Blackfoot Confederacy

The Blackfoot Confederacy is an alliance of closely related Blackfoot-speaking nations of the north-western Great Plains: the Siksika, the Kainai (or Blood) and the two Piikani (Peigan) nations. Together they call themselves Niitsítapi, "the original people", and their homeland Niitsitpiis-stahkoii, "original people's land", reaching from the North Saskatchewan River to the Yellowstone and from the Rocky Mountains east past the Cypress Hills. Today three nations live in Alberta and one, the Blackfeet Nation, in Montana.

The Siksika, whose name refers to black-dyed moccasin soles, gave the whole confederacy its English name. The Kainai, "many chiefs", were called Blood from a Cree name, and the Piikani, the largest group, later split into the Northern Piikani of Alberta and the Southern Piikani, or Blackfeet, of Montana. Blackfoot is an Algonquian language. The Athabaskan-speaking Tsuut'ina (Sarcee) joined the alliance, and the Gros Ventre (A'aninin) were allies from about 1793 to 1861. Some anthropologists believe Blackfoot ancestors once lived far to the east and moved west over centuries, while Blackfoot tradition holds that they have lived on the plains since time immemorial.

Before horses, the Blackfoot travelled on foot with dog-pulled travois and hunted bison by driving herds over cliffs at sites such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Bands of 10 to 30 lodges, about 80 to 240 people, were the basic unit, and people could move freely between bands. Winters were spent in sheltered river valleys; in midsummer the nations gathered for the Okan, or Sun Dance, the only time all of them assembled. Women processed bison into dried meat and pemmican, tanned hides for tipis and clothing and did fine quillwork. Men earned rank in warrior societies through deeds such as counting coup. In the creation story, Napi, Old Man, shapes the earth from mud that a turtle brings up from the deep water.

Horses reached the Blackfoot around 1730, and with guns obtained through Cree and Assiniboine traders they turned the tables on the Shoshone, who had earlier raided them. By 1787 the trader David Thompson reported that they had taken most Shoshone lands. Anthony Henday of the Hudson's Bay Company met the Blackfoot in 1754. Later they traded with both British and American companies, while often clashing with American trappers and with the Iron Confederacy of Cree, Assiniboine and their allies. Their other enemies included the Crow, the Cheyenne and the Sioux.

Smallpox carried up the Missouri by a steamboat in 1837 killed some 6,000 Blackfoot. As the bison disappeared, the people grew dependent on government rations. On 23 January 1870 the US Army attacked a friendly Piikani camp on the Marias River by mistake; by the Army's own count 173 people died, mostly women, children and elderly. In the winter of 1883–1884, remembered as the Starvation Winter, 600 Blackfoot died of hunger. The Blackfoot largely stayed out of the plains wars: the Siksika chief Crowfoot refused to join the Lakota, later made peace with Sitting Bull, and kept his people neutral in the 1885 North-West Resistance.

In the United States, the Blackfoot were confined to lands defined in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, and Lame Bull's treaty of 1855 promised annual goods in exchange for a reservation. In Canada they signed Treaty 7 in 1877 and settled on reserves in southern Alberta. The US government outlawed traditional religion in 1898, sent children to boarding schools and divided land into allotments from 1907, until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 restored self-government.

The nations number about 16,000 people in Canada and 15,000 in the United States. They run tribal colleges in Browning, Montana, and at Stand Off, Alberta. Elders revived the language after it had become rare by the 1950s and 1960s, and the Sun Dance, banned until 1934, is held every summer.

Our 1492, 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700 and 1715 maps draw an approximate Blackfoot territory, labelled "Blackfoot" or with its Blackfoot name. On the 1650 map it borders the Crow, the Gros Ventre, the Shoshone and the Nez Perce.