Resistance and Cultural Revitalisation: Reading Blackfoot

Agency in the Texts of Cultural Transformation 1870–1920

Blanca Tovías de Plaisted

A thesis submitted to the University of New South Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Sydney, Australia, 2007 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Tovías de Plaisted

First name: Blanca Other name/s: Idalia

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: School of History and Philosophy and Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences School of English, Media and Performance Studies

Title: Resistance and Cultural Revitalisation: Reading Blackfoot Agency in the Texts of Cultural Transformation 1870-1920

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

The radical transformations attendant upon the imposition of colonial rule on the Siksikaitsitapi or Blackfoot of northern Alberta and southern Montana are examined in this dissertation in order to emphasise the threads of continuity within a tapestry of cultural change c.1870-1920. The dissertation traces cultural persistence through the analysis of texts of history and literature that constructed Blackfoot subjectivity in the half-century following the end of traditional lifeways and resettlement on three reserves in Canada and one reservation in the United States of America. This interdisciplinary thesis has been undertaken jointly in the School of History and Philosophy, and the School of English, Media and Performance Studies. It combines the tools of historical research and literary criticism to analyse the discourses and counter-discourses that served to construct Blackfoot subjectivity in colonial texts. It engages with the ways in which the Blackfoot navigated colonisation and resisted forced acculturation while adopting strategies of accommodation to ensure social reproduction and even physical survival in this period. To this end, it presents four case studies, each focusing on a discrete process of Blackfoot cultural transformation: a) the resistance to acculturation and cultural revitalisation as it relates to the practice of Ookan (Sun Dance); b) the power shifts ushered in by European contact and the intersection between power and Blackfoot dress practices; c) the participation of Blackfoot “organic intellectuals” in the construction of Blackfoot history through the transformation of oral stories into text via the ethnographic encounter; and d) the continuing links between Blackfoot history and literature, and contemporary fictional representations of Blackfoot subjectivity by First Nations authors. This thesis acknowledges that Blackfoot history and literature have been constructed through a complex matrix of textual representations from their earliest contacts with Europeans.This dissertation is a study of the intersection between textual representations of the Blackfoot, and resistance, persistence and cultural revitalisation 1870-1920. It seeks to contribute to debates on the capacity of the colonised Other to exercise agency. It engages with views articulated by organic intellectuals, and Blackfoot and other First Nations scholars, in order to foster a dialogue between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship.

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i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The impetus for this dissertation owes much to the encouragement and support of many colleagues and friends, especially my supervisors in the School of History and

Philosophy and the School of English, Media and Performance Studies. David Cahill has followed my progress with unrivalled enthusiasm, and has mentored me to develop my academic skills beyond the call of duty. I can never thank him sufficiently. Sue Kossew deserves great credit for her support and patience as I struggled to find the balance between the two disciplines that inform my research. I am also grateful to two interim supervisors: Bill Ashcroft and Roslyn Jolly. Roslyn’s advice was always insightful and served to expand my horizons. My research in

Canada and the United States was funded by the UNSW Faculty of Arts and Social

Sciences, and I particularly wish to record my appreciation to its Research

Management Committee and to Martyn Lyons, Associate Dean (Research).

It would be near impossible to cite all those who provided me with practical advice and moral support during this project. My ideas were tested during discussions with colleagues and friends. I warmly thank Fernanda Duarte for being my role model, and for the confidence she has always placed in me. During my overseas research travels I received invaluable assistance from Jan Gasco and Jerry

Moore, who opened their house to me, fed me, encouraged me, and gave me valuable feedback. Miki Hruska and Evelyn Ellerman were tremendous hosts in Edmonton.

Evie was my point of introduction to the Siksikaitsitapi people, for which I am most thankful. I am forever grateful to Vanessa Escudero and her parents, who also received me in their home and provided much warmth and practical assistance.

ii I particularly thank the members of the “Indigenous Studies Group” at

UNSW for their assiduousness in attending our meetings and for great discussions, especially Martina Horakova, Ben Miller, Pia Solberg, Johanna Perheentupa, Uta

Daur, Hallie Donkin, David Fonteyn, Katrin Althans, and Preethi Srinivasan. My heartfelt thanks go to Chicka Dixon for opening his door to our group and sharing his knowledge, and I thank his niece Liz Mayer for her friendship. Stephen Gregory,

Sara Sutler-Cohen, Katherine Russo, and Claudia Magallanes also deserve thanks for their collegiality. I am forever in the debt of Heather Moritz, for her friendship, her unsurpassed critical and proofreading skills, and her delicious cooking.

Members of the H-AMINDIAN discussion group gave me generous advice. I am especially grateful to Rod Thomas for a copy of his draft article on Native

American women warriors. Roland Bohr provided me with some fragments of text from his research in progress, and Kenneth Lokensgard with useful hints to make the best out of my 2005 research trip to Canada and the USA. Yale Belanger and Mary

Scriver welcomed me in their homes in Lethbridge and Valier, respectively. Mary’s contributions to the list are always incisive and generous. I am also grateful to the scholars who have paved the way for my study through their own work on the

Blackfoot, especially the early Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot ethnographers who strove to document Blackfoot knowledge, and whose names I have sought to emphasise throughout the dissertation. I especially thank Hugh Dempsey, author extraordinaire whose many publications on the Blackfoot inform this thesis, and who gave me words of encouragement when he generously came to meet me at the

Glenbow Archives during my 2005 research trip to Calgary. I thank Rosalyn LaPier for providing me with contact numbers and for welcoming my enquiries.

iii My research was kindly assisted by many librarians and archivists. Gerald

Conaty was of great assistance in opening the Glenbow Archives to me and providing me with access to invaluable materials. Patricia Molesky and Jim Bowman were also very helpful. The staff at the Library and Archives of Canada, The

Provincial Archives of Alberta and The Montana Historical Society were also untiringly helpful during my consultations. I am also grateful to the librarian at the

Medicine Springs Library at the Blackfeet Community College who allowed me to use their Special Collection.

My friends and family played a significant part in the completion of this dissertation. I thank Phillip Plaisted for his enormous support and trust in my capacities; he has not only been my IT specialist, cook, carpenter and house painter, but at times has also been my financier, tour driver, photographer, and many things besides. I thank Pedro, Adelina and Pablo Plaisted for challenging me to continue learning in order to keep up with them. Adelina’s practical support was crucial during the long working days leading to completion and her companionship was soothing. My parents taught me to value knowledge and instilled in me the curiosity that has led me thus far. I thank my father Rómulo Tobías for always making me feel special, and I thank my mother, Dolores Guajardo, who did not live to see the completion of my work but was proud of me always.

I thank foremost the Blackfoot past and present, those who shared their knowledge and passed it on to the new generations. I salute them for their dedication to documenting Blackfoot knowledge, and for embracing writing in order to document Blackfoot cultural heritage. This dissertation seeks to honour them by recognising their contribution to knowledge.

iv

ABSTRACT

The radical transformations attendant upon the imposition of colonial rule on the

Siksikaitsitapi or Blackfoot of northern Alberta and southern Montana are examined in this dissertation in order to emphasise the threads of continuity within a tapestry of cultural change c.1870-1920. The dissertation traces cultural persistence through the analysis of texts of history and literature that constructed Blackfoot subjectivity in the half-century following the end of traditional lifeways and settlement on three reserves in Canada and one reservation in the United States of America.

This interdisciplinary thesis has been undertaken jointly in the School of

History and Philosophy, and the School of English, Media and Performance Studies.

It combines the tools of historical research and literary criticism to analyse the discourses and counter-discourses that served to construct Blackfoot subjectivity in colonial texts. It engages with the ways in which the Blackfoot navigated colonisation and resisted forced acculturation while adopting strategies of accommodation to ensure social reproduction and even physical survival in this period. To this end, it presents four case studies, each focusing on a discrete process of Blackfoot cultural transformation: a) the resistance to acculturation and cultural revitalisation as it relates to the practice of Ookaan (Sun Dance); b) the power shifts ushered in by European contact and the intersection between power and Blackfoot dress practices; c) the participation of Blackfoot “organic intellectuals” in the construction of Blackfoot history through the transformation of oral stories into text via the ethnographic encounter; and d) the continuing links between Blackfoot history and literature, and contemporary fictional representations of Blackfoot

v subjectivity by First Nations authors. This thesis acknowledges that Blackfoot history and literature have been constructed through a complex matrix of textual representations from their earliest contacts with Europeans. This dissertation is a study of the intersection between textual representations of the Blackfoot, and resistance, persistence and cultural revitalisation 1870-1920. It seeks to contribute to debates on the capacity of the colonised Other to exercise agency. It engages with views articulated by organic intellectuals, and Blackfoot and other First Nations scholars, in order to foster a dialogue between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship.

vi

CANDIDATE’S PUBLICATIONS

Sections only of the following publications, written by the candidate as sole author, have been included in several chapters of the dissertation:

“Infected by the Hybrid? Framing Blackfoot Stories across Genres”, New Literatures Review, Number 43 (2005), pp. 83-97.

“Colonialism and Demographic Catastrophes in the Americas: Blackfoot Tribes of the Northwest,” in Patricia Grimshaw and Russell McGregor (eds.), Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), pp. 64-71.

“Fur and Skin Trades in the Americas”, in Thomas Benjamin (ed.), Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450. 3 volumes. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. Vol. 2, pp. 508-510.

vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of Originality i Acknowledgements ii Abstract v Candidate’s Publications vii Contents viii

Introduction 1

Précis of the Four Case Studies 3

Chapter One Interrogating Early Colonial Representations of The Siksikaitsitapi or Blackfoot 6

1.1 Introduction 6 1.2 The Politics and Difficulties of Nomenclature 6 1.3 The Legacy of Colonial Misnaming 9 1.4 Siksikaitsitapi Political Organisation 12 1.5 Broad Historical Background for the Dissertation 14 1.6 Disciplinary Boundaries and Theoretical Underpinnings 16 1.7 Methodology, Primary Sources 20 1.8 Ethical Considerations and Epistemological Boundaries 27

Chapter Two The Blackfoot Ookaan (Sun Dance) 1877-1930: A Case Study of Resistance, Persistence And Revitalisation 30

2.1 Introduction 30 2.2 Theoretical Basis for the Case Study 33 2.3 Historical Background: The Many Faces of Colonialism 35 2.4 Spelling the End of Siksikaitsitapi Autonomy before the 46 1880s 2.5 Political Manoeuvring Within a New Order 50 2.6 The Cultural Centrality of Ookaan 52 2.7 Regulations and Official Attitudes Against Sun Dances 59 2.8 The Rationale for the Assault on Ookaan 72 2.9 Implementation of the Prohibition 78 2.10 Failure of the Implementation 82 2.11 Siksikaitsitapi Responses to the Prohibition 84 2.12 Conclusion 88

viii

Chapter 3 Material Culture as a Site of Colonial Negotiation and Contestation: The Grammar of Blackfoot Leadership Dress 1750–1930 91

3.1 Introduction 91 3.2 Dress Hybridity within the Intertribal Arena 102 3.3 The Interface Between Dress and the Sacred 104 3.4 Dress, Power, and Tribal Politics 108 3.5 Women’s Dress and the Politics of Gendered Power 112 3.6 The Power of Women’s Business 119 3.7 Transgressing Western Gender Stereotypes 122 3.8 Power Dressing During the Buffalo Days (1750–1880) 127 3.9 Trade Captains and Fur Trade Wives 131 3.10 Cultural Renewal at the End of an Era 136 3.11 Cultural Transformation and Mimicry 141 3.12 Conclusion 146

Chapter Four: Ethnographic Encounters: Cultural Transactions and Translations 150

4.1 Introduction 150 4.2 Scope of the Chapter 153 4.3 Overview of Oral Stories: Hybridity vis-à-vis Emic and 154 Etic Distinctions 4.4 The Ethnographic Text and Hybridity 156 4.5 Hybridity and the Oral Tradition 161 4.6 Function of the Blackfoot Stories 162 4.7 Authorial Considerations 163 4.8 Blackfoot Stories and Colonial Appropriation 165 4.9 “Salvage Ethnography” and the Construction of Blackfoot 171 History 4.10 Motivations of the “Salvage” Ethnographers 174 4.11 Power/Knowledge Perspectives on Blackfoot-White 185 Collaborations 4.12 Blackfoot Ways of Knowing and History 190 4.13 Personal Narratives in Painted Robes 195 4.14 Historical Dimensions and the “Counting Coup” Genre 198 4.15 Blackfoot Agency or Cultural Appropriation? 200 4.16 Blackfoot Appropriation: The Many Guns’ Winter Count 205 4.17 Incorporating the Other: Adopting Europeans into the 206 Blackfoot Fold 4.18 Conclusion 208

ix

Chapter Five: Cultural Continuity and Revitalisation: Literary Representations, Hero Quests and The Sun Dance 211

5.1 Introduction 211 5.2 Contextualising “Native Literatures” 219 5.3 Native Writing as a Separate Field of Study 221 5.4 Native Writing in Canada and the United States 224 5.5 Ethical Dimensions of the Story of Paii (Scarface) 227 5.6 The Role of Ethics in Emma Lee Warrior’s Blackfoot Imaginings in “Compatriots” 238 5.7 Trickster Tropes: Turning the World Upside Down in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water 245 5.8 The Sun Dance as the Allegoric Centre of the Blackfoot Universe in GGRW 259 5.9 Coyote Becomes Lionel’s Sacred Helper 262 5.10 Restoration of the World Order in GGRW: Mythological Reversals and Christians Who Refuse to Mind Their Relations 263 5.11 A Hero for all Seasons: A Late Nineteenth-Century Paii in James Welch’s Fools Crow 265 5.12 Conclusion 274

Thesis Conclusion 277

Appendices

Appendix 1 Combined Siksikaitsitapi Population 1877–1929 284 Appendix 2 Siksikaitsitapi Population Percent Change Yearly 285 and Cumulative 1884–1929 Appendix 3 Siksikaitsitapi Population by Nation 1877–1929 286 Appendix 4 Combined Siksikaitsitapi Population 1877–1929 287 (Table)

