Between 1873 and 1932, with the exception of one decade, the formulation and implementation of Indian policy on the prairies was much in the hands of a government appointee known as the Indian commissioner. The commissioner was a senior official in the federal Indian Department and, while he received instructions from Ottawa, had considerable authority within his domain in directing policy. The extent of his influence was determined in large measure by political connections, force of personality and an ability to articulate positions and concerns that resonated with the temper of the times.This is a study of the men who held the position of Indian Commissioner. The approach is biographical in that it explores their lives, their characters and their ideas. It also seeks out the confluence of the personal and the political -that indeterminate space where individuals and structures intersect and the course of events is shaped. And the events were momentous. The commissioners had charge of a complex configuration of laws, obligations and policies that guided the transition of the Native population from the independence of the buffalo days to the dependence of reserve life. Treaties, the Indian Act, schools, agriculture, missions were all part of this mix as a shattered Native society was incorporated into the apparatus of the emergent Canadian state and forcibly socialised into its rituals of conformity and submission. The Indian Commissioners were the men who presided at this remarkable and convulsive chapter in our history.