Strangers on the Land

This chapter describes the period from 1781 until 1806. Following a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1781, the Blackfoot established direct trade with non-Native people for the first time, circumventing middlemen who had been devastated by the disease. While many embraced the opportunities for trade, they also carefully structured their relationships with newcomers, repurposing regional traditions of peaceful exchange and ceremony for a new era. At the same time, they deliberately prevented British (Hudson’s Bay Company) and Canadian (North West Company) traders from expanding their trade into new regions, especially the intermountain West, thus securing crucial advantages over their western and southern neighbors. By 1806, Blackfoot people had become one of the most powerful and expansive Indigenous polities in North America.

A Future They Were Resolved to Achieve

This chapter focuses on the period from 1848 to 1860, and in particular on the 1855 Blackfeet Treaty, a crucial turning point in Blackfoot history. The late 1840s and early 1850s saw the growing presence of missionaries, migrants, and independent traders in the region, as well as increased conflict among Native people over bison hunting grounds. Blackfoot signers led by Lame Bull imagined that the 1855 treaty would strengthen their position in the region by establishing peace and protecting access to diminishing bison herds. However, U.S. treaty commissioners led by Washington governor Isaac Stevens believed the 1855 treaty would facilitate rapid immigration and settlement and ultimately transform the region, in keeping with growing American ambitions throughout the West.

Now They Will Pretend to Equal Us

This chapter describes Blackfoot responses to increasing colonial activity on the northwest plains and Rocky Mountains between 1806 and 1821. Ascending the Missouri River to their south, the American expedition of Lewis and Clark circumvented the Blackfoot to open ties with Native nations in the intermountain West. British explorer David Thompson did the same in the north, accessing the mountains near the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan River. Blackfoot people responded to these invasions with a targeted campaign of diplomacy and conflict, including blockades of key mountain passes, that severely limited American, Canadian, and British ambitions in the region for a generation. These conflicts also led to an overly simplistic depiction of Blackfoot “hostility” that lingers to this day.

Náápi’s Place

This chapter provides an overview of Blackfoot origins and life on the northwest plains prior to the eighteenth century. Blackfoot people credit the ancestral spirit Náápi, or Old Man, with the creation of the northwest plains landscape, where they have lived for millennia at least. The Blackfoot developed durable religious traditions, hunting and gathering practices, and diplomatic connections that long sustained their way of life. Beginning in the 1720s, the arrival of horses and European metal goods through trade networks of Indigenous “middlemen” disrupted their traditional practices but also provided new opportunities that many Blackfoot people embraced. The concurrent arrival of horses and metal goods also led to increased conflict and warfare between Indigenous people in the region.

Epilogue

The epilogue examines the aftermath of the 1870 Marias Massacre and smallpox epidemic. North of the border, the American whiskey trade on what was known as the “Whoop-Up Trail” wreaked havoc on Blackfoot communities prior to the arrival of the North West Mounted Police in 1874. As competition over bison herds and pressure on natural resources increased, Crowfoot and other Blackfoot chiefs entered treaty negotiations with Canadian officials. These negotiations—which many Blackfoot people have since disputed on the grounds of faulty communication and translation—culminated in Treaty Seven in 1877, which dispossessed the Blackfoot of much of their land and formalized the colonial relationship that defines Blackfoot country today.

Introduction

The introduction begins with the story of Bull Back Fat, a Blackfoot chief who visited both American and British fur traders in 1832 to remind them of their obligations to Blackfoot people. Bull Back Fat was one in a long line of savvy Blackfoot diplomats who, between 1720 and 1877, used the unique borderlands geography of Blackfoot homelands to preserve their influence, sovereignty, and way of life. By telling the story of the three Blackfoot nations (Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani) and their engagement with colonial change, this book contributes to growing scholarly conversations on Indigenous agency, borderlands history, and early North American history.

Between Empires

In 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company merged, robbing Native people like the Blackfoot of trade leverage by forcing them to trade with only one partner. At the same time, American and Canadian traders made inroads with Indigenous nations in the intermountain West, eroding Blackfoot advantages over their neighbors. Facing the loss of their strategic advantages, Blackfoot people responded by welcoming American traders from the American Fur Company to the upper Missouri River for the first time in 1830, thus securing themselves a privileged position and reasserting themselves as the region’s dominant power. Their borderlands position gave them leverage over non-Native traders and provided crucial mobility and flexibility that other Native people lacked.

Nefarious Traffic

This chapter demonstrates how tensions escalated between Blackfoot people and newcomers between 1861 and 1870. The Montana Gold Rush, increased settlement, the U.S. Civil War, and the collapse of the fur trade narrowed Blackfoot avenues for diplomacy during the early 1860s. In the late 1860s these escalating tensions exploded into open conflict in what had recently become Montana Territory, culminating in the U.S. Army’s massacre of an entire Piikani band in 1870, known as the Marias Massacre. The massacre, coupled with a devastating smallpox outbreak and settler pressure, devastated Blackfoot people’s ability to resist American expansion. By the 1870s, Blackfoot people in Montana faced little choice but to settle on a shrinking reservation or flee across the border to Canada.