The North-West Mounted Police was created in 1873 by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald in order to allow the fledgling nation of Canada to assert its authority over a vast tract of land in the West purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company. That early company of mounted police faced a brutal four-month march across a harsh wilderness. Colonel George French, Major James Macleod, Private Frederick Bagley and the rest of the North-West Mounted Police rode through prairie storms and faced down hostile Natives, starvation, thirst and disease on an epic journey that reduced the proud embodiment of Imperial Britain to a ragtag band of men on the brink of death. These intrepid men not only survived but soon asserted their authority over the renegades that fuelled the West's wild whiskey trade. They then negotiated treaties on behalf of the Canadian government with First Nations tribes and kept Sitting Bull and the Sioux from bringing their war to the Canadian West. This book recounts the remarkable achievements of the police force that would eventually become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.