The Blackfoot, or Blackfeet, are the children of people put on earth by Apistotokiwa, the Maker. The Nezetapi, or Real People, as they call each other, originated on a homeland covering today's southern Alberta, western Saskatchewan, and central Montana. Today, the tribe resides on a reservation in Montana, adjacent to Glacier National Park and the U.S. Canadian border. The Blackfeet belong to a confederacy that originally included the Blood, North Piegan, and Siksika tribes of Alberta and the Small Robes, who were the southernmost band in the Blackfoot confederacy. The Small Robes, two thousand strong in 1835, were exterminiatured in the nineteenth century by smallpox and warfare.
———When the artist George Catlin visited the Blackfeet in 1832, he estimated the confederacy's population as 16,500. The German prince Maximilian Zu Wied and karl Bodmer, an artist visiting a year later, the population at closer to twenty thousand. Catlin called the upper Missouri River homeland of the Blackfeet, and the tribe was decimated. Its survival and recovery speak of an enduring people.
———The name Blackfeet is an exclusively English term. In the tribal language, the name is Amskapi Pikuni. Pikuni derives from an old form meaning "spotted robes." Occasionally, elders will use Sokeetapi, or "Prairie People," and Apikunipuyi, "Speakers of the Same Language," as descriptive names.
———A popular anthropological theory has the Blackfeet moving onto the plains of what is now Montana in 1750. This idea derives from the naive academic notion that the tribe was migrating southward when contact with western expansion was made. Recent anthropological discoveries, and Blackfoot origin tradition, confirm the tribe's residency in its homeland for thousands of years.
———The Blackfeet were people of the plains and buffalo. They never used canoes or ate fish. To the Blackfeet, rivers and lakes hold a special power because they are inhabited by the suyitapis, the Underwater People. Painted lodge covers, medicine bundles, and other sacred items were transferred to the tribe from the Suyitapis. In turn, their power and domain are respected by the tribe. Today, the reservation waterways and lakes are routed as premier fishing spots. Yet most tribal members maintain the traditional ban on fishing.
———In 1896, at the urging of George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audobon Society, the tribe, then reduced to fourteen hundred members, signed a $1.5 million agreement with the federal government relinquishing its western territory. The relinquished area became Glacier National Park on May 11, 1910. Transcripts of the meeting include a closing speech by White Calf, leader of the tribe. In it, he referred to Ninastako, Chief Mountain, a sacred place of the tribe, stating, "Chief Mountain is my head. Now my head is cut off. The mountains have been my last refuge." The speech echoes the history of the tribe's relationship with an encroaching new order.
———The Blackfoot Indian Reservation today is a fifty-mile square of mountains and foothills, lakes and rivers falling eastward onto the plains. The 1,525,712-acre reserve is but a portion of the 26-million-acre tribal homeland recognized by the federal government in 1855. The population today is approaching the numbers reported by Catlin and Prince Maximilian, and half of the fifteen thousand enrolled tribal members live on the reservation. Enrollment in the tribe is set forth by a rule inspired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Only those with the requisite "blood quantum" (today, people with one-fourth degree, or more, blood lineage) can be tribal members. Enrolled members are issued identification cards indicating their blood quantum degree and enrollment number. Membership in the tribe entails a variety of tribal rights and responsibilities, ranging from use of communal lands to serving on the governing body, the Blackfoot Tribal Business council.
———Tribal headquarters are located at the Blackfoot Indian Agency in Browning, Montana, the largest of five reservation communities. Legend has it that the wife of the agency officer, D. M. Browning, selected the current site: overwhelmed by the beauty of acres of wildflowers alongside Willow Creek, she convinced her husband to move the agency there. Actually, the decision was made by the Great Northern Railroad, whose tracks pass nearby.
———With the extermination of buffalo in 1883, the Blackfeet were left without food, and large numbers starved to death the following winter. The Starvation Winter is the darkest period in the history of the tribe. Another dark time was Baker's Massacre. In the freezing dawn of January 23, 1870, the Second United States Regiment of Cavalry, under Major Eugene Baker, massacred Henry Runner's camp at Willow Rounds, Montana. A total of 173 Blackfeet were killed, mostly women and children, and 140 were taken prisoner. The prisoners, many with smallpox were chased into the freezing prairie and abandoned. Descendants of the victims recount the event as part of tribal and family histories.
———Much of the foundation for contemporary Blackfeet life is laid between 1884 and 1910. During that period, the tribe's exceedingly high death rate began to decline and the population began to grow. Catholic and government boarding schools were built on the reservation The schools exerted enormous effort to separate students from their tribal language and cultural ways. Government officials and teachers emphasized vocational training and "civilized" behavior.
———Today, the tribe seeks to recover its heritage so that the group might flourish in a more tolerant world. The Blackfeet are revitalizing their tribal language, culture, and identity in the belief that strength comes from a healthy self-image. The return to the native language and culture is viewed as a healing movement rather than a retreat into an unhappy past.

DARRELL ROBES KIPP (Blackfoot)
Piegan Institute
Blackfoot Indian Reservation