The Nitsitapii (“real people”), collectively called the Blackfoot, comprise three distinct groups: the Blackfoot or Siksika, the Blood or Kainai, and Piegan or Piikani. The collective use of the names Blackfoot in Canada and Blackfeet in the United States developed because it was the Siksika, the most northerly group, who first met the European traders. Today, the Siksika reside on the Bow River near Calgary, the Kainai near Cardston and the largest group, the Piikani are separated into two groups, the North Piikani near Pincher Creek and the South Piikani in northern Montana. In modern times, the northern Montana group is referred to as The Blackfeet Nation or The Blackfeet Tribe. A highly nomadic people, the Blackfeet were deeply connected to the hunting of bison on the plains and based much of their livelihood on the resources of the mountains and eastern foothills.

The Blackfeet Indians controlled the vast prairies east of the mountains. The Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai lived and hunted in the western valleys, and also traveled east of the mountains to hunt buffalo. The Glacier Park area was familiar territory to all these groups.

In October 1855, after many conferences with different Indian tribes of the northwest, Governor Isaac Stevens held a great council at the mouth of the Judith River and established the Blackfeet Reservation. This treaty included many tribes both east and west of the Rocky Mountains. The purpose of this and the other treaties signed with the other tribes was to promote peace and establish common hunting grounds among the tribes. The Blackfeet Treaty, which established a hunting ground on the Blackfeet Territory for eastern Indians but prevented the Indians west of the mountains from using the passes in or near what is now the park, really touched off the fireworks. The treaty was immediately condemned by the western Indians and was never kept by them. The result was a period of almost continual strife and warfare between the tribes between 1855 and 1870. The prime significance of this treaty is the fact that it stopped, for the next fifteen years, further attempts to enter the part of the Rocky Mountains now occupied by the park until after the quieting of Indian troubles following the Baker Massacre.

White Calf and Big Nose Bear Chief along with 33 other Blackfeet leaders met in 1895 to negotiate the sale of reservation land from their western border along the Continental Divide to Birch Creek. The Blackfeet at this point were impoverished. With the decimation of the buffalo herds, their traditional way of life was gone. White Calf stated at one point during the negotiations, “My eyes were long ago opened in regard to the purposes of the Government….No other reservation has as valuable land as that which you come to buy.” He set a price of $3 Million. Eventually, with few options but to agree, the Blackfeet settled on the price of $1.5 million. This “ceded strip” would later become the eastern border of Glacier National Park.

Credits and Sources:

Land of Many Stories: The People and History of Glacier National Park, National Park Service, Montana Hisotrical Society, Glacier Naitonal Park Fund, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation, http://www.nps.gov/features/glac/LMSeTour/centennial_eTour.html, Accessed June 10, 2015.

Donald H. Robinson, Through the Years in Glacier National Park: an Administrative History,Glacier Natural History Association, Inc. In cooperation with the National Park Service, May 1960.

“Glacier: American Indians,” National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/education/american_indians.htm, Accessed June 10, 2015.