"Sarah Carter provides a detailed analysis of marriage as a diverse social institution in nineteenth-century Western Canada. She charts the ascendancy of Christian, lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage as an instrument to shape and institutionalize the gender order as the foundation of this new region of the nation. It took great effort to impose the monogamous model of marriage on a varied population of Aboriginal people and newcomers such as the Mormons, each with their own definitions of marriage, including polygamy and flexible attitudes toward divorce. The work concludes with an explanation of the negative consequences for women, particularly Aboriginal women, that arose as a result of the imposition of monogamous marriage."--Jacket.