Elouise Cobell (Yellow Bird Woman) heard the stories for years: the government was cheating Native Americans on payments for land rights. She took up the cause, and now the Blackfoot Indians are poised to reap billions. In Blackfoot country, passing…
The Blackfeet / Blackfoot tribes were divided into the following divisions: The Siksika or Blackfeet proper, occupying the northern part of their territory; the Kainah or Bloods south of the preceding, and the Peigan or Piegan, south of the Kainah,…
The Blackfeet and Blackfoot tribes are really the same tribe. There are three divisions of the Blackfoot Nation. When the US - Canadian border was drawn, those on the Canadian side of the boundary continued to be called by their traditional branch names.
QUESTION
I know the Blackfeet Indians had a reputation as fierce warriros and excellent horsemen. But did they develop a particular breed of horse?
--Submitted by John L.
The Blackfoot Buffalo Horse is a descendant of the Spanish Mustang.
The popular opinion is that all Indian horses descended from animals brought to the Americas by Columbus, and Cortez in the early 1500s, and Ponce de Leon and other later explorers and immigrants. However some Indian tribes say they had horses before Europeans came. The Blackfoot tribes have their own legends about how the blackfoot aquired the horse.
A Blackfoot Legend
The buffalo rock, as called by the Blackfeet Indians, was usually a fossil shell of some kind, picked up on the prairie. Whoever found one was considered fortunate, for it was thought to give a person great power over buffalo. The owner put the stone in his lodge, near the fire, and prayed over it. This story reveals not only the use of such a rock, but also a common method of hunting buffalo before the Indians had horses.
Enrollment in the Blackfeet Tribe is governed by Ordinance 14. (This link is a PDF file. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to print and view this file. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can…