfilment in one another. It is also the story of a people who had to face, in 1874, the very things we ourselves may face tomorrow. We had then the actuality of man confronted by aliens far more powerful and advanced than he was. Man, whose deep-rooted and cherished beliefs are suddenly discarded; man, whose life-long conditioning to his environment is useless and whose existence is swiftly and irrevocably altered. And so it is, too, the story of Crowfoot, the man who faced all this and tried to find an answer.