Medicine Line

Meaning

Proper Noun

• The Canada-United States border; the 49th parallel north: a circle of latitude that is 49° north of Earth's equator.

Origin

• First known attestation from 1880 where the term was described as being used "because no matter what [the Indians] have done [commited crimes] upon one side they feel perfectly secure after having arrived upon the other". An synonymous term which was attested earlier is medicine road from 1869 and ostensibly a calque of a Sioux term transcribed as "pejuta canku". Unrecorded usages of the term or similar may date back centuries earlier than the first attestation. See also medicine.