The Blackfoot Indians
sketch by John Mix Stanley (c. 1853)
Glenbow Museum
The pictures are deceiving; the
Plains Indians of North America lived for thousands of years without horses.
The nomadic Blackfoot Indians in particular were known for their great
skills in hunting the enormous buffalo long before the first pyramids of
Egypt were built. It was after the introduction in 1730 of
the animal named "elk-horse" for its great size that the Blackfoot tribes
became renowned for their expert horsemanship and continued their dominance
of neighboring Native American groups as they pushed westward toward the
Rocky Mountains. They had a reputation as fierce warriors and by
the mid-19th century controlled a vast amount of territory stretching from
northern Saskatchewan to the southernmost waters of the Missouri.
They were also known as the strongest and most aggressive military power
on the northwestern plains, preventing white men, whom they considered
poachers, from impinging on their land and their natural resources for
a quarter of a century ("Blackfoot" Britannica Online).
But the end of the nineteenth century saw a population decimated by the
near extinction of the buffalo as well as repeated epidemics of smallpox
and measles. And though still dependent on the land, the remaining
were forced onto reservations by US policy and blindly placed into a way
of life that lacked social cohesiveness and resulted in the weakening of
native institutions and cultural practices ("Native American Peoples" Britannica
Online).
The Blackfoot Indians of Alberta and Montana were divided
into three closely related Algonkian-speaking tribes: the Piegan, the Blood
and the Siksika, or Blackfoot proper. The name Blackfoot is believed
to have been derived from the discoloration of moccasins from ashes .
They were typical of the Plains Indians in that they were nomadic hunter
gatherers who lived in tipis (tepees) and subsisted mainly on buffalo;
the separate bands would wander on foot in order to follow the herds (Martin
1996). Other animals such as deer and small game also contributed
to the diet, as well as gathered vegetables. Fish were abundant thought
they were only eaten in times of extreme necessity, such as when the buffalo
populations dwindled.
An average
buffalo bull provided a great deal of meat, about 700 kilograms.
Prepared fresh, the meat was roasted on a spit or boiled in a skin bag
by adding stones hot from the fire to make a rich soup. The remaining
meat was either cut into thin slices and dried in the sun to produce jerky
or it was made into pemmican, a high protein food which consisted of dried
meat pounded into a powder and mixed with melted buffalo fat and berries.
Both foods were packed tightly into skin bags and would remain edible for
years. Almost nothing of the buffalo were wasted. Bones were
fashioned into tools and horns served as containers, sinew was used as
thread and shaggy hair was braided into halters. Hooves were either
made into rattles or boiled to make glue. The hides of the animal
provided most of the clothing for the indians and were sewn together to
produce tipi covers (Ottawa 1996).
The women
were experts in the tanning of skins, a long and tiring process.
This process was considered so important that each woman was judged largely
on the quality and quantity of the skins she tanned. Even making
the simplest hard rawhide for moccasins was an exhausting process that
required both sides of the skin to be scraped clean; soft skin took a week
to produce. The women also made the tipis, and therefore had ownership
of them. In addition to the preparation meats and skin women made
weapons, shields, tools, drums, and pipes, although men were the primary
hunters (Ottawa 1996).
Military
societies had the important function of policing and regulating life in
camp and organizing the defenses. These military societies of the
Blackfoot, known as the aiinikiks, or All-Comrades, had membership by purchase
only and promotion in the various societies was age graded. A man
could sell his membership to a younger man and then purchase that of an
older man in the next appropriate society every four years. Age graded
men's society was a principle for organization among ceremonial groups,
which may have otherwise lacked social stratification due to the absence
of a division of labour or any other economic inequality. Each society
had its own distinctive song and dance. The members of the Blackfoot societies
wore headdresses made from the white winter skins of weasels; the full
feather headdress was worn only by a few important leaders of the Sioux.
White eagle feathers with sharp, black tips were highly regarded and, when
worn in the hair, symbolized acts of bravery. The
picture above is of a Piegan elder who would have been highly valued for
his wisdom and experience.
Each Blackfoot
tribe was divided into several hunting bands led by one or more chiefs
and several councilors. Band membership was quite fluid and headmanship
was very informal. Success in war and ceremonial experience were
the qualifications for head office, and as long as the headman provided
benefits to his people they would stay with him. But if his generosity
should slacken the members were free to leave. The bands wintered
separately in river valleys and congregated each summer to observe the
Sun Dance. There was also a head chief for each the three geographical
tribes: the Piegan, the Blood, and the Blackfoot. His primary purpose
was to call councils to discuss affairs of importance to the group.
Spirituality & the Sun Dance
"In the beginning all the world was water.
One day the Old Man, also called Napi, was curious to find out what might
be beneath the water. He sent animals to dive beneath the surface.
First duck, then otter, then badger dived in vain. The Old Man sent
muskrat diving to the depths. After a long time muskrat rode
to the surface holding between his paws a little ball of mud and blew upon
it. The mud began to swell, growing larger and larger until it became
the whole earth.
The Old Man then made the people."
(Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, 1996)
Spiritual
beliefs and ceremonies were an important part of the Blackfoot culture.
Their religious life centered upon medicine bundles which were individually
owned and originated from a supernatural experience. It was the adolescent
warrior who attempted the vision quest by going to a remote area and fasting
until he had a vision. He would be given a war song or dance by a
guardian spirit and be told of the magical amulets (such as feathers, birds'
beaks, or stones) that should be worn to give him power. Most failed
and did not have a vision, in which case they would buy a bundle and its
ritual. Individual bundles acquired much respect and gave its owner
prestige, especially those associated with war such as headdresses and
shields. (Martin 1996)
One of
the most important bundles to the Blackfoot group as a whole was the Sun
Dance bundle. Each year around the beginning of summer the separate
wintering bands would gather to observe the Sun Dance, the principal religious
ceremony. The buffalo, considered the very source of life and the
major symbol of the Sun Dance, influenced the time and locality of the
ceremony, which were chosen by the proximity of the buffalo herds.
