Niitsitapi

File:Blood squaws in war dress (HS85-10-18744).jpg

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfoot_Confederacy#/media/File:Blood_squaws_in_war_dress_(HS85-10-18744).jpg

The Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) are a confederation of four Indigenous nations: the Pikuni/Peigan, North Peigan Pikuni, Blood/Kainai, and Blackfoot/Siksika. Traditionally, the Niitsitapi were a nomadic gathering-hunting people who followed their most prominent game, the bison. Members are currently concentrated in present-day Montana and Alberta.

Tribal members have described the origins of the common name “Blackfoot” (using the common name "buffalo" to refer to bison as opposed to true buffalo native to Africa and Asia): “Before the horse arrived in the 1730s French fur traders observed indigenous people who had walked through a prairie fire and called them pen wa, the French word for black foot, after observing the blackened bottoms of their moccasins. An alternate identification originates from our ancient association with the buffalo whose hooves are black. We are the people of the buffalo, Blackfoot people.”

The Niitsitapi lived traditionally in bands of about 80 to 160 people. The stayed in tipis

The Niitsitapi have a website: www.blackfoot.org.

Culture

According to Kiera Ladner, the Niistiapi base their society on the surrounding ecosystem and especially on the Bison. Bison lived in a cohesive community that respected individual autonomy and whose leadership was fluid, non-coercive, and inclusive of all genders. Learning from their nonhuman neighbors, the Niistiapi established a freedom-respecting society: “[T]he buffalo are acknowledged for teaching ‘’Siiksikaawa’’ [another name for the Niistiapi], directly or indirectly, about community. While individuals were free to live their own life way without the interference of others, individuals were also obligated to and responsible for both their relations and the nation. Like the buffalo, they were tied together, by professions of kinship.”

There was a gendered division of labor, but it was not mandatory and women had a choice to engage in hunting and warfare if they preferred these activities to homemaking. Within the home, women had no obligation to obey men. On the subject of traditional gender roles, the ‘’Indian Country Media Network’’ interviewed women’s studies professor Susan Webber:

“Men took over the education of young boys, teaching them about being hunters and aggressive warriors,” she said. “But women had a choice. They could learn the tasks of homemaking or they could go to war with the men. Education—and whatever that meant—was the realm of the woman.” Traditionally, Blackfeet women owned their homes and were subservient to no one, Webber said. Prior to the introduction of Christianity and its notions of patriarchy, Blackfeet women existed at the center of the home. “The home belonged to the woman, and the husband—the man—just resided there,” she said. “She ensured the home was taken care of, that anyone who came in was fed. She even sat at the center as she cooked.”

Confirming the power of women in Niisitapi society, Alice Kehoe writes:

"Women were innately blessed with power to reproduce, both children and the whole society’s materiality. Men were believed impulsive, poor at crafts, prone to disaster unless pitied by a manifestation of the Almighty (sought by vision quest, in the Lakota phrase 'going crying for power' [Kehoe 1995]). Women created the camp, and fed, clothed, and sheltered everyone. Men dealt with outsiders, though it was not uncommon for Blackfoot women to go to war alongside their husbands. Blackfoot women were/are ritual intermediaries between spiritual power and men; they alone have power to unwrap and rewrap medicine bundles (tokens with which power was invoked with song and dance), and they lead the Sun Dance. No other Plains Nation gave women this role in the Sun Dance, though others had women’s sodalities with ritual responsibilities."

Decisions

Niistiapi governance did not involve coercive hierarchy, and Ladner writes that “there was no ‘authority’ greater than the responsible individual.”. The Niistiapi facilitated group decision making and administered the decisions through three main organizational structures: clans, societies, and bundles.

“Clans” were the local political entity, and the clan leaders (“chiefs”) played an administrative role of implementing decisions and meeting everyday needs. Leadership relied on example and persuasion rather than coercion.

Each “society” played a specific administrative or decision-making role modeled after an animal from the ecosystem. For example, the Bumble Bee society gave social assistance and “stung,” or called out, anyone who acted harmfully toward others. The Dog society provided defense and expected members to be generous and loving yet fiercely loyal.

Holders of “bundles” of sacred items also played particular governance roles. The holders of the Thunder Medicine Pipe Bundle used traditional knowledge in order to settle disputes among band members. The Beaver Medicine Bundle contains over 600 songs and dances representing animals in the territory.