Bibliography 288 Unpublished Primary Sources 288 Published Primary Sources 291 Secondary Sources 294

x INTRODUCTION

The overriding purpose of this dissertation is to emphasise cultural continuity within the radical transformations that European contact and the imposition of colonial rule forced upon the Niitsitapiksi (The Real People), but more specifically, the Siksikaitsitapi1 or Blackfoot during the period c. 1830–1920. It analyses instances in which the Blackfoot can be seen as agents, rather than as victims of history, while at the same time acknowledging the heterogeneous positions they adopted during the first half-century of reserve life in order to navigate political, cultural and social change. It argues that a nuanced understanding of those Blackfoot actions that ensured cultural continuity can be instrumental in revalorising the Blackfoot past. To this end, it focuses on Blackfoot representations in history and literature that span two eras: the “buffalo era” to c. 1880s when the Blackfoot led autonomous lifeways and relied on the American bison (buffalo) for their survival; and the “reserve era”, when the destruction of the buffalo herds, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, forced them to settle on three Canadian reserves in southern Alberta and one U.S. reservation in northern Montana. Blackfoot cultural transformation during the transition to living as colonised subjects from the early 1880s was the ineluctable by-product of famine and destitution. Dependence on government provisions of food and clothing served as leverage for forced assimilation. Despite the heterogeneity of positions occupied by the coloniser and the colonised, a wide gulf separated them. During the historical period of interest here, binaries were legally enforceable realities. Divided between Alberta and Montana, the Blackfoot bands began a radically different existence as state wards in Canada, and “domestic dependent nations”2 in the United States. George F. G. Stanley notes that Canadian law did not recognise the bands or tribes as nations, but as subjects of the Crown, with “usufructuary rights”3. John L. Tobias observes that the Indian Act of 1876 laid “the foundation for all Canada’s future Indian legislation,” although “western Indians were excluded from the operation of most sections” of this Act, such as enfranchisement, until “the Superintendent

1 Niitsitapiksi and Niitsitapi are sometimes used as equivalent terms to Blackfoot, but are more inclusive, extending to “other First Nations peoples” or “Real People”. Siksikaitsitapi refers to the four divisions that speak the Blackfoot language (see section on nomenclature below). 2 This is a well-known description by Chief Justice John Marshall c. 1832. Cited in Arnold Krupat, The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, p. 211. 3 George F. G. Stanley, “As Long As the Sun Shines and Water Flows: An Historical Comment”, in Ian A. L. Getty and Antoine S. Lussier, eds., As Long As the Sun Shines and Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies, Nakoda Institute Occasional Paper 1, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, [1983] 1990, pp. 1–26, pp. 18–19.

1 General of Indian Affairs considered them advanced enough in civilization.”4 Similar conditions applied in the United States, where “Indian” policy began to develop from 1781 with the Articles of Confederation. Citizenship was conferred on all “Indians” in 1924, and prior to that, to those who qualified through the General Allotment Act of 1887.5 Within this overarching context of colonial rule, the dissertation emphasises the ways in which the Siksikaitsitapi ensured the continuity of cultural practices marked for extinction by the colonisers, but at the same time adopted new technologies deemed beneficial to their survival and wellbeing. The dissertation consists of four case studies, each focusing on discrete processes of transformation, with the express aim of emphasising strands of cultural continuity. It analyses the extensive historiography and extant documentation of this period in order to interrogate colonial discourses that justified the appropriation of Blackfoot land and resources, and their confinement on reserves and reservations, there to be acculturated forcibly. It extends this aim of emphasising Blackfoot cultural continuity to the interpretation of contemporary fictional texts by Native authors, including Blackfoot authors, in order to analyse their links to the stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition (henceforth Blackfoot Stories). It argues that Blackfoot authors and other Native authors, who represent the Blackfoot from an emic6 perspective, turn the world upside down by representing the world from a Blackfoot-centred perspective.

4 John L. Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada’s Indian Policy”, Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology Vol. 6, no. 2 (1976): pp. 13–30, 17–18; Robert J. Surtees, “Canadian Indian Policies”, in William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp. 81–95; Andrew Armitage, Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada and New Zealand, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995, pp. 78–87; and Hana Samek, The Blackfoot Confederacy 1880–1920: A Comparative Study of Canadian and U.S. Indian Policy, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. The Canadian Constitution Act, 1982 35(2) defines “aboriginal peoples of Canada” to include “the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.” Duane Champagne, ed., Native America: Portrait of the Peoples, Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994, p. 331. 5 Reginald Horsman, “United States Indian Policies, 1776–1815”; and Francis Paul Prucha, “United States Indian Policies, 1815–1860”; in William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp. 29–39 and pp. 40–50. In 1830, the Removal Act forced the relocation of Indians to areas beyond the Mississippi; in 1849, the Department of the Interior became responsible for Indian Affairs (previously a duty of the War Department) and; from 1858 the policy of establishing reservations was adapted to the West. See Gordon Macgregor, with Royal B. Hassrick and William E. Henry (Indian Education Research Staff), Warriors Without Weapons: A Study of the Society and Personality of the Pine Ridge Sioux, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946, pp. 78– 79; and Anthony J. Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl with One Spoon, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003, p. 481. 6 Historians and anthropologists use “emic” to distinguish the understanding of a culture by an insider, from that of an outsider (“etic”). Linguist Kenneth L. Pike first coined these terms to distinguish units of sound, the first describing a level of universals as observed by a cultural outsider, and the second describing a level of contrasts within a particular language: Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 114–17.

2 Précis of the Four Case Studies

The first case study (Chapter 2) focuses on the continuity of Ookaan (the Sun Dance) despite official attempts c. 1880–1920 to eradicate it, together with other kindred ceremonies, including the Potlatch and the Tamanawas of the First Nations of British Columbia.7 It is argued that during the early reserve era, within an environment of great power disparity and forced acculturation, its persistence was ensured through a combination of diplomacy and resistance. It illustrates how government officials deployed ideas of progress during this period to attempt to force the abandonment of this practice. The chapter focuses primarily on the Canadian reserves but incorporates some perspectives pertaining to the Montana reservation. It relies on official documentation from the Department of Indian Affairs in order to draw attention to the inconsistencies between the statutory regulations and their implementation. The second case study (Chapter 3) analyses the continuity of Blackfoot dress practices within changing intercultural and gendered power relations across one century of gradually increasing contact with Europeans, Euro-Canadians and Euro- Americans (henceforth “whites”). It focuses on two eras: the fur trade from c. 1830, and the early reserve period from c. 1880. Studies by pioneer ethnologist Clark Wissler, David C. Duvall, and by Ann T. Walton, John C. Ewers, and Royal B. Hassrick8 provide comprehensive descriptions of Blackfoot dress and regalia, but are less concerned with the political and gendered implications of dress transformations. By contrast, this case study analyses the innate utility and adaptability of dress to signify power across sacred and secular realms within a changing socio-historical context of increasing availability of European dress and materials coupled with a decreasing availability of their traditional counterparts. It relates dress to the Blackfoot Stories, which provide the basis for sartorial practices. The chapter analyses stereotypes of Blackfoot women in colonial representations and contrasts these with the manifold ways in which women exercised power during the period.

The third case study (Chapter 4) emphasises the continuity of Blackfoot knowledge within a process whereby Blackfoot Stories (oral literature or orature9)

7 Christopher Bracken, The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997. 8 Clark Wissler, “Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians”, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (henceforth AMNH), Vol. 5, Part 1, New York: The Trustees, 1910; and “Costumes of the Plains Indians”, AMNH, Vol. 17, no. 2, New York: The Trustees, 1915; Glenbow Archives, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds, “Dress and Ceremonies”, esp. f. 27 for bonnets; and Ann T. Walton, John C. Ewers, and Royal B. Hassrick, After the Buffalo were Gone: The Louis Warren Hill, Sr., Collection of Indian Art, St. Paul, Minnesota: Northwest Area Foundation, 1985. 9 This neologism was coined by Jerry W. Ward, “N. J. Loftis’ Black Anima: A Problem in Aesthetics”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 7, no. 2 (1976): pp. 195–210, p. 201, to describe oral

3 were transformed into text—a process psychologist Joseph Gone describes as “entextualization”10—through the mediation of ethnographers. It focuses on five volumes published between 1890 and 1911. The chapter seeks to challenge stereotypes of the Blackfoot as “savages” and “neophytes”. The “civilisation” of the “savage” legitimated imperial pursuits that were cloaked in the progress discourse of colonialism: to “civilise” the “savages” was elevating them to a higher order of societies that possessed a state structure and advanced technology.11 By analysing a process whereby their knowledge was translated, transcribed and appropriated into Western knowledge, this chapter delineates some of the effects that a different epistemology and worldview had on the resultant texts. No study has attempted to analyse this process with a view to vindicating the contribution by Blackfoot “organic intellectuals”12 who contributed their knowledge and, in some cases, their translation and auto-ethnographical skills to these texts—which became canonical Blackfoot history and literature. The study emphasises the debt that the putative authors of the written texts owe to these Blackfoot collaborators and argues for a revaluation of their role. The fourth case study (Chapter 5) focuses on the threads of continuity between the Blackfoot oral tradition and contemporary fictional representations. Blackfoot subjectivity, as constructed in the Blackfoot Stories, provides an ideal point of comparison with that represented from an emic perspective in contemporary Native texts. This chapter builds a bridge between history and literature by linking the representation of ethics in the story of “Paii” (Scarface)13 and three contemporary fictional representations written in English by Native authors, including Blackfoot literature, “where speech not writing is the primary medium of communication.” See also Oxford English Dictionary Online, available at: http://dictionary.oed.com [Accessed 25 July 2007]. 10 Joseph P. Gone, “As If Reviewing His Life: Bull Lodge’s Narrative and the Mediation of Self- Representation”, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 30 no. 1 (2006): pp. 67–86, p. 68. 11 Olive P. Dickason traces the development of European attitudes to Canadian First Nations in The Myth of the Savage: And the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993 rpt. Indicative of this discourse is the title of Peter Farb’s study Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. See also Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Now that the Buffalo’s Gone: A Study of Today’s American Indians, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982, pp. 84– 85. 12 “Organic intellectual” is a Gramscian term used to distinguish individuals who grow organically within a social group, as opposed to intellectuals in the traditional Western sense. See Barry Burke, “Antonio Gramsci and Informal Education”, The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, available online at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm. [Accessed 11 April 2007]; and Michiel Baud and Rosanne Rutten, “Framing Protest: Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Nineteenth–Twentieth centuries)”, Position Paper, International Review of Social History, pp. 1–4, available online at: http://www.iisg.nl/irsh/protest.pdf [Accessed 11 April 2007]. 13 Also known as Poakskii, Aksskii and Payoa: Nimachia Hernandez, Mokakssini: A Blackfoot Theory of Knowledge, Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1999, p. 88; and also known as Boh-yi-yi or Welt on Face: Percy Bullchild, The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It, Foreword by Woody Kipp, [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985] Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, p. 344.

4 Emma Lee Warrior and James Welch, and Cherokee Thomas King (of Greek and German descent). The study is based on the structural analysis of six renderings of Paii, a Blackfoot culture hero who brought from Natosi (the Sun) the instruction on how to conduct Ookaan.14 Although critics often allude to the connection between orature and contemporary fiction by Native authors, no study has applied specific oral stories as tools to interpret multiple contemporary texts. As King notes, “studies interested in Native oral literature spend little critical energy on contemporary Native literature, suggesting by omission that the two have little in common.”15 This chapter addresses this gap. Apart from drawing a link between the past and the present in Blackfoot literature, it provides evidence that Native representations in literature (defined in Chapter 5) can invert colonial discourses by representing whites as “Others.” In his seminal text, Orientalism,16 Edward Said argued that the Oriental Other was constructed by the West through the constant interchange of scholarly and imaginative ideas about the Orient; the concept is now widely used in the study of other regions and contexts. The term “Other” is used throughout this dissertation to refer to a stereotypical image constructed to represent difference or “otherness” both by the colonisers and the colonised. The study argues that a decolonisation of Blackfoot history is taking place in these Native texts, wherein whites are represented as the Other. The approach adopted here to the analysis of Blackfoot representations in history and literature is considered most appropriate because it replaces the more common focus in the historiography on change, with one that emphasises continuity. It revalorises the Blackfoot past by emphasising the ways in which, during a critical period of deprivation in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the Blackfoot resisted forced acculturation and maintained a distinct Blackfoot identity.

14 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 325, notes that Creator Sun is “Nah-doo-si, Holy One”; and Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 88–89, cites a Blackfoot story by Mike Swims Under wherein Natosi is referred to as “Napi” and “Old Man”. 15 Thomas King, “Introduction”, in Thomas King, Cheryl Calver, and Helen Hoy, eds., The Native in Literature, Winnipeg: ECW Press, 1987, pp. 7–14. p. 13. 16 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Books, [1978] rpt. 1995. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “otherness” as “the quality or fact of being other; difference, esp. from an expected norm; separateness from or oppositeness to a (freq. specified) thing, or from or to an observer; diversity.”

5 CHAPTER 1

INTERROGATING EARLY COLONIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SIKSIKAITSITAPI OR BLACKFOOT

1.1 Introduction

Having provided the argument, aims and scope for the dissertation, this chapter introduces the Blackfoot divisions (a term that is preferred over tribes), and their allies. It raises problems of nomenclature and justifies the naming strategies utilised in the dissertation. This chapter provides a sketch of the broad historical context of the four case studies. It outlines the theoretical underpinnings and methodology adopted in the dissertation, and reviews the principal primary sources and some of the secondary texts that inform the present study. It locates the dissertation within the academic disciplines of English, and a History informed by Anthropology (Ethnohistory). Finally, it explores ethical issues pertinent to the academic research of First Nations peoples (Niitsitapiksi or The Real People) in general, and of the Blackfoot in particular, whose lives and lifeways were permanently dislocated through European expansionism that began in The Americas from the fifteenth century.

