The Skirmish at Seven Oaks

Card covers, saddle stitched with staples, 19 pages, 7x8.5 in - 17.5x21.5 cm, B&W line drawings.

Cover corners very lightly bumped. Staples beginning to rust. Return mail label of a previous owner adhered to title page verso.

This slim volume (part of the Gabriel Dumont Institute’s “Métis Historical Booklet” series) contextualizes and describes an 1816 skirmish between a group of Metis and white settlers at Seven Oaks (in what is now Manitoba). The book situates the conflict within a larger, long-running battle for fur trading supremacy between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Indeed, an account of the skirmish only appears near the end of the text after explanations of rising tensions between the two companies. The volume closes with a summary of the conflict’s ramifications for both the fur trade and the Métis.