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The Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans who currently live in Montana and Alberta. They lived northwest of the Great Lakes and came to participate in Plains Indian culture.
In Blackfeet Indian mythology, the supernatural world is dominated by the Sun. The Sun (Nah-too-si; Super powered or Holiness) is equated with the Creator (Apistotoke) by some anthropologists. [1] The Creator is said to have created the earth and everything in the universe. [2] Nah-too-si is sometimes personified by the mystical Napi, or Old Man. Napi was said to have been sent by the Nah-too-si to teach people how to live a sinless life, like he and his wife, Ksah-koom-aukie, Earth Woman. A-pi-su'-ahts(early riser) was the only surviving child of Sun and Moon, after the rest were attacked and killed by pelicans. [3] Napi is said to have given the Blackfoot visions and, by implication, Blackfoot music.
The numbers four and seven, the cardinal directions, the six principle points and center, are important in Blackfoot mythology. Communication is believed to occur between the supernatural world and Blackfoot through visions of guardian spirits, during which songs and ceremonies may be imparted, such as that of medicine bundles. The physical world is seen as just a glimpse of the spiritual dimension, which is actually the true reality. [4] The Blackfoot people name themselves "Real People" [5] in comparison to anyone that does not possess the ability to communicate with the spirit world like the members of the Blackfoot tribe.
Ceremonies include the Sun Dance, called Medicine Lodge by the Blackfoot in English, [6] in which sacrifices would be made to Sun. According to the legend the ceremony, the Sun Dance, was started when a human woman, named Feather-woman fell in love with Morning Star, the child of Sun and Moon. After plucking the sacred turnip she and her half-divine son were banished from the Sky-Country, and eventually she died leaving her son, Poïa (Scar-Face), orphaned. Eventually he makes his way back to Sky-Country and because his grandparents, Sun and Moon, took mercy on him he honored them by doing the Sun Dance once a year. [7] These sacrifices ranged from offering sweat, [8] through the use of sweat lodges to actual offerings of flesh, for example men from the tribe would rip off ropes tied to their skin as sacrifices to Sun. [9] The Medicine Lodge would require the Blackfoot to promise vows of eventual sacrifice to Sun throughout the year after requesting protection from war or for family members, or after praying for the health of the tribe. [10]
There are three subsections for which minor deities(and/or personifications of nature and animals) are placed into: Above Persons, Ground Persons, and Under Water Persons. Deities such as Thunder, Wind Maker, and Cold Maker were worshipped to influence certain changes in nature like bringing rain and stopping storms. [11]
Amskapipikuni is said to be the inventor of tobacco and made the first war-time killing with an aspen stick.
The Sta-au are believed to be a type of ghost, specifically the ghosts of cruel men and women. Most of the deceased are said to live in certain parts of the hills, but the Sta-au are said to hang around camps. They are believed to cause bad luck and harm to living people, especially in the morning.
Historically, one of the primary sources of food many other needs for the Blackfoot was the American Bison, colloquially referred to as the "buffalo", and as iiníí; pl. iinííksi in the Blackfoot language. The Buffalo Dance commemorates this reliance. [12]
The typical hunting method was to drive a herd off of a cliff, and butcher them after they died at the bottom. [13]
The night before the hunt, the shaman ceremonially smoked tobacco and prayed to the sun. His wives were not allowed to leave their home, nor even look outside, until he returned; they were to pray to the sun and continually burn sweet grass. Fasting and dressed in a bison headdress, the shaman led a group of people at the head of a V formation. He attracted the herd's attention and brought them near the cliff; they were then scared by other men hiding behind them, who waved their robes and shouted. The bison ran off the cliff and died at the rocks below.
According to legend, at one point the bison refused to go over the cliff. A woman walking underneath the cliff saw a herd right on the edge and pledged to marry one which jumped down. One did so and survived, turning into many dead buffalo at the bottom of the cliff. The woman's people ate the meat and the young woman left with the buffalo. Her father went in search of her. When he stopped to rest, he told a magpie to search for his daughter and tell her where he was. The magpie found the woman and told her where her father was located. The woman met her father but refused to go home, frightened that the bison would kill her and her father; she said to wait until they were all asleep and would not miss her for some time. When she returned to the bison, her husband smelled another person and, gathering his herd, found the father and trampled him to death. The woman cried and her husband said that if she could bring her father back to life, they could both return to their tribe. The woman asked the magpie to find a piece of her father's body; he found a piece of his spine. The woman covered the bone with her robe and sang a song. She was successful and her father was reincarnated. Impressed, the woman's husband taught them a dance which would attract the bison and ensure success in the hunt and which would restore the dead bison to life, just as the woman had restored her father to life. The father and daughter returned to their tribe and taught a small group of men, eventually known as I-kun-uh'-kah-tsi ("all compatriots"), the dances.
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
The Piegan are an Algonquian-speaking people from the North American Great Plains. They are the largest of three Blackfoot-speaking groups that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy; the Siksika and Kainai are the others. The Piegan dominated much of the northern Great Plains during the nineteenth century.
The Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi, is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Blackfeet people: the Siksika ("Blackfoot"), the Kainai or Blood, and two sections of the Peigan or Piikani – the Northern Piikani (Aapátohsipikáni) and the Southern Piikani. Broader definitions include groups such as the Tsúùtínà (Sarcee) and A'aninin who spoke quite different languages but allied with or joined the Blackfoot Confederacy.