1.2 The Politics and Difficulties of Nomenclature

It is appropriate in a study of this length to recognise and acknowledge the main protagonists, particularly because, as is the case with the Siksikaitsitapi, using the proper nomenclature is the first step towards decolonising their history. The colonisers’ possession of writing allowed them to impose names on the colonised. To uncritically restate the abundant misnomers in colonial history would be to perpetuate the discourse of colonisation. However, the adoption by the colonised of imposed terms on the one hand, and changing naming conventions over time in the historiography on the other, combine to present great difficulties when writing about First Nations peoples. In 1772 the Hudson’s Bay Company trader Mathew Cocking named the Blackfoot divisions, which he called “Archithinue Natives” as follows:

This Tribe is named Powestic-Athinuwuck (ie.) Water-fall Indians. There are four Tribes, or Nations more, which are all Equestrian Indians, viz. Mithco-Athinuwuck or Bloody Indians, Koskitow-

6 Wathesitock or Blackfooted Indians, Pegonow or Muddy-Water Indians & Suxxewuck or Wood Country Indians.1 Rather than referring only to the Blackfoot-speaking groups, the list includes two smaller “tribes” who were under Blackfoot protection, and as such were minor allies. Ewers identifies the tribes in Cocking’s list as “the five allied tribes of Gros Ventres, Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans, and Sarsis.”2 In 1787–88 David Thomson identified the three Blackfoot tribes as “the Peegan, called Peeaganakoon, the Blood Indians (Kennekoon) and the Blackfeets (Saxeekoon).”3 The spelling of these names has since undergone several revisions but, even among Blackfoot scholars, a clear consensus is not reflected in practice, with several ethnonyms—a name by which a group chose to be known in their own language4—being employed for the different divisions. Nomenclature here follows the conventions articulated by the Blackfoot Gallery Committee (henceforth BGC), a body composed by representatives from all the Blackfoot divisions and research staff from the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. As such, it incorporates terms used by several Blackfoot scholars, in particular Betty Bastien, whose language consultant in her Blackfoot Ways of Knowing is Kainai Duane Mistaken Chief.5 “Blackfoot” is the translation for Siksikaitsitapi. Also used as Blackfoot self-identifiers are Niitsitapiksi, Niitsitapii (The Real People) and Nitsi-poi-yiksi (speakers of the Real Language”)6. One of the three divisions described by Thomson became separated, making four the divisions (tribes) recognised by the Blackfoot: Kainai, Siksika, Amsskaapipikani (South Pikani, which is used to refer to the Pikani in Montana), and Apatohsipikani or Skinnii Piikani or Aputosi Pikuni (North Pikani, which is used to refer to the Pikani in Alberta). The Kainai are also known as Aapaitsitapi (Many Chiefs), Kainah,

1 John C. Ewers, The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, n.d. rpt. of 1958 ed., pp. 27–28. 2 Ibid.; and Clark Wissler, Indians of the United States, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Revised ed. by Lucy Wales Luckhohn [1940] 1966, p. 104, notes that “Under their protection were the Gros Ventre (Atsina), a division of the Arapaho, and a small tribe of foreigners, the Sarsi of the Athapascan Family”. 3 J. B. Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations in Western America 1784–1812, in The Publications of the Champlain Society, Vol. 12, Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1916. 4 Theodore (Ted) Binnema, Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. xiv–xv. The opposite term is “exonym,” the name by which a group is known to outsiders. 5 Betty Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi, Foreword by Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone), Jürgen W. Kremer, ed., and Duane Mistaken Chief, Language Consultant, with a Glossary by Mistaken Chief and Kremer, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004. 6 Blackfoot Gallery Committee, Nitsitapiisini: The Story of the Blackfoot People, Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2001, pp. 2–4. Other First Nations peoples had similar names for themselves, for example, the Cheyenne’s ethnonym is Tsitsitsas or “Human Beings”, in Clara Sue Kidwell and Alan Velie, Native American Studies, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, p. 4.

7 Kainawa and Akainawa, Blood People or Bloods. The Siksika (“black-footed people”)7 are also known as Northern Blackfoot. The Pikani (“a people that possessed poorly dressed or torn robes”8) were originally one division. They are also known as Piikani, Pikuni, Pikunii, Piegan (in the USA) and Peigan (in Canada). The four divisions collectively became known as “Blackfoot” in Canada and “Blackfeet” in the United States. This “doublespeak” across both sides of the international boundary is a reminder that the history of colonialism in the United States and Canada did not follow exactly the same path, although colonisation in both countries resulted in land dispossession and confinement to reserves (Canada) or reservations (United States) as well as forced assimilation. The term “Blackfoot” is used throughout this dissertation for the collective alliance, following the convention in Canada, rather than “Blackfeet”, which is the legal name in the United States.9 However, Siksikaitsitapi is also used here to increase readers’ familiarity with the ethnonym. Given their frequent recurrence in this study, the collective names as well as the names for the four Blackfoot divisions will not henceforth be italicised. Except in direct quotes, the singular noun forms such as “Pikuni”, “Kainai”, and “Siksika”, are utilised unchanged to form the plural, even though forms such as “Pikunis” abound in the documentation. Although the stem of Blackfoot nouns requires a –wa suffix to indicate singular gender nouns, and –iksi for the plural10, these suffixes are not used here, following conventions established in the historiography, not least by Blackfoot scholars themselves. By the early twentieth-century, many Blackfoot used their English names in their dealings with non-Blackfoot. The names of the Blackfoot signatories to Treaty Seven, for example, appeared in both the Blackfoot and English languages, but only the translated names appear in subsequent official documents. Personal Blackfoot names are acknowledged in this study and, where available, precede English translations. The challenges of Blackfoot nomenclature for English speakers act as a reminder of the difficulties inherent in cultural translation.

At the turn of the twentieth century a Blackfoot person underwent several, sometimes up to eight or ten, name changes in his or her lifetime. A name was bestowed early in life, and a new name was conferred after achieving a certain status.

7 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, pp. 2–4; and Audrey Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail to the Sun’s Lodge: Renewal Through Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, Masters Dissertation, University of Lethbridge, 1990, p. 41. 8 See Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 5–6, for the translations. 9 The very title of the publication, BGC, Nitsitapiisini: The Story of the Blackfoot People, provides an indication of the acceptance of “Blackfoot” in Canada; however, the title in Bullchild, The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It, accords with U.S. convention. 10 Donald G. Frantz, Blackfoot Grammar, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [1991] 2000.

8 This is illustrated in the many names by which one of the most celebrated Siksika chiefs, Crowfoot (short for Crow Indian’s Big Foot) was known. His Kainai parents named him Astoxcomi (Shot Close). After the death of his father, his mother remarried to a Siksika man, who gave Crowfoot the Siksika name Kyiah-sta-ah (Bear Ghost). When he earned the right to a man’s name by achieving honour in war, Crowfoot chose to be known by his dead father’s name: Istowun-eh’pata (Packs a Knife). This name changed later to reflect his later exploits to Isapo-muxica (often misquoted as “Chapo-Mexico”). Thus, apart from the difficulties created by the same person being known at different times by different names, there is the added confusion created by the adoption of deceased relatives’ names, not to mention different spelling conventions and even plain errors due to language barriers. Naming practices were modified by the colonisers during the reserve era through the treaty rolls on which annuity payments were based, but Blackfoot names bestowed in the traditional fashion continued to be used internally.11 Personal names in the Blackfoot language are not italicised here, only words in the Blackfoot language are italicised. One exception is “Ookaan” (The Sun Dance), which is used extensively throughout the dissertation and would seem impractical to italicise.

1.3 The Legacy of Colonial Misnaming

Nomenclature difficulties arise from the (mis)naming of the First Nations peoples of The Americas, which began with what Umberto Eco magnanimously calls serendipity12 and Paul Chartrand calls Christopher Columbus’s “naming fiasco.”13 Columbus’s mistaken belief to have made landfall in the Indies in 1492 was perpetuated in the misnomer “Indian” being ascribed to the totality of the inhabitants of what was named “America.” As such, the terms “Indian and “America” are European constructs. Moreover, in current use “America”14 and “Americans” have

11 In 1938 when after nearly six decades of reserve life researchers Lucien M. Hanks and Jane Richardson conducted interviews among the Siksika, some Blackfoot names were used in their English translation, but names in the Blackfoot language were still in evidence. Glenbow Archives, M8458, Jane and Lucien Hanks fonds, for example, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”, f. 10, pp. 276–319. 12 Umberto Eco, Serendipities: Language and Lunacy, Italian Academy Lectures, William Weaver, trans., New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p. viii. 13 Paul Chartrand, “‘Terms of Division’: Problems of ‘Outside Naming’ for Aboriginal People in Canada”, Journal of Indigenous Studies, Vol. 2, no. 2 (1991): pp. 1–22, p. 3; and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present, New York: Vintage Books, [1953] 1978. 14 For an even narrower deployment of “American”, see Kathryn Shanley, “The Indians America Loves to Love and Read: American Indian Identity and Cultural Appropriation,” in Gretchen M. Bataille, ed., Native American Representations: First Encounters, Distorted Images, and Literary Appropriations, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, pp. 26–51, p. 29, who apologises for her “pragmatically narrow use of the term American, which for [her] purposes … includes only the continental United States.”

9 come to refer exclusively to the United States of America and its citizens, no longer to the continent extending from Alaska and the North West Territories to Tierra del Fuego, which is herein referred to as The Americas. Many Canadians refuse to identify as “Americans”, a term they do not see as having pan-American coverture. Terms such as Euro-American, Euro-Canadian, Native American, and Native Canadian are used in order to disentangle history in terms of the border between Canada and the United States, often referred to as the “medicine line”15 by First Nations peoples, who continue to contest its existence.16 I will refer to citizens of the United States as “American” in preference to neologisms such as “Unitedstatian”, following the widespread acceptance of the term despite its patent inaccuracy. I understand that this is a narrowing of a term that rightfully applies to the inhabitants of The Americas. The term “Indian” homogenises a complex and heterogeneous world and reinscribes myriad indigenous subjectivities, by taking the place of the names that First Nations peoples had for themselves in their own languages. As Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor argues, “the Indian is a simulation and loan word of dominance”. In refusing to yield the naming to the coloniser, Vizenor points up that in his The Everlasting Sky, “the natives were the oshki anishinaabe, or the new people”.17 Yet, despite this awareness, the longevity and extensive use of some imposed names makes it practically impossible to avoid them, not least because many were adopted and subsequently used as self-identifiers by First Nations peoples themselves. Amsskaapipikani “Grandfather”18 Percy Bullchild, for example, refers to himself as a “Blackfeet Indian.”19 Articulating the “naming fiasco” is simpler than escaping its grip. Yet, as Vizenor notes, grappling with these problems of nomenclature is helpful to “understand the problems of identity among tribal people who are burdened with names invented by the dominant society.”20 Following Vizenor’s lead, I use the term “Indian” in inverted commas, and when referring to

15 Kennerly Clay, “On the Medicine Line of the Blackfeet”, Native Peoples, Vol. 17, no. 3 (2004): p. 34 (one page only). 16 For example, Alan Taylor, “The Divided Ground: Upper Canada, New York, and the Iroquois Six Nations, 1783–1815”, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, no. 1 (2002): pp. 55–75, pp. 74–75, notes the ongoing protests by Six Nations peoples against boundary restrictions of the Canadian- American border. 17 Gerald Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, First Bison Books ed. 2000, pp. 14–15 and p. 203, n. 22, citing The Everlasting Sky: New Voices of the People Named the Chippewa, New York: Crowell-Collier, 1972. 18 “Grandparents” is used by the Blackfoot to refer to their elders, whether blood relations or not. See Beverly Hungry Wolf, The Ways of My Grandmothers, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1980, p. 8, who notes that according to “tribal custom, all the old women of the past are [her] grandmothers”; see also Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone), “Foreword”, pp. vii–ix, p. vii, who notes that Kaaahsinnooniksi (Grandparents) in specific contexts, refers to those versed in Blackfoot sacred knowledge; and Mistaken Chief with Kremer, “Glossary”, p. 222. 19 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 1. 20 Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, p. 203, n. 22.

10 specific bands or tribes, I utilise their ethnonyms wherever practicable. However, despite the pejorative connotations progressively accumulated in the term “Indian”, it is ubiquitous during the historical period addressed here, being entrenched in the language through terms such as “Amerindian”, “Plains Indians”, “Indian Country”, “Indian agents”, and “Indian Dances”. Consequently, its use in one guise or another is practically unavoidable, even though it has been replaced by more acceptable terms, such as First Nations peoples, Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous peoples, Native Americans and Native Canadians. The preferred term in Canada is First Nations, while in the United States it is Native American. First Nations peoples is used here to replace “Indians”, but Chapter Five makes extensive use of “Native” as in “Native literature” for reasons that are explained therein. Conversely, the European, Euro-American and Euro-Canadian colonisers were also subsumed under the collective noun “whites,” used in everyday language by both First Nations peoples and whites themselves. The name in the Blackfoot language is Napikwan (Old Man Person). For the fur trade era, the documentation makes a distinction between the English traders from the Hudson’s Bay Company (henceforth HBC), their (French-)Canadian rivals, and the Americans. Rather than reflect the origins of individual traders, these distinctions related to the companies themselves. During an era of competition there was a practical use for them, because each offered their customers different trading terms. Likewise, when colonisation arrived in the Northwestern Plains, home to the Siksikaitsitapi, it followed different paths under the leadership of the Great White Father (U.S. President) and the Great White Mother (Queen Victoria). The term “whites” is also used extensively throughout the dissertation in order to refer to the colonisers. Other instances of misnaming, resulting from genuine confusion and the language difficulties faced by early chroniclers, added to the derogatory names that First Nations peoples applied to rival First Nations. This negative stereotyping was part of a process of “Othering” peculiar to the Northwestern Plains.21 The Blackfoot, for example, called the Cree “Lying People” or “Liars”, and they called the Assiniboine (Nakoda) “Cutthroats”.22 The newcomers documented some of these derogatory exonyms based on the information of their guides, who often belonged to

21 James Willard Schultz, [Apikuni], Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life among the Indians, edited with an Introduction by Keith C. Seele, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [c. 1878– 1915] 1962, p. 293, cites Pikani Kai Otokan (Bear Head), who represents the Cree as “Others” as follows: “They seem to have had no pride of themselves. Their leather clothing was old and soiled; their hair, uncombed, unbraided; their moccasins were soft soled, their guns, mostly North Traders muzzle loaders; some were even without guns and using bows and arrows.” 22 Ibid., pp. 290 and 294; and Walter McClintock, The Old North Trail or Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians, Introduction by Sidner J. Larson to the Bison Book Edition, [London: Macmillan and Co, 1910] Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992, pp. 395–405.