People would leave if a leader turned out to be coercive. Decisions were made with everyone in mind, including children and the elderly:

"Families voted with their feet when leaders proved undiplomatic or stingy. Personal autonomy was highly prized. Even opinions of children were respected. Personal autonomy was linked to the gi of spiritual power. Health and prosperity signaled spiritual blessing; elders were the living proof of blessedness. Respect for the elderly reflected respect for spiritual powers."

Economy

The Blackfeet traditionally had what the anthropologist Ruth Benedict called a “high-synergy” economy, meaning that it was in an individual’s advantage to cooperate with the community rather than compete. Communities honored those who shared, and frequent redistributions prevented the permanent acquisition of private wealth.

Those who became wealthy over the course of a year would give away virtually all their wealth at an annual Sun Dance ceremony. The humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow attended a Sun Dance and recounted how a Northern Blackfoot man gave away nearly all his possessions (such as food, blankets and Pepsi-Cola cases) to those in need:

And then, with a very lordly gesture, a gesture of great pride, but without being humiliating, he gave this pile of wealth to the widows, to the orphaned children, and to the blind and diseased. At the end of the Sun Dance ceremony he was stripped of all his possessions, owning nothing but the clothes he stood in. He had, in this synergic way ( I won’t say either selfishly or unselfishly because clearly the polarity has been transcended) given away everything he had, but in that process had demonstrated what a wonderful man he was, how capable, how intelligent, how strong, how hard-working, how generous, and therefore how wealthy.

After colonists introduced the horse, the Blackfoot developed rudimentary social classes. "Certain families considered themselves of higher status, training their children to exercise leadership; well dressed, they were absolved from daily drudgery. Such families maintained their relative economic advantage by lending horses to others, receiving in return a share of the hunted, raided, or harvested produce."

Environment

The Niitsitapi modeled much of their entire society on nonhuman surroundings and lived sustainably until European colonization. They kept band sizes were kept small enough to be “amenable to the survival of all species.” Song and dance taught people about different animal and plant species. The beaver was considered an especially sacred animal because of “his role in the orchestration and allocation of water.”The Niitsitapi hunted bison without depleting the animal or destroying its habitat, as tribal members recount: “Blackfeet territory had more buffalo per square mile than anywhere. With an abundance of cold, pristine glacial water from the ‘Earth’s Backbone’, coupled with the cyclical arrival of warm Chinook winds, there evolved a high-protein species of fescue grass. This grass supported the richest buffalo ecosystem in North America. The Blackfeet diet consisted of 80 percent fresh meat, with adults consuming five to seven pounds per day. Blackfeet considered buffalo ‘real food.’”

Neighboring Societies

Piegan, members of the Niistiapi, were the only Indigenous people to engage in violent clashes with the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. "United States" president Thomas Jefferson had commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore territories recently acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. In 1806, about thirty Piegans encountered Lewis and three companions. These settlers had separated from the main party on the return visit, in order to scout the Two Medicine River valley in present-day Montana. A Piegan on horseback rushed toward the settlers and, stopping a hundred paces away, retreated. Instead of respecting this warning, Lewis and his companions ventured further into the Piegan territory and joined the Indians’ campsite. According to Lewis’s account, a Piegan approached the sleeping settlers in the morning and tried to seize their guns. Blackfeet oral histories say that these men were not stealing guns from Lewis's party but had won them in a night of gambling and were simply taking what they and rightly won. Other Piegans tried to take the explorers’ horses. Lewis shot one of the Indians and the explorer J. Fields chased another Indian and stabbed him in the heart. Lewis and his men stole horses, guns, bows, arrows, and bison meat from the Piegans before leaving.

In subsequent years, the Niistiapi would face massacre and land theft at the hands of the “United States.” On 23 January 1870, American troops killed 200 Peigans in what is known as the Marias Massacre:

On the morning of Jan. 23, 200 Peigans were killed, most of them women, children, and elderly. The Peigans were a friendly tribe, not the hostile camp that the troops were supposed to attack. However, the commander had permission to use his judgment and attack the Peigans and punish them for things they may be guilty of in the past or future. After the massacre, the troops left to find their real target, but it was too late as the hostile tribe had moved.