Blackfoot and Blackfeet Confederacy

Category: Tribe and confederacy

Culture area: Northern Plains

Language group: Algonquian

Primary location: Montana (U.S.), Alberta (Canada)

Population size:26,225 in United States (2021 American Community Survey); 23,200 in Canada (Statistics Canada, based on 2021 census)

The Blackfeet Confederacy consisted of four tribes from the Algonquian language family: the Siksika (Blackfeet Proper), Kainah (Blood), Northern Piegan (or Piikani), and Southern Piegan (or Piikani). Siksika is a Cree word meaning “people with black feet,” which probably referred to moccasins dyed black or that turned black after contact with prairie fire ashes. “Piegan” means “poorly dressed robes” and referred to tribal members who lived in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The Blackfeet originally came from somewhere in the east and had a common language and similar religious beliefs; they frequently intermarried. Geography separated the tribes, particularly in the mountains where each branch of the Confederacy lived in a separate valley or along a different river. The Blackfeet came together to fight invaders, to hunt for food, and to celebrate weddings and successful hunts. The tribes moved about frequently in search of their primary source of food and clothing, the American bison (buffalo).

Customs and Culture

The four major tribes separated into smaller groups, the Northern and Southern Piegans having twenty-three bands, the Blood seven, and the Blackfoot or Siksika six. Each band had a headman, chosen because of bravery in battle. The headman took care of the poor and disabled and sponsored social and religious ceremonies. The headmen met together as a tribal council to decide on questions such as war and trade relations with neighboring tribes. Within each band, warriors were divided by age into military societies, dance groups, and religious clubs.

In traditional Blackfoot religion, the Sun Dance played a prominent role as it did in many Plains tribes. A woman—the “vow woman”—sponsored the event, usually after a great disaster such as a tornado or the loss of many lives in battle. In honor of the survivors, she prepared a sacred dish of buffalo tongue and pledged to live a life of purity. A Sun Dance ceremony consisted of three days of preparation and four days of dancing. Male members of the tribe constructed a medicine lodge (okan) of a hundred newly cut willows and dedicated it to the sun, the source of all power and knowledge. They covered the okan with offerings of food and drink. Inside they said prayers and conducted secret purification rites. The “vow woman” fasted while the lodge was built and presented herself to the assembled worshippers on the fourth day, wearing a sacred headdress, and led the people in prayers. If the prayer was not uttered precisely right or if too few presents, such as horses, blankets, and clothes, were given away by the woman and her family, more terrible disasters could strike the tribe. The Blackfoot Sun Dance did not include incidents of self-torture, such as among the Mandan. It remained the most important event in the yearly cycle of life, however, until ended by missionaries in the 1890s.

When a Blackfoot died, the body was placed in a tree and a horse was killed to accompany the deceased into the land of the dead. If the death took place in a tipi, the tipi was burned. Surviving relatives and friends mutilated themselves to show their grief—slashing their arms or legs, cutting their hair, or cutting off their fingers.

The Blackfeet lived in tipis made of skins. Women built the tipis; men painted them with sacred signs, including star constellations and animals. The men spent much of the summer hunting buffalo. In the fall and spring, they gathered turnips, onions, cherries, plums, and berries. Women made clothing, cooked, sought out wood and water, and made pemmican, a favorite food made of dried meat pounded together with blueberries. Besides buffalo meat, the tribe also consumed deer, elk, and antelope. The buffalo, however, provided far more than food. Tribal members found more than sixty uses for various parts of the animal. The buffalo provided clothing and shelter (from the hides), tools (from the bones), and utensils, bags, and storage containers. Before horses were introduced, warriors hunted buffalo by chasing them on foot and stampeding them over cliffs. The Blackfeet learned how to use horses in the early 1700s from other tribes. Hunting strategies changed quickly; warriors now drove the buffalo into a box canyon where they shot them from horseback with bows and arrows. Their hunting territory now spread from central Montana to northern Saskatchewan.

Historical Period

The first contact with Whites came in 1806 when Meriwether Lewis reported meeting people called Piegans. Not until the 1830s, however, did the tribe become involved in trade with White Americans. At this time John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, headquartered in St. Louis, opened a series of trading posts in the northern Great Plains. The company sought buffalo robes and paid for them with guns, blankets, and ammunition. The Blackfeet gained control of a vast area of buffalo range through successful wars with the Flathead, Nez Perce, Crow, Cree, and other Plains tribes. Wealth and weapons acquired in the robe trade enabled the Blackfeet to keep their traditional customs, at least as long as the buffalo herds existed. The coming of the railroads and the increasing number of White farmers moving into the area greatly threatened those herds.

In 1855, the Blackfoot headman (chief) Lame Bull signed a treaty with United States government agents allowing construction of a railroad through tribal lands. American citizens would be able to travel through the territory unharmed. According to the terms of the treaty, the confederacy would receive $20,000 in useful goods and services immediately and $15,000 each year in the future “to promote civilization and Christianization.” The United States promised the Blackfeet schools, agricultural training, and perpetual peace. The army established an office at Fort Benton in northern Montana Territory to distribute the goods and services. Beginning in 1856 about seven thousand Blackfeet a year received aid, though many crossed the border from Canada to get their annuities. The Indians, having never recognized such a border, ignored army agent complaints about giving aid to “Canadian” citizens.

In the years after the American Civil War (1861-1865), more and more Whites moved into the region and demanded added protection from “savage Indians.” Especially troublesome for the Blackfeet were the increasing numbers of cattle ranchers who fenced their lands with barbed wire to keep buffalo out. In 1870, war broke out in Montana after a massacre of 173 Blackfoot men, women, and children by a White volunteer militia. In addition to the dead, 140 women and children were driven from their village into the subzero weather, where they suffered horribly. In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant issued an executive order moving the reservation boundary much farther north than had been agreed upon by the Blackfeet. No payment was offered to the Indians. A smallpox epidemic in the new reservation reduced the tribe’s population to three thousand, about one-fifth of what it had been a hundred years earlier. At this point, Chief White Calf ordered a halt to any more resistance; “further war would only result in our extermination,” he explained.