11 rival groups. These exonyms and their translations into English and French have been perpetuated in the historiography. As they are gradually replaced, multiple names for the same group coexist in the documentation.

1.4 Siksikaitsitapi Political Organization

The heterogeneity of the Siksikaitsitapi divisions (tribes) and sub-divisions (bands) make it necessary to be wary of generalisations. Each division or tribe was autonomous, and was, in turn, sub-divided into autonomous bands (gens or gentes), each bearing a distinct name. In the late nineteenth century George Bird Grinnell—a naturalist and amateur ethnographer who spent many summers with the Blackfoot— compiled a list of eight Siksika, thirteen Kainai, and twenty-four Pikani bands. He notes that the bands were “a body of consanguineal kindred in the male line”, although they “often received outsiders.”23 However, because the Siksikaitsitapi divisions shared a language and culture, intermarried, and jointly fought their enemies, Europeans coined the term Blackfoot Confederacy to refer to them collectively. Prior to the reserve era, the Blackfoot divisions, which “have now developed a formal political alliance,”24 had two minor allies who shared their territory: the Tsúùt’ínà (Many People or Every One (in the tribe)) or Sarcee; and the At-séna (also Atsina, Gros Ventre or “Entrails People”), who became enemies of the Blackfoot c. 1862.25 The organization of band affairs was the purview of a Ninnaa (“leader … lately tribal Chief or Councilor”26), assisted by a variable number of minor chiefs or councillors. Leaders gained respect on the basis of their war deeds, the acquisition of Sacred Bundles (or other sacred items considered natoyi or “Medicine”27), and

23 George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press [1892], Introduction to the New Bison Books edition by Thedis Berthelson Crowe [Akiiwa Iyoumako Mistewaw, Sokapiwa or Good Crooked Stick Woman] 1962 rpt. 2003, pp. 208– 10. The term “lodge” is equivalent to “tepee” or “tipi” and “wigwam”. 24 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 4. 25 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 244. 26 Mistaken Chief and Kremer, “Glossary”, p. 219; Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 210 translates Ni’-nah as “My father”. Frantz, Blackfoot Grammar, p. 9, translates “nínaawa” as “man”, and “nínaiksi” as “men”. According to Clark Wissler, “The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians,” AMNH, Vol. 7, no. 1 (1911): pp. 1–64; pp. 22–23, there was no “formal right to a title or an office” by the headman who was considered “band chief”. 27 McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 169 and 517, notes that as a noun “Medicine ... means something endowed with supernatural power; but, when used as an adjective-prefix, it also means sacred, or set apart for use in religious ceremonials”. Thus “Medicine Lodge” is the structure where Ookaan takes place; the vower and ceremonialist are referred to as the ‘Medicine Woman’ and “Medicine Man”. “Medicine bundles” are sacred objects given to the Blackfoot by creators. Warriors carried into battle their personal “Medicine”, which could take many shapes associated with the individual’s protector spirits. Blackfoot scholar Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 7–8, notes that natoyi, the Blackfoot equivalent for “Medicine”, is the energy or moving force of the universe. Unfortunately, although she interviewed Blackfoot elders, she relies on Colin Taylor’s explanation of the Lakota equivalent for the 12 through their generosity to other band members.28 Some leaders’ prestige transcended their bands,29 but decisions such as joint war actions were made by consensus. As was the case at inter-tribal level, there were no mechanisms, other than persuasion, to enforce the different bands to comply with collective decisions. The bands gathered every summer during Ako-katssinn (“the time of all people camping together”, often shortened to “circle encampment”30). During this time, they hunted buffalo and prepared for their central sacred rite, Ookaan, which Europeans dubbed the Sun Dance. Each division held a separate circle encampment, which featured visitors from other divisions and other First Nations. The Blackfoot participated in sodalities collectively named I-kun-uh’-kah-tsi (all-comrades societies).31 Membership was age-graded and cut across the different bands of each division. Wissler explained their functions, which included:

to preserve order in the camp, during the march, and on the hunt; to punish offenders against the public welfare; to protect the camp by guarding against possible surprise by an enemy; to be informed at all times as to the movements of the buffalo herds and secondly by inter- society rivalry to cultivate the military spirit, and by their feasts and dances to minister ... social recreation.32 To gain entry into a society required that a member retire and ceremonially transfer the membership. The new member paid in kind for the privilege. Societies provided a hierarchy for advancement that commenced in childhood and culminated in the most powerful, respected and feared of all societies: The Horns. Each society had a

term (Skan or To). See Colin F. Taylor, “The Plains” in his ed., Native American Myths and Legends, London: Salamander Books, 1994, pp. 40–53, p. 41. 28 For the concept of “Sacred Bundles” see Reg Crowshoe and Sybille Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman: A Blackfoot Framework for Decision-Making and Mediation Processes, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, [1997] 2nd. ed., 2002; pp. 19–26; Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, pp. 27–8; and Gerald T. Conaty, “Economic Models and Blackfoot Ideology”, American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, no. 2 (1995): pp. 403–9. 29 Fraser Taylor, Standing Alone: A Contemporary Blackfoot Indian, Halfmoon Bay, BC Canada: Arbutus Bay Publications, 1989, p. 15, where Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone), a “Grandfather of Sacred Horn Society”, notes that “[t]he more effective the leadership in any particular band, the more likely other bands would look to them for those decisions affecting the whole tribe.” 30 According to missionary John Maclean, “[t]he meaning of Okán is now entirely lost. It is known amongst the white people as the Medicine-Dance or Sun-Dance.” John McLean (sic, Maclean), The Blackfoot Sun Dance, reprinted from the proceedings of the Canadian Institute, No. 151, Toronto: Copp. Clark, 1889, pp. 1–2. Available online at: http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/PageView/30372/0003?id=4c3e4976a43788e9 [Accessed 26 Feb. 2007]. Maclean claimed to have attended four Kainai Sun Dances in the late 1880’s “in the interest of science.” Spelling in BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 20. Mistaken Chief and Kremer use “Aako’ka’tssin”, in “Glossary”, p. 195. 31 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 219–224; McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 206 and 445–65; Clark Wissler, “Societies and Dance Associations of the Blackfoot Indians,” AMNH, Vol. 11, no. 4 (1913): pp. 359–460, pp. 367 and 430. For a broader look at societies of the First Nations of the Plains, see Thomas E. Mails, Dog Soldiers, Bear Men and Buffalo Women: A Study of the Societies and Cults of the Plains Indians, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. 32 Wissler, “Societies and Dance Associations”, pp. 367 and 430.

13 distinct function; for example, the Crazy Dogs Society (or Mad Dog Society) enforced discipline, acting as “police” within the camp and during the hunt. Some societies, like the Horns, did not admit single members but required both man and wife to enter the society.33 Members of the societies took part in the bands’ decision- making processes, acting as councillors. This Blackfoot-specific meaning of society should not be confused with the common application of the term to define a community. When mentioned here, society always refers to the I-kun-uh’-kah-tsi.

1.5 Broad Historical Background for the Dissertation

Blackfoot culture, along with those of other First Nations peoples of the Plains and Prairies was radically transformed by the acquisition of European goods, including the horse, firearms and metal tools, first through intertribal networks during the very early eighteenth century, and subsequently by direct participation in the fur trade.34 The incorporation of these goods into Niitsitapiksi lifeways ushered in a period of cultural florescence. During the so-called golden age of the “Plains Indians” (1750– 1875), the Siksikaitsitapi alliance dominated a territory extending from the Elk (Saskatchewan) River to the Yellowstone River. Until the middle of the nineteenth century this territory was considered off-limits to whites and enemy First Nations.35

33 Alice B. Kehoe. “Blackfoot Persons”, in Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, eds., Women and Power in Native North America, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995, pp. 113–25, pp. 119– 20. 34 For the fur trade see Oscar Lewis, The Effects of White Contact upon Blackfoot Culture, with Special Reference to the Role of the Fur Trade, in Monographs of the American Ethnological Society 6, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1942. See also the extensive writings of Arthur J. Ray, including: Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay 1660–1870, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974; I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, Toronto: Lester Publishing Key Porter Books, 1996; “Fur Trade History as an Aspect of Native History”, in Ian A. L. Getty and Donald B. Smith, eds., One Century Later: Western Canadian Reserve Indians Since Treaty 7, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1978, pp. 7–19; “The Northern Great Plains: Pantry of the Northwestern Fur Trade, 1774–1885”, Prairie Forum, Vol. 9, no. 2 (1984): pp. 263–79; and “The Hudson’s Bay Company and Native People”, in William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp. 335–50. See also E. E. Rich, ed., and A.M. Johnson, asst. ed., The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 2 Vols., Vol. 1, 1670–1763, Vol. 2, 1763–1870, London: The Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1958–59; Christopher L. Miller and George M. Hamell, “A New Perspective to Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade”, Journal of American History, Vol. 73 (1986): pp. 311–28; Irene Spry, The Palliser Expedition, Calgary: Fifth House, [1963] 1995; and her “The Great Transformation: The Disappearance of the Commons in Western Canada”, in Richard Allen, ed., Man and Nature on the Prairies, Canadian Plains Studies 6, Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 1976, pp. 21–45. See also Lewis O. Saum, The Fur Trader and the Indian, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965, and his “The Fur Trader and the Noble Savage”, American Quarterly, Vol. 15, no. 4 (1963): pp. 553–71; and Leslie Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats: The Life and Times of Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina’, Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2000. 35 Library and Archives Canada (henceforth LAC), Annual Report of The Department of Indian Affairs 1864–1990, (henceforth DIA, AR), 1905, pp. 114–16: R. W. Wilson, Indian agent at the Blood Agency, notes that the Blackfoot and their allies “held by force of arms against all comers an extensive territory reaching from the Missouri River north to the Red Deer and from the Rockies east to beyond the Cypress Hills.” Available online at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/indianaffairs/ [Accessed 2005–2007].

14 The Blackfoot attacked and destroyed trading posts on several occasions. In 1810 thirty whites were killed when a war party attacked a trading fort at the mouth of the Big Horn River established by trader Manuel Lisa; and a party of Kainai burnt Fort Piegan in 1833.36 However, those whites who followed the right protocols and came in peace were well received by the Siksikaitsitapi, which is evident from the writings of travellers (such as Henday and Cocking) who met them during the eighteenth- century. The opposite occurred when eight young Pikani met American explorer Meriwether Lewis in 1806, a meeting that ended in bloodshed, seriously damaging U.S. relations with the Blackfoot, who resented Lewis’s plans to sell guns to Blackfoot enemies.37 Blackfoot influence straddled both sides of the forty-ninth parallel or international boundary, which in 1846 created an artificial division between kindred Blackfoot bands.38 In time, it resulted in the permanent separation of the Pikani, now divided between the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and the Piegan Reserve in Alberta. The chronological context for this dissertation extends back to a time when Siksikaitsitapi bands moved freely between both sides. In geographical terms, Blackfoot participation in the fur trade was conducted on the periphery of their territory, wherein British (HBC) and Canadian (Northwest Company) trading posts were operating by 1794. The Blackfoot travelled northwards to trade at these posts. They traded wolf and fox skins as well as fresh and preserved provisions, and even horses (which were indispensable to traders for hunting and to transport goods). In return, they obtained axes, kettles and knives; luxury items like vermillion, beads, blankets, tobacco and liquor; and guns and ammunition for both the hunt and to defend their territory from enemies. Competition for Blackfoot trade between the British and Canadian companies ended in 1821, when they joined forces. However, they were soon facing competition from American trading companies. From 1830, the Siksikaitsitapi began trading a substantial number of buffalo robes at American Fur Company’s posts along the Upper Missouri.39 The process of establishing the fur trade with the Blackfoot was protracted, as the violent episodes already mentioned demonstrate. Despite these differences, mutual interest served to maintain a trade from which both

36 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 23–25. 37 Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon and Shuster, rpt. 2003, pp. 387–94. 38 Roger L. Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999, p. 203. Eventually, the Pikani became permanently separated between the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and the Piegan Reserve in Alberta, although visiting across the boundary line continued. 39 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 28–29.

15 sides profited and created what historian Richard White termed the “Middle Ground,” a period of Indian-white relations characterised by accommodation40 when “whites could neither dictate to Indians nor ignore them. Whites needed Indians as allies, as partners in exchange, as sexual partners, [and] as friendly neighbors.”41 Mutual dependency made the middle ground:

a place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the nonstate world of villages ... the area between the historical foreground of European invasion and occupation and the background of Indian defeat and retreat.42 The middle ground disappeared with the bison herds: without commodities for exchange what remained was a relationship of dependency that left the Siksikaitsitapi little room for manoeuvring.

1.6 Disciplinary Boundaries and Theoretical Underpinnings

In order to emphasise instances of cultural continuity within a transforming cultural context, this study traverses the disciplines of English and History, especially the anthropologically informed version of the latter (Ethnohistory). The study of the past based on written records has long served to define the field of history, as William Sturtevant notes in his 1966 reflection on “Anthropology, History and Ethnohistory.”43 However, the boundaries between history and anthropology in the study of First Nations peoples (Ethnohistory) have been extensively blurred since the late 1950s.44 Russell J. Barber and Frances F. Berdan provide a synthesised meaning of Ethnohistory as follows:

Ethnohistory is an interdisciplinary field that studies past human behavior and is characterized by a primary reliance on documents, the use of input from other sources when available, a methodology that

40 An example of “accommodation”, noted by Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, Padstow, Cornwall: T J Press International, 1997, p. 208, is the translation of Christianity by the Jesuit missionaries to China and India “into the local cultural idioms by presenting it as compatible with many of the values of the mandarins and the brahmins.” 41 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rpt. 1997, pp. x, and pp. 50–93. 42 Ibid., p. x. 43 William C. Sturtevant, “Anthropology, History, and Ethnohistory”, Ethnohistory, Vol. 13, nos. 1–2 (1966): pp. 1–51, pp. 1–3. Ethnohistory is sometimes called “Historical ethnology”, according to Ronald Spores, “New World Ethnohistory and Archaeology, 1970–1980”, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 9 (1980): pp. 575–603, p. 575. 44 R. David Edmunds, “Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895–1995”, American Historical Review, Vol. 100, no. 3 (1995): pp. 717–40, p. 725, notes that typical of this ethnohistorical approach is Ewers, The Blackfeet, 1958.

