It was to the west of these agricultural tribes that the Great Plains hunting people began to appear. Sometime during the late 15th century, these western tribes had abandoned their previously settled life and returned to the nomadic hunting life of their ancestors. And by the time the first white men arrived on the Plains, they had transformed themselves into the feared warriors of the West, made even more powerful and aggressive through their most prized possessions – the horse and firearms, both, of course, introduced earlier by the white man.
The northwest corner of the Plains, parts of Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta, was by that time the undisputed territory of the powerful Blackfoot Confederacy – the Algonquian Siksika, who were the actual Blackfoot tribe, the Piegan, and the Blood. Under their protection in this same territory lived also Athabascan Sarsi and Algonquian Atsina, whom the French called Gros Ventre – the Big Bellies.
The Blackfoot tribe must have been on the Plains much longer than other Indian people, hunting buffalo on foot, carrying their teepees and other possessions, or using wooden travois drawn by dogs. When met by white pioneers to the area around 1750, the Blackfoot were Plains Indians in every way; they could not remember ever having planted crops of any kind, or that any of their ancestors ever made pottery or basketry. But in all probability, like all Algonquian people, the Blackfoot, too, came from the forests around the Great Lakes, or the Canadian forests to the north; some turned south and eastward, where they became the Algonquian tribes of the eastern Woodlands, while others turned to the west, becoming farmers or buffalo hunters on the Plains.
At any rate, by that year of 1750, the Blackfoot Confederacy held an immense territory and were known and feared as the strongest and most aggressive military power on the northern Plains. From the Rocky Mountains in the west, through much of Montana and Alberta, they covered nearly 150,000 square miles, and held that vast land against all intruders, red or white. For nearly a century they prevent white men – whom they regarded as little more than poachers – from trapping in the rich beaver country of the Missouri River tributaries. At the same time they fought neighboring tribes, taking scalps and horses and whatever booty they could get.
But it was not human enemies that defeated the Blackfoot in the end. Unlike most of the Plains tribes, the Blackfoot never carried on a formal war with the American troops, and did not face defeat in that sense. But the end result was the same: diseases and liquor, introduced intentionally or not, did their terrible work. In 1836, smallpox swept through the eastern border of the Blackfoot territory, and some of the tribal villages there lost three-quarters of their people. Within a few months more, raiding parties of Blackfoot warriors contracted the disease and carried the epidemic back to their own camps. About half their people died that year alone.
Again in 1845, and once more in 1857, the same disease swept through the Blackfoot camps, reducing the population to less than a third of their former strength. Despite their decimated ranks they managed to carry on, but their troubles were far from over. Whiskey traders from the east came among the people, encouraging them to steal horses and cattle from white ranchers in exchange for liquor. Conditions got quickly out of hand, with the young men of the tribes willing to do nearly anything to get a hold of the liquor. The whiskey traders operated mostly out of Canada, while the Indians crossed over to the southside of the border to steal cattle and horses and then quickly returned to the safety of their home country. Inevitably, their brothers in Montana were blamed for everything; at any rate, being the only Indians within easy reach, they suffered the most. In 1869, soldiers fell over a peaceful Piegan camp, killing many of the inhabitants indiscriminately. The next year smallpox struck again among the Blackfoot.
The Sarsi were only one of many tribes that now lived far from their original homelands. At some earlier time, these Athabascan people had moved across the Saskatchewan River from their original homeland in the Sub-Arctic and had adopted the ways of the bison hunters. Almost from the first, they had apparently enjoyed the protection of the Blackfoot tribes, in whose territory they now lived, and soon their traits and ceremonies began to resemble those of their hosts. The name Sarsi is, in fact, the Blackfoot name for them, and apparently means ‘no good’, though this may not be a literal translation. It may simply mean that the Sarsi were a small and weak group of people, desperately in need of protection, and that the Blackfoot tribes had taken pity on them. Still, the Sarsi managed to retain their tribal independence, even if many of them adopted the Blackfoot language – probably out of necessity, because their protectors no doubt considered it beneath their dignity to learn the Sarsi language. And if Sarsi groups were occasionally encountered in Montana as well, they always regarded Canada as their real home.
The Atsina were called Gros Ventre (Big Bellies) in frontier days – not because they had developed large abdomens, but because they lived along the South Saskatchewan River, which in those days was called the Big Belly River, where they apparently formed a large population. But some of their people later split away from them and moved southward into the territory of what is now Colorado, where they became known as the Arapaho. And when, sometime around 1800, smallpox appeared on the Plains, it carried away nearly two-thirds of the remaining Atsina population. Other tribes quickly took advantage of their weakened position and raided them until they, like the Sarsi, sought refuge among the powerful Blackfoot.