The overall importance of the Sun Dance was the renewal of personal spirituality
as well as the renewal of the living earth, a time when kinships within
both social and natural realms were reaffirmed; and by doing so prosperity
and social harmony would be extended for another year.
After moving
the camp on four successive days, the medicine bundle of the ceremony,
the Sun Dance lodge, was built on the fifth day . It was here that
the people gathered, though only a few men actually participated.
They strove to obtain supernatural aid and enhance their personal power
through sacrifice in order to become a more meaningful member of their
society. The sacrifice required the participants to dance for three
or four days while fasting and abstaining from drink. Skewers that
pierced the skin and muscles of the men were used as part of the self torture
and they performed such feats as hanging from the ceiling of the lodge
by the skewers. This self-inflicted pain reflected their desire to
return something of themselves to nature in exchange for past and future
benefits.
The Creation
was expressed in the Sun Dance by the use of symbolic objects that represented
the attributes of various animal kin. Animals were viewed as wise
and powerful and served as intermediaries between humans and the supernatural
forces. The eagle was the chief of all creatures in the air and respected
for his wisdom and wealth. The life sustaining buffalo was the central
figure. Its' tongue, considered the most sacred part, was consumed
as a sacramental food during the ceremony and its' skull was used to express
the theme of rebirth as bone was presumed to be where the soul resided.
The Sun Dance was an important part in reconciliation of killing the buffalo,
which violates the kinship between animal and man. After the conclusion
of the ceremony the lodge was abandoned and all animal objects left inside
so they could return to the earth. This symbolized the renewal of
the living and emphasized the necessity of human cooperation in order to
bring about universal regeneration. (Lawrence 1996)
In 1904
the U.S. government banned the Sun Dance because of the self torture and
mutilation it involved. The Blackfoot continued to celebrate their
ritual, though often times in an altered form.
For further
detail on the Sun Dance ceremony visit "Animal
symbolism in Plains Indian Sun Dance" by Elizabeth Lawrence.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
In addition to its massive size the buffalo also had a keen sense of hearing
and smell. Before the advent of horses and guns, the Blackfoot tribe,
along with other Plains Indians, developed effective hunting techniques
involving hundreds of people. The evidence of one such method can
be seen today at a site just outside Fort Macloed, Alberta. In the
picture to the right are the 10 meter high cliffs known as Head-Smashed-In
Buffalo Jump. It is one the oldest, largest and best preserved buffalo
jumps in North America. The name refers to a young Piegan brave who
stood below the sandstone cliffs to watch a hunt and was later found under
a pile of buffalo with his skull crushed in (Corbett 1997).
The jump is rich in prehistory; bone and tool beds nearly 11 meters thick
lie beneath the cliffs. Radiocarbon dating of the bones establishes
that the site was first used as a buffalo jump over 5,700 years ago, more
than 500 years before the Stonehenge was built in England. There
is also evidence from two 9,000 year old spear points that man visited
during early prehistoric times, thought it is uncertain if the jump was
used by these hunters (HSIBJ Official Site 1997).
Head-Smashed-In
Buffalo Jump is just one part of a communal kill site complex. The
buffalo would graze in the basins above the cliffs where the young men
would disguise themselves under wolf and buffalo calf skins to lure and
then push the herd into narrow drive lanes marked by stone cairns (heaps
of stones), some of which are still evident. Along the way hunters
hidden behind brush piles would jump up and wave buffalo robes to keep
the animals going on course. There was a visual deception that made
the land above and below the cliff appear unbroken; the buffalo, usually
galloping at full speed, were unable to stop or veer away once they saw
the cliff. After the drive hunters used spears to finish off the
buffalo as the 10 meter fall didn't always immediately kill the animals
(Corbett 1997). The carcasses were then dragged to the nearby campsite
for butchering and skinning, a task shared by the hunters. The meat
was divided accordingly to the need of each family while special allotments
were made for the sick and elderly. Communal hunts took place in
June, July, and August when the buffalo fat and their meat prime.
Out
of respect of kinship with the buffalo and the sense of eating their own
flesh the Blackfeet describe the hunt as leading the buffalo and calling
to them, not driving or chasing them to their death. It was a good
life that sustained itself for thousands of years, but it all ended in
less than a century with the arrival of the horse and gun in 1730.
Today the Blackfoot tribes reside on four reservations.
Over 6,000 Indians, mostly of Piegan decent, live on the Blackfeet Indian
Reservation in Montana (also known as Pikuni);
fewer than 20 percent are full blood. In addition, there are more
than 9,000 Indians living on the Blackfoot, Blood, and Piegan reservations
in Alberta (Britannica Online). (According to the 1990
census by the U.S. Department of Congress there are 32,234 Blackfoot
Indians comprising 1.7 percent of the current Indian population.)
Bibliography
Britannica Online.
1998 "Blackfoot"
[http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/72/15.html]
Corbett, Bill.
1997 "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump"
[http://www.calexplorer.com/backcountry/head_smashed/index.html]
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Official Site.
1997 "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump"
[http://www.head-smashed-in.com]
Lawrence, Elizabeth Atwood.
1996 "Animal Symbolism in Plains Indian
Sun Dance"
[http://envirolink.org/arrs/pysyeta/sa/sa1.1/lawrence.html].
February 1996
Martin, Marlene.
1996 "Society- Blackfoot"
[http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7833]
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa.
1996 "First Nations in Canada; The Culture
Areas: A Survey"
[http://www.inac.gc.ca/pubs/fnic/plain.html]
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