The Blackfeet living in Canada managed much better than their American brothers. In 1877, the Canadian government signed a treaty creating a reserve on which Blackfeet could live, hunt, raise cattle, and receive government rations. Only at this point did the American-Canadian border achieve any significance in tribal history, as people north of the line improved the quality of their lives while those living south of it suffered a continuing population decline. By 1880, only twenty-two hundred Blackfeet lived on the United States reservation surrounded by a White population of over twelve thousand. The buffalo had practically disappeared, in all of North America only a few hundred having survived the hunters. With the annihilation of their main source of subsistence, the Blackfeet became impoverished; more than six hundred suffered horrible deaths in the “starvation winter” of 1883-1884. Rations provided by the army allowed 1.5 pounds of meat, half-a-pound of flour, and smaller amounts of beans, bacon, salt, and coffee for each individual. Another bitter winter hit the reservation in 1886-1887, but the rations still were not increased and hundreds more died.

The Roman Catholic church provided much of the education on the reservation in the early days. An elementary school had opened in 1859, but after thirteen years a new agent, the Methodist minister John Young, closed the school and opened one of his own. Catholics were forced to attend school off the reservation. Jesuit missionaries built a school a few miles away but refused to allow parents the right to visit students during the school term. Isolating children from parents, it was hoped, would break down old loyalties and habits and encourage young Indians to adopt White ways. The reservation school taught English, Christianity, and “modern” ways. Whichever institution the students attended, any connection with their past customs and traditions was effectively torn away from them.

Reservation Life

In 1895, Blackfoot leaders leased thousands of acres of land back to the federal government, with Indians retaining the right to hunt, fish, and cut timber on the property. The leased land supposedly contained large deposits of gold, but prospectors actually found little of value in the territory. Much of this land became Glacier National Park a few years later.

After 1900, economic conditions on the reservation became even worse, largely because of a failed attempt by the Indian Office in Washington, D.C., to “civilize” the Blackfeet by teaching them how to farm. The leasing of land for grazing cattle had at least provided a meager income to the tribe, but now some experts in the Indian office believed that collecting grazing fees just made the Indians “lazy.” Farming, it was decided, was a manlier, healthier, more appropriate way to make a living. Accordingly, the local agent contracted to have a huge irrigation system built. The reservation, however, had little water of its own. It was also windy and subject to extremes of temperature, and crops could not be grown. The irrigation project proved to be a costly waste of time and effort.

The agent in charge of the reservation then encouraged cattle ranching. In 1904, the Blackfeet paid to have their land fenced to keep out non-Indian cattle, but a drought that year, a tough winter the next, and an epidemic disease the next killed thousands of reservation cattle. The Blackfeet stayed poor. Other problems resulted from a rapid turnover in agents; from 1905 to 1921, ten different men filled the post. Some of the agents quit after being charged with corruption, while others were simply weak or incompetent. Weather continued to have a devastating impact on reservation life. The 1920s saw a long dry spell bringing fires and tremendous heat as well as grasshoppers, cutworms, and other plagues to the area. Grain and cattle prices fell, and many surrounding communities became ghost towns. The Blackfeet, of course, could not leave. Poverty, sickness, and hunger spread. Two out of three Blackfeet were living entirely on government rations.

A new agent in the late 1920s improved conditions somewhat by encouraging small gardens for each household and the raising of chickens and pigs. He also promoted adult education and literacy programs. Then the Great Depression hit, its impact on the reservations mirroring that on American society at large. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 promoted self-government and a return to cultural traditions. It also brought some money into the community for small construction projects. These helped many Blackfeet survive the worst ravages of the Depression years, but hunger and poverty persisted for many on the reservation.

The Great Northern Railroad provided some help by hiring Blackfeet to give performances at its lodge in Glacier National Park. The park had opened in 1910 and lay outside the territory the Blackfeet had actually lived in, but tourists enjoyed the Indian dances all the same. The Blackfeet still performed the Sun Dance but by the 1930s had moved the date of celebration to July 4. Missionaries who formerly had denounced the dance as heathen could hardly object when the dancers insisted that their only motive was to celebrate the birthday of their new homeland. Allowing Indians to practice their traditional religions, as provided for by the 1934 act, came too late to save many Blackfeet customs. Poverty, death, and disease had already taken their toll; meanwhile, White schools had ruined any opportunity for the Blackfeet to maintain their traditional language. Few young Blackfeet could speak the old tongue anymore, and with its passing went most of the traditions of Blackfoot life.

Conditions on the reservation improved somewhat after World War II, and only a few tribal members participated in the disastrous resettlement plan of the 1950s when the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to force Indians from their reservations and place them in cities. In the 1960s, many Blackfeet got jobs through the War on Poverty as Head Start teachers, firefighters, and government welfare agents. Others obtained employment in the sugar-beet and hay fields of northern Montana. A few became teachers, doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Still, the per capita income on the reservation was well below the poverty level, and many Blackfeet in the late twentieth century found themselves trapped in joblessness and hopelessness.

Bibliography

"Blackfoot Confederacy." Canadian Encyclopedia, 6 Dec. 2010. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/blackfoot-nation. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.

Brandon, William. The Indian in American Culture. Harper & Row, 1974.

McFee, Malcolm. Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation. U of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Indian in America. Harper & Row, 1975.

Wissler, Clark. “Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 5, no. 1, 1910, hdl.handle.net/2246/203. Accessed 25 Mar. 2023.