The Blackfeet tribe has thrived in the Rocky Mountain region for several centuries.
In the early 18th and 19th centuries, the four Blackfeet bands–the North Piegan, the South Piegan, the Siksika, and the Blood occupied many of the northern uplands.
The tribe were nomads, observing and trailing the seasonal grazing and migration of buffalo.
The motive for the Tribe’s name is argued to this day.
It is said that they were called ‘Blackfoot’ because they blackened their moccasins with ash.
People of the Blackfeet Nation in the United States are predominantly descendants of the South Piegan.
Today, the Blackfeet Tribe use their land for cultural and spiritual purposes.
We review the historical development, culture, and Facts of the Blackfeet Tribe.
Blackfeet Tribe History
Origin and Pre-colonial Contact
The Blackfeet Tribe settled in the fields around Montana preceding the 17th century.
They were known as one of the strongest and most-aggressive military powers on the northwestern Plains.
The Blackfeet were among the first Algonquian-language speakers to migrate westward from the timberland to open grasslands.
The Niitsitapi, as they are natively called, probably moved on foot using wooden travois drawn by dogs to convey their goods. Before long, they resided in a section of the woodlands north and west of the Great Lakes.
The force exerted by British traders at James Bay in present-day Canada on the Algonquin-speaking tribes in the location drove the Blackfeet out onto the Northern Plains.
The Blackfeet eventually acquired firearms and horses, thus becoming an intimidating example of the classic Plains Indian culture.
They were also a powerful tribe, controlling an expansive area from present-day Edmonton, Alberta Province, close to Yellowstone National Park, and from Glacier Park to the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The Badger-Two Medicine area is a significant sacred site for the tribe.
European Contact – Present day
In the late 19th century, the Blackfeet territories were invaded by European Americans and Canadians.
Different offshoots of the people were pressured to give up lands and ultimately move to smaller Indian reservations in Canada and the United States.
Bordering their reservation, the treaty of 1896 established two federally controlled areas: the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
The area was set up in 1896 and contained the Bager-Two Medicine area, an area of 200 m², and Glacier National Park, both portions of the tribal nation’s former territory.
To the Blackfeet people, the Badger-Two Medicine area is a sacred place.
This holy part of the Rocky Mountain Front was barred from Blackfeet lands in a Treaty of 1896, but they retained access, fishing, and hunting rights.
Since the early 1980s, when the Department of Land Management authorized drilling rights leases without negotiations with the tribe, the Blackfeet have acted to protect this sacred location, where they practiced their ancestral religious rituals.
The federal government of the United States suspended all leasing activities for drilling in this area in the 1990s, and the Bush administration in 2007 made a permanent moratorium on distributing new permits.
Numerous leaseholders had formerly relinquished their leases. In November 2016, the Department of Interior publicized the cancellation of the 15 drilling rights leases held by Devon Energy Corporation in the Badger-Two Medicine area.
The Blackfeet Tribe had established that the area was not a “wilderness,” as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex had specified, but a “human landscape” structured by and integral to their culture.
Blackfeet Culture
Social structure
Like other Alqgonquian-speaking tribes, an Easter native language, it is believed that the Blackfeet Tribe migrated to the Great Plains from the eastern woodlands many years before Europeans came to America.
These made them one of the oldest Great Plains tribes.
The Blackfeet culture revolves predominantly around warfare, buffalo, and, later, the horse. Like most Native Americans, the Blackfeet were nomadic and loved portable buffalo-skin tipis.
They were not involved in arts, such as basketry, pottery, or agriculture.
Instead, they almost depended entirely on the buffalo and moved wherever this beast went.
Food
They got their food, clothing, shelter, and equipment from buffalos.
The meat was either dried for winter or used raw.
The Blackfeet also periodically hunted other game, such as moose, elk, and deer.
The women browsed the Plains and supplemented their diet with berries, plants, and roots that they could find.
When they were not foraging, the women spent most of their time tanning the hides, which was tedious and time-consuming.
They also constructed and erected the tipis and cooked the food.
Marriage
Marriage was an eventful occasion for the Blackfeet tribe.
Marriages were meticulously arranged by family and friends, most times when the woman was still very young.
Before a wedding, the groom had to prove he was a skillful hunter and a strong warrior.
When he finally demonstrates his worthiness, both families will trade gifts, and the marriage begins.
The newly married either move into their tipi or with the groom’s family.
Religion
The religion of the Blackfeet tribe was very complex.
Their god was the sun, but they also believed in a supernatural entity called Napi, which means ‘Old Man.’
They also had complicated doctrines about the supernatural powers under nature, such as the belief that animals possess their powers and that they could administer them to a person in a dream.
The dreams always revolved around the animal, presenting the dreamer with a list of songs, objects, and rituals that the dreamer had to put together to use the power.
When the dreamer awakes, they will pack those items together, which would be called a medicine bundle.
Medicine bundles were mostly traded between the tribes, all with unique powers connected to them from specific animals, and each bundle was worshipped and used often during ceremonies.
The Blackfeet also believe that rivers and lakes possess special powers due to the ‘Underground People, ‘ called the Suitapis.
To this present day, they avoid eating fish or using canoes.
Ceremony
Ceremonies were crucial to the Blackfeet, and this was one of a couple of times when all three sub-tribes would gather together.
These ceremonies routinely revolved around dance, and these dances were both religious and social functions.
The Sun Dance, a celebration of the sun, was their principal tribal ceremony.
A ‘vow woman initiated this ceremony,’ a virtuous woman from one of the tribes who pledged to sponsor the dance.
She prepared the food, learned complex prayers, and wore sacred clothes.
The dancers, however, would fast the entire time; some would even voluntarily pierce their chests to prove their gratitude to the sun.
Blackfeet Tribe Facts
1. The Blackfoot tribe, also known as the Blackfeet Nation, was the first known Tribe of the Great Plains region.
The Blackfeet were a fiercely powerful and remarkable tribe for many centuries in the Great Plains area.
The coinage “Blackfeet” is believed to have derived from the Tribe’s black-dyed moccasins.
2. The Blackfeet Confederacy was united by a mutual language, culture, traditions, and beliefs, but in the end, it had a separate governing body.
Each tribal group of the Confederacy united to assist each other when needed.
The four dominant bands of the Blackfeet Nation were, Siksika, Piikani, Kainai/Kainah, and Piegan.
Each was established based on location, for the most part.
3. Blackfeet Tribe were typically nomadic and relied on buffalo herds for their livelihood.
They got their food, clothing, shelter, and more from the buffalo.
The Blackfeet Nation witnessed a major hardship and change to their traditional way of life when the Europeans and Americans almost killed all the buffalo population.
Europeans also brought disease and war to the Blackfeet Nation, eventually resulting in the tribe settling in reservations.
This reservation currently exists within Montana in the U.S. and southern Alberta in Canada.
Conclusion
The fierce attitude of the tribe toward protecting its interest majorly through politicking as well as military action perhaps is why most of the tribe’s cultural element survives to this day.
But irrespective of the motive that drove the tribe to protect its interest, that same harmonizing spirit the tribe shared in its primitive days, still unites the tribe today as well in the cultural elements retained in Blackfeet societies.
