The Bannock people who struck the Reed party’s camps were not acting without motivation.

The fur-trade enterprise was operating in their country, exploiting their resources, and altering the ecological and political balance of the region.

The tensions that produced the attacks had been building throughout the fall and winter.

None of this excuses the killing of men who were, in the context of the individual camps, not combatants.

But it situates the event in a world where violence was one instrument among many in the competition for resources and territory, and where the fur-trade enterprise was not simply a commercial activity but a form of territorial penetration that disrupted existing patterns of life and governance.

What She Carried That Could Not Be Packed