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| Like the Sioux, the Blackfeet were divided into three main groups. Numbering around 18,000 people, they dominated southern Alberta, Canada, and western Montana. This area had plenty of grass and water, and was one of the last places that herds of buffalo could be found. The Blackfeet fought against almost all the other tribes, with no allies except for the Sarsi (a small tribe of around 800 people) and sometimes the Atsina (3,000 people).
The Blackfeet had a Braves' Society that chose two men every year to serve as "Grizzly Bear Men." These men had to be fierce warriors who fought like grizzly bears, always charging at the enemy. On ceremonial occasions, or to go into battle, they wore bear-fur arm bands, bear-claw necklaces, a bear-fur belt, and a special headdress made from two grizzly claws. The Blackfoot Nation today actually consists of four distinct Blackfoot nations, who share a historical and cultural background but have separate leadership: the Siksika Nation (whose name literally means Blackfoot), the Akainawa Nation (also called Kainai or Bloods), the Pikanii or Peigan Nation (variously spelled Piikani, Pikani, Pikuni, or Piegan), and the Blackfeet Nation. The first three nations are in Alberta, Canada, and the fourth is in Montana. ("Blackfeet," though the official name of this tribe, is actually a misnomer given to them by white authorities; the word is not plural in the Blackfoot language, and some Blackfoot people in Montana resist this label.) The Blackfoot were nomadic plains hunters, traditional enemies of the Shoshone and Nez Perce. There are about 14,000 Blackfoot Indians today all told. The Blackfoot were a powerful buffalo-hunting society of the northern plains, with most of their settlements in Montana, Idaho, and Alberta. At first the Blackfoot Indians were pleased by the arrival of the Europeans, since the horses they brought were invaluable to buffalo hunters. Unfortunately, things took several turns for the worse. Smallpox epidemics ravaged the Blackfoot population in the mid-1800's (there is evidence that some white settlers may have deliberately helped it along by selling infected blankets). In 1870 American army forces, looking for Mountain Chief's band of hostile Blackfoot Indians, fell instead upon Heavy Runner's peaceable Piegan band and killed 200 of them, many of them women and children. (Mountain Chief and his people escaped across the new border into Canada.) Worse than this, by 1900, the white settlers had wiped out the buffalo herds. Hundreds of Blackfoot Indians starved to death, and the forced transition to sedentary life left a once-mighty nation dependent on government rations. Nevertheless, in the face of these travails the Blackfoot people have not lost their culture, and the Blackfoot Indian language is one of the few indigenous languages in Canada and the United States which has a good chance for survival. |
| The Blackfeet |
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