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Paul F. Sharp's book Whoop Up Country focused on the way of life of the people located near the Whoop Up Trail. The Whoop Up Trail connected Fort Benton in Montana and Fort Macleod in Alberta, Canada. The lives of these two prairie towns evolved greatly over time. Beginning with the Whiskey Trading that took place illegally amongst the Native Americans in the area. This trade was frowned upon by Easterners as well as the more law abiding locals and often had atleast a small part (or huge part) in causing conflicts between the traders and the Natives that were being robbed. Along with the practice of horse stealing that was never really understood by whites events such as the Cyprus Hills Massacr, episodes of extreme violence, broke out in Whoop Up Country. These events showed a great need for some sort of law enforcement on this plains. Vigilante justice was common on the frontier, where angered citizens would take the law in their own hands, often without trial, and usually brutal in their tactics. This situation appalled people in the more "civilized" east and in Canada led to the creation of the Northwest Mounted Police. A force of Canada's finest military and police personel that was trained and eventually sent went in hopes of closing down the whiskey forts in the West. This force was trained with the expectations of a war with the whiskey traders. Oddly enough, however, they met little resistance besides the fact that they were ill prepared for the journey west and had little experience with the frontier and barely survived the trek. With the institution of law in the West the two forts were allowed to create a more civilized culture on the plains. Town leaders in Fort Benton began to take the steps to create what they called "Chicago of the Plains." This attempt at civilization was often difficult with the very little traffic that entered the town being made up of stagecoaches hauling freight and often citizens heading towards the west coast. Despite this Fort Benton became the last outpost before the Rockies and developed into a strong city with a hotel a paper and many other business. The final battles with Native Americans and borders however were not at an end. The Indian Wars on the Plains raged on with Custer and the Big Horn and The Canadian Mounted Police felt the need to guard their border against the Americans, who were rumored to be planning attacks into Canada against Sitting Bull's forces and later annexationist visions aimed more to the North in hopes of making Canada another state in the United States. This relationship exists today with diplimacy and unfortunately still many missunderstandings between the people across the 49th Parallel.

My favorite part of this book was the Narratives. Sharp does a good job of including the often humorous stories of the people that inhabited these two forts. My favorite story involved a wagon of one barrel of flour and forty barrels of whiskey, which led an inhabitant of Fort Benton to question, "what in the world do they want with all that flour?" These stories made the book very readable and allowed the reader to learn the history of this tumultuous area all the while feeling like he was reading a work of fiction. Another interesting part to me was the journey of the Mounted Police west. It seemed hard to believe that a planned and trained force for a specific purpose could be so ill prepared for their exact mission, yet through sheer guts and determination managed to finish their journey and rid the area of the whiskey forts that mark a dark past and give the Whoop Up Country its name.