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Paul Sharp's Whoop-Up Country is about the Whoop-Up Trail and why it was so important to the Great Plains. This trail ran east of the Rockie Mountains and connected Canada and the American West. It was a trading route for many fur traders and Indians. The major trading site was Fort Benton. This fort was built in the 1840s by the American Fur Company and was located near present day Great Falls, MT. Fort Benton was not able to be constructed until the 1840s because of the Blackfeet Indians. The Blackfeet were feared by all and were troublesome until the early 1860s. Traders used the fort to trade with the Indians. The Indians would trade their furs for watered down whiskey. This free trade with the Indians came to an end in 1874 when the Canadian Mounted Police came to the Whoop-Up Country. The book then goes on to tell of the Massacre at Cypress Hill. This became an important trial because it showed the Indians that whites would be harshly punished for their crimes too. The chapter Life on the Trail was about the extreme weather on the Plains and different peoples views of the Plains. Some of them talk about how bad the blizzards were and others about the harsh summers.

I thought this book was a much better read then The Great Plains by Webb. There were many good stories and more interesting facts. This book also went very well with the lectures and went into very good detail about the fur trade.