The Marias Massacre was a massacre of Piegan Blackfeet Native peoples which was committed by the United States Army as part of the Indian Wars. The massacre occurred on January 23, 1870, in Montana Territory. Approximately 200 Native people were killed, most of whom were women, children, and older men.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km (11 mi) west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, on Highway 785. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture. Joe Crowshoe Sr. (1903–1999) – Aapohsoy’yiis – a ceremonial Elder of the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, was instrumental in the development of the site. The Joe Crow Shoe Sr. Lodge is dedicated to his memory. He dedicated his life to preserving Aboriginal culture and promoting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and in 1998 was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for "saving the knowledge and practices of the Blackfoot people."
Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation is one of seven Native American reservations in the U.S. state of Montana. Established by an act of Congress on September 7, 1916, it was named after Ahsiniiwin, the chief of the Chippewa band, who had died a few months earlier. It was established for landless Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indians in the American West, but within a short period of time many Cree (Nēhiyaw) and Métis were also settled there. Today the Cree outnumber the Chippewa on the reservation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) recognizes it as the Chippewa Cree Reservation.
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people, also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota, are a First Nations/Native American people originally from the Northern Great Plains of North America.
The Gros Ventre, also known as the Aaniiih, A'aninin, Haaninin, Atsina, and White Clay, are a historically Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe located in northcentral Montana. Today, the Gros Ventre people are enrolled in the Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana, a federally recognized tribe with 7,000 members, also including the Assiniboine people.
George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell in Glacier National Park in Montana is named after him.
A buffalo jump, or sometimes bison jump, is a cliff formation which Indigenous peoples of North America historically used to hunt and kill plains bison in mass quantities. The broader term game jump refers to a man-made jump or cliff used for hunting other game, such as reindeer.
Running Eagle (Pi'tamaka) was a Native American woman and war chief of the Blackfeet Tribe known for her success in battle.
Fools Crow is a 1986 novel written by Native American author James Welch. Set in Montana shortly after the Civil War, this novel tells of White Man's Dog, a young Blackfeet Indian on the verge of manhood, and his band, known as the Lone Eaters. The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a portrait of a culture under pressure from colonization. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants.
There are a vast array of myths surrounding the Blackfoot Native Americans as well as Aboriginal people. The Blackfeet inhabit the Great Plains, in the areas known as Alberta, Saskatchewan, and areas of Montana. These stories, myths, origins, and legends play a big role in their everyday life, such as their religion, their history, and their beliefs. Only the elders of the Blackfoot tribes are allowed to tell the tales, and are typically difficult to obtain because the elders of the tribes are often reluctant to tell them to strangers who are not of the tribe. People such as George B. Grinnell, John Maclean, D.C. Duvall, Clark Wissler, and James Willard Schultz were able to obtain and record a number of the stories that are told by the tribes.
The Great Race is a Native American legend surrounding the Red Racetrack, a ring shaped depression surrounding the interior of the Black Hills. The legend tells the story of when buffalo and man raced each other to establish order in the universe. The stories differ from tribe to tribe but the constant theme is that man established supremacy over the buffalo. This story is also associated with the origins of the Sun Dance and the Medicine Lodge. Taking place in July, Sun Dance is four to eight days of dancing in order to try to connect with the Great Spirit.
Bison hunting was an activity fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands on the Interior Plains of North America, before the animal's near-extinction in the late 19th century following US expansion into the West. Bison hunting was an important spiritual practice and source of material for these groups, especially after the European introduction of the horse in the 16th through 19th centuries enabled new hunting techniques. The species' dramatic decline was the result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by non-Indigenous hunters increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and cases of a deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during times of conflict.
Plains hide painting is a traditional North American Plains Indian artistic practice of painting on either tanned or raw animal hides. Tipis, tipi liners, shields, parfleches, robes, clothing, drums, and winter counts could all be painted.
Madison Buffalo Jump State Park is a Montana state park located seven miles south of the Interstate 90 interchange at Logan in Gallatin County, Montana in the United States. The park preserves a canyon cliff used by Native Americans as a buffalo jump, where herds of bison were stampeded over the cliff as an efficient means of slaughter. The main geographic features of the jump site remain largely unchanged since the days of the jumps. Archaeologists have found tons of bison bones buried at the base of the cliffs. They have also uncovered the remains of tipi villages.
The Iron Confederacy or Iron Confederation was a political and military alliance of Plains Indians of what is now Western Canada and the northern United States. This confederacy included various individual bands that formed political, hunting and military alliances in defense against common enemies. The ethnic groups that made up the Confederacy were the branches of the Cree that moved onto the Great Plains around 1740, the Saulteaux, the Nakoda or Stoney people also called Pwat or Assiniboine, and the Métis and Haudenosaunee. The Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade when they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations, and the flow of furs to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and North West Company (NWC) trading posts. Its peoples later also played a major part in the bison (buffalo) hunt, and the pemmican trade. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds sapped the power of the Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to U.S. and Canadian expansion.
The game drive system is a hunting strategy in which game are herded into confined or dangerous places where they can be more easily killed. It can also be used for animal capture as well as for hunting, such as for capturing mustangs. The use of the strategy dates back into prehistory. Once a site is identified or manipulated to be used as a game drive site, it may be repeatedly used over many years. Examples include buffalo jumps and desert kites.
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