Tribe: The Blackfoot, or "Niitsitapi" is a confederacy of four smaller tribes, three of which are in Canada, and the fourth is in Montana. The three Canadian tribes are the Northern Peigan, the Siksika and the Kainai, and the tribe in Montana is the Southern Peigan.
Meaning of Name: Niitsitapi means "Original People." They also call themselves "Pikuni" in Algonquin. Other than that, it is theorized by some that they are called the "Blackfoot" because the soles of their moccasins have been dipped in pine tar and ash to make them more durable, and the forested terrain darkened the tar and ash until it turned black.
Location: Originally from the forests of Eastern Canada, in about 1200 AD, the Blackfoot traveled west and settled in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia in Canada, with a group of them traveling south from there to Montana in the United States. They followed the bison and wintered and summered in two different places, as did the bison. They now live on reservations located on their old hunting grounds.
Original Language: Algonquin.
Tribal Affiliations: The Gros Ventres (the "Fat Bellies"), who called themselves the Naywattamee, and the Athabascan-speaking Sarcee.
Traditional Enemies: The Cree, a Canadian tribe, as well as Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow, Cheyenne, the Sioux (the Dakota, the Lakota and the Nakota), the Plains Ojibwe, the Metis and many other tribes. Wars, horse-thieving and raiding parties were common. The Blackfoot men were particularly partial to kidnapping Shoshone women and their children. They weren't too fond of white men encroaching on their hunting grounds, either.
Traditional Style of Housing: Because the Blackfoot followed the bison, and were therefore nomadic, they lived in buffalo-hide four-pole teepees. Once white men had hunted the bison close to extinction, the Blackfoot lifestyle and diet were radically altered, and they took to a more sedentary lifestyle, and moved from teepees to log cabins. The teepees and log cabins were owned by the women.
Traditional Attire: Bison-skin fur-lined breach-cloth, leggings, tunics, skirts for the women, moccasins, and split-horned headdress (one bison horn, split in half and decorated.) The men wore their hair long and decorated with feathers and beads.
Traditional Foods: The Blackfoot men hunted bison, pronghorn sheep, moose, antelope and elk, but 90% of their diet was bison meat. (One bison could weigh as much as 2000 pounds and every bit of it was used, so the relatively small bands of Blackfoot didn't need to kill many to keep themselves in bison jerky.) They traditionally avoid hunting and eating snakes, reptiles and grizzly bears, fish, seafood and fishing. The women made pemmican, jellies, and jams, and made a baked bread using the same ingredients as Indian Fry Bread. They also gathered service berries, black walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, cherries, huckleberries, blueberries, crabapples, plums, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, elderberries, persimmons, hickory nuts, acorns, agave, yucca and corn.
Position of Women: Low. This was a warrior and hunting culture. Women did all of the cooking, beading, clothing-production, moccasin-making, food-production and bison-processing. Men did the hunting, the raiding, and the wars and took the leadership roles.
Blackfoot Courtship: The girls would paint the parts of their hair in red to show that they were ready for marriage and child-bearing, but most marriages were pre-arranged by the families while the bride and groom were still children. Unlike most of the Native Americans, the brides went to live in the teepees of their in-laws. Gifts between families were exchanged, and there doesn't seem to have been a bride-price of horses, deer meat, textiles or the playing of flute-music.
Interesting Tidbits: Before they learned about horses, they used dogs to pull their supplies in travois, which is a wheel-less cart shaped like a triangle. Once they discovered how to use horses, horses became the main source of currency, and the richest man was the one who could afford to give most of his herd of horses away.... A boy was given a silly name until he had stolen his first horse or killed his first enemy, at which time he was given a respectable name.... Like other Plains Indians, they engaged in "Counting Coup" by using long feathered sticks to poke their enemies.... Their young men engaged in vision quests, and of the Indian Tribes, they were the most like the Hollywood stereotype.
Traditional Religion: Very nature-based, with story-telling and creation myths, deeply spiritual.
Slavery and the Blackfoot: It has been suggested that escaped African slaves may have been part of the Blackfoot tribe, but a more likely scenario is that they found a safe harbor with the Seminole, because southern cotton plantations are closer to Florida, and the Everglades would provide better cover for dark-skinned people than the wild open places of Montana.
Current Population: There are more than 32,000 registered Blackfoot, but most live in Canada.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: factories.
Famous Blackfoot: Nobody that I have heard of.
No comments:
Post a Comment