Kootenay Brown

Who was Kootenay Brown?

John George Brown, better known as "Kootenai" Brown, was an Irish-born Canadian polymath, soldier, trader and conservation advocate.

Born in Ennistymon, Ireland and educated at Eton and Oxford, Brown was commissioned as a British Army officer in 1857 "without purchase", joining the 8th Regiment as an ensign

After serving in India in 1858 and 1859, in 1862 he sold his commission and joined the flood of prospectors joining the Cariboo Gold Rush. He proved unsuccessful as a prospector, turning to trapping and then briefly policing, serving as constable in Wild Horse Creek, BC.

In 1865, he moved on, to Waterton Lakes, being wounded by a Blackfoot Indian on his way to Fort Garry, where he settled and became a whisky trader.

Subsequent to that, he worked briefly for a company delivering mail to the United States Army until 1874, during which time he was captured and nearly killed by Sitting Bull in 1869.

The same year, Brown married a local Metis woman and ultimately made a living bison hunting and wolfing.

After a quarrel at Fort Benton, Montana, with "celebrated hunter" Louis Ell, in which Ell was killed, and subsequent trial and acquittal by a territorial jury, Brown returned to his beloved Kootenay, where he settled, building a reputation as a guide and packer.