16 incorporates historiography and cultural relativism, and a focus on cultural interaction.45 Boasian anthropologists advocated cultural relativism in order to discard notions that the indigenous cultures of North America were in “a primitive stage in human evolution.”46 However, the belief by Boasians that these cultures had remained static prior to contact with Europeans—a view since rejected—served to value the cultural past over the present, which was interpreted as contamination. This belief fuelled the practice of “salvage ethnology.”47 Moreover, historians have also expanded the definition of “historical documentation” to materials previously outside their purview. Among these one may cite ethnographic records pertaining to cultures whose mode of knowledge transmission is oral. These include non-written forms of record keeping that are sometimes referred to as “picture writing” (see Chapter 4) and stories from oral traditions. It is much less usual to draw together the disciplines of History and English. However, given that the ethnographic documentation on which this dissertation relies is now viewed as canonical Blackfoot history and literature, a combined approach is not merely desirable, but indispensable. As will be particularly evident in Chapters Four and Five, history and literature cannot be separated neatly within the colonial texts wherein Blackfoot subjectivity was represented. However, although the “historicity” of Blackfoot fictional representations will be viewed against the background of historical research, the dissertation also utilises the conventions of literary criticism, including close textual analysis and the deconstruction of the diverse discursive positions represented in the documentation. This interdisciplinary context presents many challenges, not least of which is the empirical requirements of historical research versus the scepticism of historical methods now widespread within literary criticism, especially in its postmodern mode, which relativises historical writing.48 It is not the intention here to engage in a

45 Russell J. Barber and Frances F. Berdan The Emperor’s Mirror: Understanding Cultures through Primary Sources, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998, p. 12. 46 Bruce G. Trigger, “Ethnohistory: The Unfinished Edifice,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 33, no. 3 (1986): pp. 253–67, pp. 255–56; and Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 47 Francis Jennings, “A Growing Partnership: Historians, Anthropologists and American Indian History,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 29, no. 1 (1982): pp. 21–34, p. 26, cites Edward Burnett Tylor, the first Professor of Anthropology at Oxford University to elucidate the distinctions between anthropology, ethnology and ethnohistory. These distinctions were based on the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica: anthropology was “the science which, in its strictest sense, has as its object the study of man in the animal kingdom. It is distinguished from ethnology, which is devoted to the study of man as a racial unit, and from ethnography, which deals with the distribution of the races formed by the aggregation of such units” (italics in original). “Salvage” ethnology, as the name indicates, sought to document cultures believed to be in danger of disappearing by recording their oral history and tradition. 48 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Foreword by Fredric Jameson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 17 debate of their respective disciplinary approaches to knowledge, nor is it to rate one discipline above another. Rather, the dissertation aims to incorporate tools that can assist in the reinterpretation of Blackfoot history and literature, irrespective of disciplinary boundaries. However, on the basis of this study’s empirical research, it rejects as theoretically untenable the relativist view that all perspectives on history have equal value. It accepts that textual representations are constructed in accordance with the views and ideologies of their authors. However, the view here is that despite or because of the ethnocentricity of colonial texts, failing to produce reinterpretations that expose their ethnocentric bias would be tantamount to acquiescing in their statements and perspectives. Although both historians and literary critics employ close textual analysis, the former are wary of post-colonial critics’ coinage of certain concepts, when these are not securely moored to concrete historical experiences or contexts. While this study utilises an eclectic theoretical base, including concepts articulated by post-colonial theorists, some specific post-colonialist perspectives are deemed inappropriate to its aims. Indeed, generally applying the term “post-colonial” continues to irritate First Nations and Aboriginal49 scholars in New Zealand (Linda T. Smith), Australia (Bobbi Sykes), Canada (Thomas King), and the United States (Gerald Vizenor)50, who insist that the colonisation of First Nations peoples is ongoing and reject the “post-“ in “post-colonial”. Despite arguments (by post-colonial theorist Bill Ashcroft, for example) to the effect that “post-colonial”51 should not be construed as meaning that colonisation has been dismantled, the concept remains marginal in Native American studies. Taking account of these objections is part of this study’s aim to create an understanding between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship. Nor do these objections constitute a case of special pleading. While post-colonial studies developed its perspectives from nation states such as India and Africa, where colonial rule was dismantled, post-colonial critics have not paid sufficient attention to the experience of First Nations peoples of The Americas, who continue to carry the burden of colonialism, even in countries such as Mexico and Peru, where

Press, [1979] 1997 rpt., p. xxiv, defines “postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives” (his italics). 49 In New Zealand and Australia the preferred term is “Aboriginal” rather than “First Nations.” 50 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003, p. 24, articulates discomfort with the term post-colonial. She cites Aboriginal activist Bobbi Sykes, “who asked at an academic conference on post-colonialism, “What? Post-colonialism? Have they left?” 51 Bill Ashcroft, “On the Hyphen in ‘Post-Colonial’”, New Literatures Review, Vol. 32 (1996): pp. 23–31, p. 24, argues that “[t]he post-colonial is not a chronological period but an historical condition, a way of contending with various specific forms of colonial oppression … best understood as a political act which attempts to resist the privileging of the discourse over discursive actors and practices, particularly textual practices, which occur in colonized societies.”

18 imperial rule was replaced by the nation state in the early nineteenth century. Stuart Hall distinguishes the colonial from the post-colonial as follows:

‘colonization’ signals direct occupation and rule, and the transition to ‘post-colonial’ is characterized by independence from direct colonial rule, the formation of new nation states, forms of economic development dominated by the growth of indigenous capital and their relations of neo-colonial dependency on the developed capitalist world, and the politics which arise from emergence of powerful local elites managing the contradictory effects of under-development.52 Clearly, in terms of Hall’s argument, the scope of the present study does not fit neatly into a post-colonial context. In seeking to answer criticisms of the term post- colonial, inter alia by Ella Shohat, Anne McClintock and Arif Dirlik, Hall suggests that

a more careful discrimination is in order between different social and racial formations. Australia and Canada, on the one hand, Nigeria, India and Jamaica on the other, are certainly not ‘post-colonial’ in the same way. But this does not mean that they are not post-colonial in any way.53 Here, Hall might have gone further and mentioned, for example, where he would place the First Nations peoples in Canada within the context of the post-colonial. Finally, I concur with Hall regarding the usefulness of reading binaries such as colonised/coloniser as forms of “transculturation”; however, I will be referring to the work of Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz,54 who coined the term in 1940 and defined it. He posited that “transculturation” reflects the two-way changes that occur as a result of the encounter between two cultures, in contrast to terms such as “acculturation” (“the adoption of elements from the dominant culture”) and “deculturation,” both of which “describe the transference of culture in reductive fashion imagined from within the interests of the metropolis.”55 Indeed,

52 Stuart Hall, “When Was ‘The Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit”, in Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 242–260, pp. 247–8. 53 Ibid., pp. 245–46. 54 Fernando Ortiz Fernández coined the term in Contrapunto Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar, in María Fernanda Ortiz Herrera, ed., [La Habana: Edit. Jesús Montero, 1940] Madrid: EditoCubaEspaña, 1999, pp. 79–83, p. 80. Ortiz suggests a process of “desajuste y de reajuste”, that is, imbalance and readjustment, takes place when immigrants go through “deculturation or exculturation and acculturation or inculturation, and at the end of this synthesis, of transculturation” [my translation]. Transculturation implies both cultural loss and cultural gain. 55 Uruguayan critic Angel Rama [La Ciudad Letrada] incorporated the term into literary studies in the 1970s. Cited in Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge, rpt. 1997, p. 228; and Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, 1997, pp. 206–12. David Atwell, Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005, p. 17 rightly points up that Pratt’s definition of “transculturation as the process whereby ‘subordinated or marginalised groups select or invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture’ ... does not capture the extent of Ortiz’s intervention.”

19 transculturation is deployed in this dissertation with regard to specific contexts (see Chapter 3), although generally speaking, mutual borrowings between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot were asymmetrical in magnitude and significance. As a project of textual reinterpretation, this study benefits from the elaborations of philosopher of history Michel Foucault on the workings of power/knowledge, the function of discourse, and the construction of truth in Western epistemology. Chapter Four pays particular attention to his ideas on “the will to truth,” that is, the notion “that in every society, the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures.”56 As noted by Foucault, these procedures function in order to produce discourse that falls “within the true.” Foucault called these procedures “rules of exclusion”, one of these being “the privileged or exclusive right to speak of a particular subject.” He placed the “will to truth” in this type (which he borrowed from Nietzschean thought), and which Foucault articulated as “a system of exclusion (historical, modifiable, institutionally constraining) in the process of development.”57 According to Foucault, the ‘will to truth’ pervades discourse, posing the question “what has been, what still is.”58 Applying these ideas to the Blackfoot context has proven helpful for understanding that a parallel system is at work within Blackfoot epistemology (see Chapter 4). This system, which is based on radically different principles to those of its Western counterpart, nevertheless serves the same function of determining the boundaries of what can be known, and the process that needs to be undertaken in order to articulate what can be considered as “true” within the Blackfoot worldview. This process of truth construction in Blackfoot epistemology is articulated in the writings of Siksikaitsitapi scholars, among others, Nimachia Hernandez, Betty Bastien, and Audrey Weasel Traveller, whose work informs this dissertation.59 In addition to these analytical tools, the theoretical foundations pertinent to each case study will be taken up within each of the following chapters.

1.7 Methodology, Primary Sources

This study assumes that Blackfoot history, however flawed or biased, continues to be relevant to Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot alike and, as such, warrants ongoing

56 Michel Foucault, “Orders of Discourse”, Lecture delivered at the Collège de France on 2 December 1970 [L’ordre du discours, Paris: Gallimard, 1971] trans. Rupert Swyer, in Social Science Information, Vol. 10, no. 2 (1971): pp. 7–30, pp. 7–10. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Hernandez, Mokakssini, 1999; Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 2004; and Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, 1990.

20 reinterpretation. The first phase of this study sets a research agenda that is conducive to a better understanding of specific processes of cultural transformation attendant upon colonialism. These may not have received separate attention in the historiography, but there is sufficient documentation to achieve the aims of this study. There is much to be gained from interrogating the historiography with a view to seeking a more nuanced understanding of the experience of colonisation, even if this means critiquing the very texts on which I rely for information. This requires that these texts be read “against the grain” of the ethnocentric prejudices that prevailed at the time of their writing. Much has been written about the Blackfoot60 and their transition, during the late nineteenth century, from autonomous sovereign nations to domestic dependent nations or state wards. Early Blackfoot historiography, in common with those of other colonised peoples, is characterised by an etic perspective that places European “civilisation” on a plane above indigenous worldviews. Despite the good intentions expressed by the authors/compilers of these early writings, their texts are imbued, to varying degrees, with the belief in the superiority of their own culture, which justifies designating these texts as “colonial history.” In seeking to critique colonial history using emic perspectives from Blackfoot and other First Nations scholars that can contribute to decolonising it61, the aim is not to claim or to seek access to an essential “truth”. Rather, the purpose here is to draw attention to some glaring omissions that have resulted in an unbalanced view of the cultural processes of transformation that it places under scrutiny. These processes are viewed here through the documentation of everyday acts whose cumulative import is often ignored in a history that focuses on big events. First Nations peoples are represented in some of these texts as inferior to whites in terms of the noble/ignoble savage dichotomy. The “Bon Sauvage” imagined by Montaigne c. 1580 in the wake of the “discovery” of the New World and later articulated by Rousseau was used to describe “Indians” yet to become contaminated by contact with “civilisation.”62 The progression from “savagery to civilization” or from “heathenism to Christianity” was seen as the undeniable fate of humans, and as Francis Jennings argues, these ideas were current long before Charles

60 There are 1,828 bibliographical items in Hugh A. Dempsey and Lindsay Moir, Bibliography of the Blackfoot, Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1989. 61 This is a perennial debate in historical studies, set running in 1961 by E. H. Carr’s relativist What is History? One principal criticism of Carr’s fourteen-volume magnum opus on Soviet Russia was that it was a history of winners, with history’s losers lost to view: see Richard J. Evans, “Introduction”, E. H. Carr, What is History?, London: Palgrave, 40th anniversary edn. 2001, pp. ix–xlvi. 62 Harry Culverwell Porter, The Inconstant Savage: England and the North American Indian 1500– 1660, London: Duckworth & Co., 1979, pp. 137–152, p. 137.

