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.
Glacier County is located in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13,778. The county is located in northwestern Montana between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, known to the Blackfeet as the "Backbone of the World". The county is geographically and culturally diverse and includes the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier National Park, and Lewis and Clark National Forest. The county is bordered by 75 miles of international boundary with two ports of entry open year-round and one seasonal international border crossing into Alberta, Canada.
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.
The Blackfoot language, also called Siksiká, often anglicised as Siksika, is an Algonquian language spoken by the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi people, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. There are four dialects, three of which are spoken in Alberta, Canada, and one of which is spoken in the United States: Siksiká (Blackfoot), to the southeast of Calgary, Alberta; Kainai, spoken in Alberta between Cardston and Lethbridge; Aapátohsipikani, to the west of Fort MacLeod which is Brocket (Piikani) and Aamsskáápipikani, in northwestern Montana. The name Blackfoot probably comes from the blackened soles of the leather shoes that the people wore.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation are a federally recognized tribe in the U.S. state of Montana. The government includes members of several Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d'Oreilles tribes and is centered on the Flathead Indian Reservation.
The Blackfeet Nation, officially named the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, is a federally recognized tribe of Siksikaitsitapi people with an Indian reservation in Montana. Tribal members primarily belong to the Piegan Blackfeet band of the larger Blackfoot Confederacy that spans Canada and the United States.
First Nations in Alberta are a group of people who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The First Nations are peoples recognized as Indigenous peoples or Plains Indians in Canada excluding the Inuit and the Métis. According to the 2011 Census, a population of 116,670 Albertans self-identified as First Nations. Specifically there were 96,730 First Nations people with registered Indian Status and 19,945 First Nations people without registered Indian Status. Alberta has the third largest First Nations population among the provinces and territories. From this total population, 47.3% of the population lives on an Indian reserve and the other 52.7% live in urban centres. According to the 2011 Census, the First Nations population in Edmonton totalled at 31,780, which is the second highest for any city in Canada. The First Nations population in Calgary, in reference to the 2011 Census, totalled at 17,040. There are 48 First Nations or "bands" in Alberta, belonging to nine different ethnic groups or "tribes" based on their ancestral languages.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
Earl Old Person was an American Indian political leader and the honorary lifetime chief of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, United States.
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.
John Louis Clarke was a Blackfoot artist and woodcarver from East Glacier, Montana who was deaf and mute, he was noted for his wildlife carvings related to Glacier National Park. His Blackfoot name was "Cutapuis".
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.
Gordon Belcourt, or Meekskimeeksskumapi, was an American Blackfeet and Native American tribal executive and social advocate. A member of the Blackfeet Tribe, Belcourt served as the executive director of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council for fifteen years, from 1998 until his death in 2013.
The fur trade in Montana was a major period in the area's economic history from about 1800 to the 1850s. It also represents the initial meeting of cultures between indigenous peoples and those of European ancestry. British and Canadian traders approached the area from the north and northeast focusing on trading with the indigenous people, who often did the trapping of beavers and other animals themselves. American traders moved gradually up the Missouri River seeking to beat British and Canadian traders to the profitable Upper Missouri River region.
Helen Piotopowaka Clarke was a Piegan Blackfeet and Scottish American actress, educator, and bureaucrat who pioneered as a mixed-race woman in her fields, becoming one of the first women elected to public office in Montana.
Mountain Chief was a South Piegan warrior of the Blackfoot Tribe. Mountain Chief was also called Big Brave (Omach-katsi) and adopted the name Frank Mountain Chief. Mountain Chief was involved in the 1870 Marias Massacre, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, and worked with anthropologist Frances Densmore to interpret folksong recordings.
John Two Guns White Calf (1872–1934) was a chief of the Piegan Blackfeet in Montana. He was born near Fort Benton, Montana and was the adopted son of Chief White Calf. After the elder White Calf died in 1902, White Calf became the last chief of the Blackfoot Tribe. He died of pneumonia at the age of 63 and is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Browning, Montana.
Terran Last Gun is a Native American visual artist. He is Piikani and a citizen of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, a member of the Siksikaitsitapii. He lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
