In Her Own Footsteps: Flora Ross and Her Struggle for Identity and Independence in the Colonial West

In the summer of 1859, British and American troops stood at the brink of war over a small island in the Pacific Northwest, each claiming sovereignty over the region in a military standoff that has become known as the "Pig War" of San Juan Island. In the midst of the dispute sat a Hudson's Bay Company farm, where seventeen year-old Flora Ross, the Métis daughter (Anishinaabe/Scottish) of a prominent company family, nursed a farmworker's dying wife. The American instigator of the military inc...