21 Darwin’s The Descent of Man elevated them to the category of scientific fact.63 However, First Nations’ accumulated knowledge was deemed valuable to Western scholarship for the light it could shed on the “primitive” state believed to exist at the foundation of modern societies. Thus, even before professional ethnologists arrived with their notebooks on the reservation, officials, missionaries, travellers and traders had been collecting information about First Nations peoples “in the interest of science.”64 At the same time, the savage/civilised dichotomy is often deployed in these texts to justify colonisation in terms of the belief in the inexorable march of “progress”. There is an extensive body of work that examines how the dichotomy savage/civilised was deployed to justify the colonisation of The Americas, and how the belief produced discourses such as that of the “disappearance of the Indian,” based on a myth of authenticity that devalued the present in favour of a romanticised past. Although accepted with some regret, extinction was accepted nonetheless as a “natural” consequence of progress.65 The discourse of a “vanishing race” gained momentum in the late 1800s and fuelled a flurry of “salvage ethnologies” that sought to capture its dying moments.66 The discourse of the “disappearance of the Indian” served to shift the blame to nature for the effects of European colonisation, such that “nature,” not human agency, was posited as the mediating force for extinction. The pursuit of knowledge was wrongly assumed to be the exclusive purview of Europeans. Yet the texts of colonial history collectively represent the incorporation of the knowledge of First Nations into Western epistemology, with the former usually being categorised as “stories”, “customs” and “habits”. Indeed, during the late nineteenth century the very humanity of “Indians” was still subject to doubt among the general white population. George Bird Grinnell, author of one of the earliest (1892) and most comprehensive texts on Blackfoot history and literature, argued that Americans “do not realize that Indians are human beings like

63 Jennings, “A Growing Partnership”, p. 25. 64 Maclean, Blackfoot Sun Dance, pp. 1–2; and Jacob W. Gruber, “Ethnographic Salvage and the Shaping of Anthropology”, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 72, no. 6 (1970): pp. 1289– 99, p. 1294. See also Marcel Mauss, The Gift, London: Routledge Classics, [1950] 2002, p. 60, who argues, for example, that “institutions, which are termed ‘primitive’ … have general sociological value, since they allow us to understand a stage in social evolution.” 65 Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003, p. 57; Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, rpt. 1982; Dickason, Myth of the Savage, 1997; Mark Francis, “The ‘Civilizing’ of Indigenous People in Nineteenth- Century Canada”, Journal of World History, Vol. 9, no. 1 (1998): pp. 51–87; and Porter, The Inconstant Savage, 1979. For a similar perspective on Spanish America, see David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, esp. p. 15, where he notes that in 1804 Miguel Lastarria divided Indians from the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires into “fourteen degrees of progress toward what he called the “adult stage of civilization.” 66 A prime example is Edward Curtis, The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios, London: Taschen, [1907–1930] 2003, p. 6.

22 themselves.”67 Taking into account that this debate had commenced in the sixteenth century,68 it is remarkable that so little understanding of First Nations peoples had been attained three hundred years later. The 1837 report of the British Select Committee of Aborigines argued that by ignoring the humanity of First Nations peoples, and classing them as “savages ... [we] consider ourselves exempted from the obligations due to them as our fellow [wo]men.”69 In the United States, the doctrine of Manifest Destiny reconciled the displacement of First Nations peoples with a divinely given right for Americans to rule over the continent. In Canada, where no similar Manifest Destiny doctrine was expressed, there was an unquestioned determination to expand colonial domination westwards, one step ahead of their southern rival. The “opening of the west” was viewed as a heroic project, rather than a means to deprive First Nations peoples of their lands. The view of expansion as heroic in both the United States and Canada is reflected, to cite just two examples, in two titles: Stephen E. Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, and John McDougall’s Opening the Great West: Experiences of a Missionary in 1875–76.70 The early Blackfoot historiography fits within a Hegelian paradigm that seeks an “objective” truth while viewing scientific progress as one with social and moral progress. In seeking to re-interpret this historiography, this study applies a constructivist perspective, which rests on the premise that history is constructed via the apparatus of representation and interpretation in accord with constantly changing rules and perspectives, as noted by Foucault in “Orders of Discourse”. For this reason, attention here focuses on the conditions that provided the context for the publication of key texts, and the discourses or ideologies encoded in their pages. This dissertation relies on five groups of primary documentation: 1) early traders’ and travellers’ accounts; 2) published and archival records by amateur and professional ethnographers, government officials and missionaries; 3) documentation pertaining to the administration of reserves; 4) Blackfoot-authored texts, including translated and transcribed oral stories, transcriptions of pictographic records (“year

67 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 26. 68 For the debate in Valladolid, Spain, between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 regarding the claim by the latter of the “inferior” type of humanity of the “Indians” of The Americas, see Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, [1959] 1975; see also Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 69 Gruber, “Ethnographic Salvage”, pp. 1292. 70 Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 2003; and John McDougall, Opening the Great West: Experiences of a Missionary in 1875–76, Occasional Paper 6, Hugh A. Dempsey, ed., Intro. J. Ernest Nix, Calgary: Glenbow-Alberta Institute, 1970.

23 counts” or “winter counts”), testimonies, memoirs, and 5) contemporary fictional representations of Blackfoot subjectivity by Blackfoot authors, as well as by other Native authors. Traders, travellers and, later, amateur and professional ethnographers, began documenting the Siksikaitsitapi in 1754–1755, when trader Anthony Henday of the HBC recorded meeting them briefly on two occasions and failing to persuade them to send young men to conduct trade on behalf of the Blackfoot at the HBC’s factory at Fort York. Similar failures met his successors, Henry Pressick (1760–61) and Matthew Cocking (1772–73).71 The trading journals that provide early glimpses of the Siksikaitsitapi were kept by traders as a condition of their employment. As anthropologist Gerry Conaty notes, David Thompson’s journal (1784–1812) contains the first “good description of early Blackfoot culture”. A trader with the Northwest Company who came from a prominent New Jersey family, Alexander Henry The Younger, also left a journal of his trading experiences (1799–1814), which was published together with that of Thompson by Elliott Coues.72 Among the travellers who met with the Blackfoot are the painter George Catlin, who produced the earliest known portraits of the Blackfoot during his stay at Fort Union in 1832, together with ethnographic descriptions.73 The travels in the Upper Missouri in 1833–1834 of Prussian Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied in the company of Swiss artist Karl Bodmer also produced invaluable paintings of Siksikaitsitapi as well as the related journal by Prince Maximilian.74 After these early sketches came the writings of amateur ethnographers (including missionaries), which documented the Blackfoot when they still pursued their autonomous lifeways.75 Then, interest in documenting cultures that were

71 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 16–17. 72 Alexander Henry The Younger, in Elliott Coues, ed, New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest: The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson 1799–1814 (henceforth Journal), Minneapolis: Ross & Haines Inc., [1897] 1965, pp. 525 and 725. Coues’s publication is based on 1,642 pages of what is called “the Coventry copy” as the original Journal has not survived: Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative, 1916. 73 George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, 2 Vols., Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, Inc., rpt. of 1841 ed. Available online from Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Source Documents: Diaries, Narratives, and Letters of the Mountain Men at: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/catlin/index.html [Accessed 29 March 2007]. See also John C. Ewers, Artists of the Old West, New York: Doubleday, 1973, pp. 54–63. 74 Brandon K. Ruud, ed., Karl Bodmer’s North American Prints, annotations by Marsha V. Gallagher, essays by Ron Tyler and Brandon K. Ruud, and Foreword by J. Brooks Joyner, Omaha: Joslyn Art Museum and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004; and John C. Ewers, Marsha V. Gallagher, David C. Hunt, and Joseph C. Porter, Views of a Vanishing Frontier, Omaha: Center for Western Studies/Joslyn Art Museum, 1984. 75 A detailed study of the role of missionaries among the Blackfoot lies outside the scope of this dissertation. However, missionary writings are valuable sources for early Blackfoot history; among the writings of early missionaries consulted for this study, see especially John McLean (sic, Maclean), Sun Dance; Vanguards of Canada, Toronto: The Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, 1918; The Indians of Canada: Their Manners and Customs, Toronto: William Briggs, 1889; McDougall, 24 believed to be on the verge of extinction, through the practice of “salvage” ethnology76 (see Chapter 4), fuelled the production of several texts by professional ethnographers that record Blackfoot knowledge. Once the Siksikaitsitapi settled into reserves, professional ethnographers enjoyed easier access to informants. During the first half-century of reserve life, the foundations of canonical Blackfoot history were established. Salvage ethnologists, like the traders and travellers who preceded them, relied on Blackfoot organic intellectuals and bilingual collaborators. Of these, five foundational volumes by George Bird Grinnell, Clark Wissler and David C. Duvall, Walter McClintock, Christian Cornelius Uhlenbeck, and James Willard Schultz, are key to this dissertation.77 These are widely cited by scholars, except for Uhlenbeck, who is included here because he provides the only early bilingual collection of Blackfoot Stories, which are “literally” translated and therefore retain more of the Blackfoot language than other translations. A diary kept by Wilhelmina Maria Uhlenbeck-Melchior, his wife, is instructive because it provides detailed descriptions of his methodology and identifies his informants.78 Duvall was the earliest Siksikaitsitapi ethnographer. He possessed mixed ancestry, his mother being a Pikuni. However, although he spoke the Blackfoot language, he relied for information on Elders who were knowledgeable as much as non-Blackfoot ethnographers did. Despite any apparent shortcomings of these texts (see Chapter 4), they are valuable resources and the first point of departure for Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot researchers. Early chroniclers of the Blackfoot wrote about their own experiences, and supplemented their observations with the contributions by Blackfoot informants. However, failure to integrate the interconnections between stories, ritual, and everyday practices has left unacknowledged in colonial texts the existence of a viable epistemology that ensured the transmission of Blackfoot knowledge.79 This problem

Opening the Great West, 1970; and Provincial Archives of Alberta, 84.400/1193, boite 49, Oblate fonds, Emile Legal, esp. Cantes pied-noirs, 2 janvier 18852; suivis de clans et chefs Pied-Noirs et degrés d’initiation Indienne; 84.400/1195 Notes sur la fête du soleil; 84.400/1197, Legends du Pieds- Noirs, s.d. 76 Gruber, “Ethnographic Salvage”, p. 1290. 77 Grinnell, Lodge Tales; Clark Wissler and David C. Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians, Alice Beck Kehoe, Introduction to the Bison Book ed., [Anthropological Papers of the AMNH, Vol. 2, part 1 (1908), New York The Trustees] Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995; McClintock, Old North Trail; Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck, ed. and trans., with the help of Joseph Tatsey, Original Blackfoot Texts: From the Southern Piegans Blackfoot Reservation Teton County Montana, Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1911, and Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck, ed. and trans., with the help of Joseph Tatsey, A New Series of Blackfoot Texts: From the Southern Piegans Blackfoot Reservation Teton County Montana, Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1912; Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, [c. 1878–1915] 1962. 78 Wilhelmina Maria Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Wilhelmina Maria Uhlenbeck-Melchior’s Diary, in Mary Eggermont-Molenaar. Ed., Montana 1911, A Professor and his Wife among the Blackfeet, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005, pp. 31–178. 79 Hernandez, Mokakssini, 1999; Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, p. 26.

25 has begun to be redressed in the more recent work of Blackfoot scholars themselves, whose work informs this dissertation. This dissertation profits from a rich vein of unpublished documentation in Canadian and United States archives collected during the early reserve era. For this study I made two research visits in 2004 and 2005 in order to consult the archival holdings at the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa, the Glenbow Archive in Calgary, the Provincial Archive of Alberta, Edmonton, the Montana Historical Society Research Centre in Helena, and the Special Collection at the Medicine Springs Library, Blackfoot Community College, Browning. A visit to the Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning was instructive for their rich collection of traditional Blackfoot clothing. However, written records pertaining to the reservation formerly held at the Museum have been relocated to Denver and were unavailable for consultation. During these visits, my research benefited greatly from consulting the collections on the Blackfoot at the Mackimmie Library, University of Calgary, and the Mansfield Library and Archive, University of Montana, Missoula. The work of Blackfoot intellectuals is vital to this study in order to incorporate, through their work, an emic perspective into the analysis of cultural transformation, thus enabling a dialogue between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship. Among these, from the early reserve era I refer particularly to Bull Plume, Natosi-Nepee, David C. Duvall and Crooked Meat Strings80 (see Chapter 4). Among contemporary authors, I refer, among others, to Mike Mountain Horse, Percy Bullchild, Woody Kipp, Reg Crowshoe, Beverly Hungry Wolf, Nimachia Hernandez, Betty Bastien and Audrey Weasel Traveller.81 I also make reference to Fraser Taylor’s biography of Kainai “Grandfather of Sacred Horn Society” Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone).82

80 For Bull Plume, see Glenbow Archives, M8188, Bull Plume’s Winter Count. Available online at: http://asalive.archivesalberta.org:8080/access/asa/documents/display/GLEN-22 [Accessed 11 April 2007]; and Paul M. Raczka, Winter Count: A History of the Blackfoot People, Brocket, AB: Oldman River Culture Centre, 1979. For Bull Plume and Natosi-Nepee, see McClintock, Old North Trail. For Duvall, see Glenbow Archives, M4376-1, David C. Duvall fonds; and Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, esp. Kehoe’s “Introduction”. For Crooked Meat Strings, see Kenneth E. Kidd, Blackfoot Ethnography, Archaeological Survey of Alberta Manuscript Series 8, [M.A. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1937] Edmonton: Alberta Culture, 1985, who notes that Crooked Meat Strings was “the oldest and one of the most knowledgeable of [his] Blackfoot informants” (p. vii); and Glenbow Archives, M8458, Hanks Papers, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”, f.10, pp. 276–319. 81 Mike Mountain Horse, My People The Bloods, Hugh A. Dempsey, ed., and Introduction, Calgary: Glenbow Museum and Blood Tribal Council, 1989; Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, and “Foreword” by Woody Kipp; Crowshoe and Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman, [1997] 2002; Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, 1980; Hernandez, Mokakssini, 1999; Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 2004; and Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, 1997. 82 Taylor, Standing Alone, 1989.

26 In revisiting the foundational texts of colonial history, the intention is not to provide a totalising view of Blackfoot history. Such a comprehensive approach has already been produced in ethnohistorian John C. Ewers’s The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains, an invaluable resource for this study. Eminent historian Hugh Dempsey has also contributed greatly to the writing of Blackfoot history. His numerous publications span the genres of history, biography, ethnography and literature. Most valuable for the purposes of this study are his biographies of Chiefs Isapo-Muxica (Crowfoot) and Mekasto (Red Crow), two Blackfoot leaders who played significant roles during the signing of Treaty Seven with the Dominion in 1877.83 They were two of the principal Blackfoot negotiators with white officialdom during the early reserve era. Dempsey’s position as chief ethnologist at the Glenbow Archives and Museum in Alberta, and his personal ties to the Blackfoot, having married a Kainai, provided him with a perspective rarely afforded a non-Blackfoot researcher—his interpreter was none other than Akay-Namuka (Many Guns) or James Gladstone, the first member of a First Nation to have ever been elected to the Canadian Senate (1958),84 who was Dempsey’s father-in-law. This study builds upon the work of these Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholars.

1.8 Ethical Considerations and Epistemological Boundaries

Research that involves First Nations peoples presents specific ethical challenges, the most salient of which is how to avoid re-colonising their history. In her oft-cited volume, Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, writing from the position of “an indigenous Maori woman from New Zealand” and a researcher within Western academia, identifies research “as a significant site of struggle between the interests and “ways of knowing”85 of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other.”86 Smith argues that to discuss in the same breath “research methodology” and the signifier “indigenous peoples” requires an understanding of the links between “the pursuit of knowledge [and] imperial and colonial practices”. Indeed, as Foucault points out, knowledge and power are inextricably connected. Within the specific context of colonialism, power/knowledge relations have devalued First Nations knowledge and worldviews, beginning with

83 Hugh A. Dempsey, Red Crow, Warrior Chief, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980; and Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfeet, Foreword by Paul F. Sharp, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1972] 3rd rpt. 1989. 84 Anonymous, “Senator James Gladstone 1887–1971”, Saskatchewan Indian, September 1971-Vol. 2 no. 7, p. 1 (Obituary). Available online at: http://www.sicc.sk.ca/saskindian/a71sep01.htm [Accessed 26 July 2007]. 85 The expression is used by Betty Bastien to refer to Blackfoot epistemology in Blackfoot Ways of Knowing - Indigenous Science, Ph.D. Dissertation, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1999. 86 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, p. 2.

27 discourses in colonial representations that construct First Nations peoples as “savages” in need of “civilisation” or as “heathens” in need of Christianity (see Chapter 2). By contrast, the experiences of white colonisers have been framed using discourses of “discovery”, “civilisation” and “progress.” These obscure the unlawful appropriation of First Nations lands and resources and construct an image of settlers as intrepid and courageous, and of First Nations peoples as “children” or “savages”, while ignoring the complexity and viability of their cultures and the epistemologies whereby their knowledge was produced and transmitted. A number of indigenous academics within the disciplines of English, History and Anthropology, are increasingly pointing up the blind spots of non-indigenous scholarship and proposing alternative theories and methodologies.87 Some of these scholars have called for a privileged position for First Nations academics within disciplines that engage with First Nations knowledge. These attitudes are a reaction to the misrepresentation of the history of the colonised in colonial texts. However, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith recognises, research sets agendas that are not always specific to the researcher’s own community, or to communities that individual First Nations researchers might be familiar with. First Nations academics are assumed to possess an emic view of their cultures, but are nevertheless expected to comply with the disciplinary methods normative to academic institutions. However, even for those who have an emic view, reframing and recasting or translating First Nations peoples’ knowledge within academic disciplinary contexts is especially challenging, because this requires that they be simultaneously insiders and outsiders. Moreover, claiming a privileged position for indigenous researchers could result, not in reducing cultural incomprehension, but in perpetuating it, by creating artificial boundaries of what can be known, not on the basis of research-based arguments, but by appealing to essentialist notions that would narrow, rather than expand, the methods and perspectives available. This does not preclude the formulation of indigenous research methodologies (such as those proposed by Smith) and their broad application within academia. This kind of strategy would reduce cultural misunderstanding.

In researching this dissertation, I have sought to engage with Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship with a view to analysing cultural continuity within processes that, hitherto, have not received sufficient attention. This methodological strategy aims to dispel generalisations regarding cultural loss and the locating of First

87 Notably, in Canada, Hernandez and Bastien; in the United States Paula Gunn Allen, Vine Deloria, Jr., Devon A. Miheshua, Gerald Vizenor; in New Zealand Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Their works are taken up throughout this dissertation. See especially Devon A. Mihesuah, ed., Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about the American Indians, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

28 Nations authenticity in a distant, irretrievable past, by picking out the threads of continuity within a tapestry of cultural change. This focus necessitates a close reading and close analysis of micro-historical aspects, which has resulted in the four case studies.88 Although these processes are viewed separately, they are deeply interconnected, and these connections are made explicit throughout the dissertation. The interconnectedness between the sacred and the secular in the Siksikaitsitapi worldview—and, therefore between the stories, the ritual, and the everyday—dictates that Ookaan take precedence as the first case study. Blackfoot customs, beliefs, identity, and individual and communal values all intersect (then as now) in Ookaan, and it was a significant site of both Blackfoot accommodation with, and resistance to, the full onset of colonial rule. It is therefore highly appropriate as the initial focus and point of departure of this dissertation.

88 This is closely akin to the method outlined by Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3–30.

29 CHAPTER 2

THE BLACKFOOT OOKAAN (SUN DANCE) 1877–1930: A CASE STUDY OF RESISTANCE, PERSISTENCE AND REVITALISATION

2.1 Introduction

In order to emphasise Siksikaitsitapi cultural continuity within the transitional era to life on reserves from the early 1880s, this chapter analyses the survival of Ookaan (Sun Dance), their annual central ceremony. During the first half-century of reserve life, Ookaan’s significance as the point of intersection for observances spanning the secular and sacred realms—which the Blackfoot consider to be indivisible1—made its eradication a cornerstone for the adoption of Christianity.2 Officials and missionaries believed that the first step towards “civilisation”—often conflated with assimilation— was extinguishing the Sun Dance (and the Potlatch of the Pacific First Nations).3 Assimilation, or forced acculturation, is intrinsic to colonisation when, as historian Richard White asserts, “a dominant group is largely able to dictate correct behaviour to a subordinate group.”4 As historian John L. Tobias notes, the policy of “civilizing the Indian” was adopted by the British after 1815.5 This chapter examines Blackfoot actions that ensured Ookaan’s persistence to argue that despite the asymmetrical power relations of the early reserve era, the Blackfoot were not passive receptors of the colonisers’ desires. It views the persistence of cultural practices such as Ookaan as evidence that, as Jacqueline Gresko argues— based on her study of the Plains Cree and other signatories to Treaty Four in Canada—the efforts by governments and missionaries to transform “western Indians into civilized Christians” stimulated resistance to assimilation.6 Anthropologist and ethnohistorian Alice Kehoe concurs, positing that “[t]he net result of the paradox of policies segregating Indians in the avowed pursuit of

1 BGC, Nitsitapiistandsini, p. 8; McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 170; and Conaty, “Economic Models,” pp. 403–9. 2 Ian A. L. Getty, The Church Missionary Society among the Blackfoot Indians of Southern Alberta, 1880–1895, M.A. Dissertation, University of Calgary, 1970, pp. 75–82. 3 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation”, pp. 13–30. Assimilation was the objective of the Indian Act 1876: Andrew Armitage, Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation, pp. 77–87. 4 White, Middle Ground, p. x. 5 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation”, p. 14. 6 Jacqueline Gresko, “White ‘Rites’ and Indian ‘Rites’: Indian Education and Native Responses in the West, 1870–1910”, in Anthony W. Rasporich, ed., Western Canada Past and Present, Calgary: McClelland and Stewart West, 1975, pp. 163–81, p. 164.

30 assimilation was the strengthening of Indian identities”.7 The present chapter analyses the dynamics of forced assimilation, highlighting how official disapproval of Ookaan elicited Blackfoot resistance, rather than compliance. This chapter argues that different circumstances allow for different kinds of resistance to be exercised, especially by indigenous elites who can benefit personally and obtain benefits for their group from cooperation, rather than confrontation, with the colonisers. During the process of subjecting the Siksikaitsitapi divisions to colonial rule in the late-nineteenth century, pre-existing Blackfoot-white alliances forged during the fur trade era were maintained. For example, Siksika Chief Crowfoot’s relationship with white traders (see Chapter 3) gave him a pre-eminent position in treaty negotiations and beyond. This does not suggest anything near an equal share of power nor does it deny the catastrophic effects of colonisation enumerated by the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996: “dishonoured treaties, theft of Aboriginal lands, suppression of Aboriginal cultures, abduction of Aboriginal children, impoverishment and disempowerment of Aboriginal peoples.”8 Rather, the intention here is to avoid homogenising the Blackfoot colonial experience and thereby obscuring their actions that ensured Ookaan’s persistence. These actions indicate that the Siksikaitsitapi defined at least some of the terms of their cultural transformation, a remarkable outcome given the extent of the official assault on Ookaan. It is argued here that the absence of violent rebellion does not equate to an absence of resistance. Although diplomacy and “accommodation” (see Chapter 1) lack the notoriety of armed rebellion, they can nevertheless be effective. Moreover, although it remains easier to theorise radical social movements9 rather than the

7 Alice B. Kehoe, “Maintaining the Road of Life”, in William B. Taylor and Franklin Pease G.Y., eds., Violence, Resistance, and Survival in the Americas: Native Americans and the Legacy of Conquest, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994, pp. 193–207, p. 201. 8 Martin Thornton, “Aspects of the History of Aboriginal People in their Relationships with Colonial, National and Provincial Governments in Canada,” in Martin Thornton and Roy Todd, eds., Aboriginal People and Other Canadians: Shaping New Relationships, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2001, pp. 7–24, pp. 9–10, citing the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996c, pp. 4–5; and James S. Frideres, “The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: The Route to Self- Government?”, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Vol. 16, no. 2 (1996): pp. 247–66. 9 As regards North America, as long ago as 1896 James Mooney wrote what has remained the definitive account of the Ghost Dance movement, while Ralph Linton (1943) and Anthony Wallace (1956) respectively coined the terms “nativist movements” and “revitalization movements”, suggesting typologies and methodological approaches to the study of these phenomena: James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee, New York: Dover Publications, [1896] 1973 rpt.; Ralph Linton, “Nativistic Movements”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 45, no. 2 (1943): pp. 230– 40; Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements: Some Theoretical Considerations for Their Comparative Study”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 58, no. 2 (1956): pp. 264–81. See also the influential comparative studies, Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, [1979] 1987; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, [UK: Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1957] London: Paladin, 1972; Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of Cargo Cults in Melanesia, London: Paladin, [1957] 1970.

31 everyday acts of individuals, the latter, nonetheless, can have a dramatic impact on intercultural affairs. Ashcroft articulates the possibility of such actions as follows:

We do not need to claim that colonial subjects are entirely autonomous to show that in the material aspects of their lives they make choices, employ strategies of self-transformation and production, sometimes of remarkable subtlety, which characterize them as agents who are capable of ‘resisting’ cultural power even when that resistance is not channelled into any organized political programme.10 Historians have theorised the possibilities, other than rebellion, open to the colonised using conceptual tools such as “weapons of the weak”, “repertoire of contention” (see Chapter 1), and “hidden transcripts”. According to Kevin Gosner (following James C. Scott and E. P. Thompson), the limits of what a community can endure before opting for armed rebellion constitute a “moral economy”11, which if exceeded will lead to insurrection. In the specific case of the Blackfoot, by embracing cultural transformation on their own terms, they refused assimilation in terms dictated solely by whites. Lacking the requisite technology of war (firearms were obtained from whites), survival could be best ensured through diplomacy. Given that transformation is the constant condition of all cultural forms, Ookaan being no exception, persistence here refers to the continued viability and relevance of the practice. This study does not argue for or against the survival of an unchanging ritual grammar, modelled in the distant past. The intention here, and throughout this dissertation, is to ascertain any strands of continuity within a context of rapid cultural transformation. The chapter begins with a discussion of the theoretical tools utilised here to analyse resistance against colonialism. It surveys the historical background against which the Blackfoot resisted forced acculturation in order to point up the deleterious effects of white contact that put an end to Blackfoot autonomy and drastically reduced their population and political power. Although the figures are not entirely reliable, the downward trend is clear: the figure for the three divisions combined fell from 4,304 in 1877 to 2,330 in 1929, a reduction of 56.50 per cent (Appendices 1–4). It provides a sketch of the many faces of colonialism that had a bearing on Blackfoot responses to efforts to eradicate Ookaan. It points up the connection between Blackfoot accommodation strategies and the destitution that followed the destruction of the buffalo herds towards the late 1870s and early 1880s,

10 Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformation, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 35. 11 Kevin Gosner, Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992; James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, New Haven.: Yale University Press, 1976; and E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, Vol. 50 (1971): pp. 76–136.

32 causing widespread famine. It then examines the cultural centrality of Ookaan in order to evaluate the effects of its intended prohibition. Finally, it analyses the regulations designed to eradicate Ookaan, their implementation, and some of the Siksikaitsitapi responses.

2.2 Theoretical Basis for the Case Study

Resistance to colonialism has taken many guises, ranging from subtle, passive methods to violent rebellion. Some acts of resistance are public and others are hidden from the view of the colonisers. The latter approximate to what historian and social anthropologist James Scott termed “hidden transcripts” and defined as follows:

Every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal a “hidden transcript” that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant. The powerful, for their part, also develop a hidden transcript representing the practices and claims of their rule that cannot be openly avowed. A comparison of the hidden transcript of the weak with that of the powerful and of both hidden transcripts to the public transcript of power relations offers a substantially new way of understanding resistance to domination (italics in original).12 Myriad overt and covert actions have been deployed by First Nations peoples in order to resist the prohibition of, inter alia, their spiritual practices within specific “contact zones,” Mary Louise Pratt’s concept for the “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.”13 This chapter focuses on the contact zone of the “reserve” in Canada or “reservation” in the United States, a geographically demarcated space where, according to the terms of treaties, the four Siksikaitsitapi divisions settled in the late nineteenth-century. Within these spaces as subordinate and dependent on the colonisers for survival, they were expected to cease cultural and religious practices considered by officials and missionaries to be obstacles to “civilisation”. They were expected to become Christians and adopt “agriculture and pastoral pursuits”14, at the same time as their children received a Christian education, preferably in boarding schools, away from the cultural influences of the reserve. Officials from the Department of Indian Affairs (henceforth DIA)—including Indian agents and farming instructors—and

12 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990, p. xii; and his Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. 13 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 4. 14 Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and The North-West Territories, Toronto: Belfords, Clarke & Co., Publishers, [1862] rpt. 1971.

33 missionaries15 oversaw this transition to a new modus vivendi. In Canada, the North West Mounted Police (henceforth NWMP) exercised “military, police, and civil governmental functions”16 and, in the United States, the Army, civil militias and (in some cases) the “Indian Police”17 provided law enforcement. The Blackfoot are cast here as actors who sought to define proactively the terms of their own cultural transformation and to resist assimilation, even while selectively adopting European practices to ensure their survival and wellbeing. The persistence of Ookaan serves to refute the pejorative view of the colonised as entirely powerless. This revisionist aim is in part informed by Foucault’s notion that individuals “are always in a position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising” power and are neither “its inert or consenting target” nor “its points of application.”18 As he asserted, “[i]f there was no resistance, there would be no power relations because it would simply be a matter of obedience.”19 Foucault’s view of power acts as a reminder against using the coloniser/colonised binary uncritically, obscuring the two-way workings of accommodation. An appreciation of the heterogeneous positions adopted by the Blackfoot is a prerequisite for understanding how, despite the power asymmetry characteristic of colonialism, discrete groups deploy unique sets of performances, what Charles Tilly calls a “repertoire of contention,” a term for the range of interaction possible between pairs (or sets) of actors, “one claimant and one object of claims.”20 Indeed, the repertoire of contention of the Siksikaitsitapi and that of government officials was conditioned by a common ground of mutual interests that was constantly being re-negotiated since the early days of the fur trade. Diplomacy was the best option available, and some tolerance was exercised on both sides, while

15 Getty, Church Missionary Society, 1970, reviews the role of British missionary organisations among the Blackfoot 1880–1895. 16 For the Northwest Mounted Police (henceforth NWMP), see Sir Cecil E. Denny, The Law Marches West, W. B. Cameron, ed., Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons (Canada) Ltd., 1939; Dick Harrison, Best Mounted Police Stories, Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, [1978] 1996; The Commissioners of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, The New West: Being the Official Reports to Parliament of the Activities of the Royal North-West Mounted Police Force From 1888–1889, Introduction by Commissioner W. L. Higgitt, RCMP, [Ottawa: Queen’s Printer 1888–1889] Toronto: Coles Publishing Co., 1973, facsimile; Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada, p. 211; and James H. Gray, Booze: When Whisky Ruled the West, [Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972] Calgary: Fifth House, 1995, pp. 24–7. Gray notes that the NWMP began with 318 men and combined “the roles of policeman, judge, and jailer.” 17 Wilcomb E. Washburn, The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History, 4 Vols., Vol. 1, New York: Random House, 1973, pp. 336–7, notes that Congress approved the creation of the Indian Police in 1878 and by 1882 it was in operation in forty agencies. 18 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977, Colin Gordon, ed., trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mephan, and Kate Soper, New York: Pantheon Books, Harvester Press ed. 1980, p. 98. 19 Paul Rabinow, ed., The Essential Works of Foucault, New York: The New Press, 1997, p. 167. 20 Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 45.

34 “hidden transcripts” were kept by the colonised and colonisers alike. Despite the power asymmetry of the early reserve era, Blackfoot accommodation was still required. If and when it led to their desired outcomes, this accommodation could simultaneously be a form of resistance.

2.3 Historical Background: The Many Faces of Colonialism

Trading interests and competition between British and French companies had brought the first whites to the northern Plains, seeking to persuade inland First Nations to travel to remote posts in order to exchange furs for European merchandise. The introduction of guns and metal goods had a practical impact on the First Nations’ lifeways, but had little effect on their beliefs and ceremonial life.21 In 1870 the Dominion of Canada acquired Rupert’s Land from the HBC, incorporating the Northwest Territories—independently of the rights and wishes of First Nations peoples, and even without their knowledge.22 By this time, the Dominion’s overriding concern had shifted from trade to white settlement. Their signing of Treaty Seven in 1877 subjected the Siksikaitsitapi to the provisions of the Indian Act of 1876 as wards of the state.23 This Act and its subsequent amendments Tobias argues, “attacked traditional Indian sexual, marriage,

21 Hugh A. Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1979, p. 9. Henry Kelsey in 1691 and Anthony Henday in 1754, were sent by the HBC to seek trade with “the inland Indians.” Both wrote of meeting the “Archithinue”, and of their refusal to travel to the Bay to trade. The HBC sent Henry Pressick in 1760–61, and Matthew Cocking in 1772. There is no record of Pressick’s trip, but Cocking failed to persuade the Blackfoot to travel to trade at Fort York: Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 24–8; and Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 16–7, citing A. S. Morton, A History of the Canadian West to 1870–71, Toronto and New York, [n.d.], p. 252. Conaty, “Economic Models,” p. 404, notes that the first European credited with visiting the Canadian Prairies was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Vérendrye c. 1741, but that neither he, nor Kelsey, met with the Blackfoot, David Thompson’s was the first account of Blackfoot culture, based on his wintering with the Peigan in 1787. 22 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 64. 23 For Treaty Seven see John Leonard Taylor, “Canada’s Northwest Indian Policy in the 1870s: Traditional Premises and Necessary Innovations”; and Taylor, “Two Views on the Meaning of Treaties Six and Seven,” in Richard T. Price, ed., The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, [Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1979] 3rd ed. 1999, pp. 3–8 and pp. 9–45; Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council, with Walter Hildebrandt, Sarah Carter, and Dorothy First Rider, The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996, esp. Wilton Goodstriker, “Introduction: Otsitsi Pakssaisstoyiih Pi (the year when the winter was open and cold)”, pp. 3–27, pp. 8–9, and pp. 230–39 for a transcript of Treaty Seven; Ian A. Getty and Donald B. Smith, eds., One Century Later: Western Canadian Reserve Indians Since Treaty 7, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1978, esp. the following chapters: Hugh A. Dempsey, “One Hundred Years of Treaty Seven”, pp. 20–30; Stan Cuthand, “The Native Peoples of the Prairie Provinces in the 1920s and 1930s”, pp. 31–42; and Harold Cardinal, “Treaties Six and Seven: The Next Century”, pp. 82–102. Treaty Seven available online from Treaty Seven Management Corporation at: http://www.treaty7.org/Article.asp?ArticleID=1 [Accessed 17 January 2007].

35 and divorce mores and furthered the Christian-European values.”24 The Act, as summarised by Anthony Hall,

defines Indians ... as having a status separate and particular from other Canadians with a whole body of law applicable only to them, rendering [them] dependant, incompetent and subject to arbitrary decree in almost every aspect of their economic and political lives.25 Hall omits the spiritual dimension, which is central to this chapter, but succinctly contextualises the prevailing juridical framework against which to view this case study. Westward expansion required large numbers of settlers and infrastructure to exploit the region’s natural resources. These goals were common to Canada and the United States, the two rival nations that since 1846 had shared the forty-ninth parallel as their international boundary—at best a porous and historically unstable border— with Blackfoot territory spanning both sides. The Blackfoot divisions’ geographical distance from white settlements had hitherto spared them from interference, but by the late 1870s settlers were encroaching on their territory, although in lesser numbers on the Canadian side. Dominion officials, missionaries and settlers concurred that a treaty with the Blackfoot was desirable and, insofar as settlers and other First Nations were already penetrating their territory, the Blackfoot also wished to negotiate. They twice made representations to Ottawa,26 concerned with the increasing encroachment by settlers since the arrival of the Mounted Police in 1874, as well as from their Cree enemies.27 Crowfoot complained: “We are getting shut in. The Crees are coming in to our country from the north, and the white men from the south and east, and they are all destroying our means of living.”28 Blackfoot concern increased with the arrival of

24 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation”, pp. 17–18 and 30. 25 Ibid., pp. 13–30, for Canada; and for the United States, Hall, American Empire and the Fourth World, p. 481, who notes that citizenship was conferred on all Indians in 1924, and prior to that, to those who qualified through the General Allotment Act of 1887; and Macgregor et al., Warriors Without Weapons, pp. 78–9. 26 Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 26. A request was made to Major General E. Selby-Smyth while on a tour of the West; the other was a memorial to the Queen’s Government signed by fifteen leaders representing the three divisions, which was prepared by Jean L’Heureux (a Euro-Canadian who lived in Crowfoot’s camp). 27 According to McDougall, Opening the Great West, p. 18, the safety offered by the Mounted Police at Fort Macleod, in the Elbow River, attracted the relocation of a post office and trading company to that vicinity, and “in a few weeks the mouth of the Elbow became a busy scene of government occupancy and trade development.” The Cree had been allies and trading partners of the Siksikaitsitapi and, significantly, are credited with providing the latter with their first firearms in 1730. Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 11–12. 28 Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 90, citing Sessional Papers of Canada 1875–1890, 1877, 9: 23–4.

36 Hunkpapa Chief Sitting Bull, whose followers reached eventually five thousand.29 They crossed the border seeking refuge following their defeat of the elite Seventh Cavalry led by Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876,30 increasing local demand for food resources at a time when the bison herds were declining. Furthermore, while the future of the Siksikaitsitapi remained uncertain, the Cree had already signed a treaty.31 Treaties were the principal means by which colonial governments appropriated First Nations’ lands while avoiding costly wars and risks to settlers’ lives.32 In the nineteenth century both Canada and the United States followed an established British pattern of providing annuities and other benefits in return for land surrender. In 1855 the leaders of several (but not all) the Siksikaitsitapi bands signed the “Lame Bull” treaty with the United States Government, but the agreement of peace formalised by the treaty was not honoured.33 American treaties that included the Siksikaitsitapi followed in 1865 and 1868 (both unratified), and a reservation was drawn up by an act of Congress in 1874. Two more treaties were signed in 1888 and 1896 (whereby the size of the Blackfeet reservation was reduced).34 In Canada, the Siksikaitsitapi signed Treaty Seven in 1877, the last of the numbered treaties concluded with the northwest First Nations between 1871 and 1877. However, by signing a treaty, the Siksikaitsitapi did not renounce their autonomy or beliefs, and yet, the destitution caused soon after by the destruction of the buffalo herds, their means of survival, left them in an invidious position—they faced starvation without white assistance. These circumstances prepared the ground for forced assimilation. Appropriating First Nations’ lands was rationalised by whites as a right that governments should facilitate and protect. Father Constantine Scollen, who in 1873 founded a mission in Pikani territory, wrote in 1876: “[t]he settlers also are anxious

29 Ibid., pp. 90–1; and Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, New York: Ballantine Books, 1993, p. 200. 30 For the ”Great Sioux War” and the sequel to the annihilation of Custer and c. 250 of his men at Little Bighorn in June 1876 by a confederacy of allied Teton Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, see Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: A History of the Sioux Uprising of 1870, London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971; Jerome A. Greene, ed., Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876– 1877: The Military View, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993; Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003; and William S. E. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, rpt. 2002. 31 Taylor, “Two Views”, p. 26, for Cree treaty, which some Cree bands refused to sign. 32 For a general view on approaches to treaties, see Jill St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada 1867–1877, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001; and Stanley, “As Long As the Sun Shines”, pp. 1–26. 33 Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 216–21 and 227–33. A condition of all treaties was that the signatories would live in peace with whites, but also with other First Nations. 34 Ibid., pp. 273, 304 and 313. For the 1888 treaty, see Merrill G. Burlingame, “Historical Report Regarding Lands ceded to the United States Government by the Blackfeet and Gros Ventre Tribes of Indians, residing upon the Blackfeet And Fort Belknap Reservations in the State of Montana, in the agreement of May 1, 1888”, Montana State University, Bozeman, Burlingame Special Collections. A copy of this report is kept at the Medicine Spring Library, Blackfeet Community College, Browning.

37 that a treaty [with the Blackfoot] be made as soon as possible, so that they may know what portions of land they can hold without fear of being molested.”35 The consequences for the Siksikaitsitapi, occupiers of their land from time immemorial— a land that, according to the Blackfoot Stories, was given to them by Ihtsi-pai-tapi- yopa, the Creator and Essence of Life36—were a secondary consideration “unless violence or a political crisis erupted.”37 This situation prevailed within Indian affairs since 1820, in both the United States and Canada.38 For the Dominion, an added benefit of the Blackfoot treaty was the securing of a territory adjacent to the border and forestalling possible encroachment by the southern neighbour. Moreover, in view of Sitting Bull’s entreaties to the Siksikaitsitapi to form a confederacy against whites in 1876, and his continued presence with his followers on Canadian soil, a treaty was expected to reduce the prospect of such an alliance.39 On 27 September 1877 the “Blackfeet, Blood, Piegans” and their old allies the “Sarcees” signed Treaty Number Seven. Their old enemies, the “Stonies” signed the same treaty subsequently. The interpretation of the treaty by the Blackfoot—who had to rely on interpreters and who did not have literacy skills to peruse it—remains at variance with the written document, especially in regard to “land surrender”, which the Siksikaitsitapi claim was not discussed during negotiations.40 The Siksikaitsitapi have also disputed the reserve’s boundaries. In 2003, the Siksika received 82 million dollars in compensation for 5,067.6 hectares (12,522.6 acres) of reserve lands that were subject of a 1910 claim.41 Furthermore, while the Siksikaitsitapi of the early reserve era believed themselves entitled to treaty benefits by virtue of having allowed whites to share their territory, government officials expected that assimilation would put an end to treaty payments or at least reduce the level of expenditure.42

35 Morris, Treaties of Canada, p. 249. 36 BGC, Nitsitapiisinni, p. 4; Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, p. 35 refers to the “Great Mystery, the source of life”. 37 Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada, p. 175. 38 Ibid. 39 Provincial Archives of Alberta, 84.28/15, R. N. Wilson, “Our Betrayed Wards: A story of “Chicanery, Infidelity and the Prostitution of Trust” (40 pages), p. 2; Morris, Treaties of Canada, pp. 246–9. Sitting Bull and most of his followers surrendered and returned to the United States in 1881, see LAC, DIA, AR, 1881, p. 37. 40 For Blackfoot attitudes to Treaty Seven, including the claim that it was a “Peace Treaty” and not the surrendering of land, see Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council et al., True Spirit and Original Intent, pp. 277–80 and 323–26. For early dissatisfaction with treaties, see LAC, DIA, AR, 1881, p. 40: “There had been a good deal of dissatisfaction with the treaties, some Indians stating that it was impossible to make their living under the existing ones; and others contending that promises had been made during the negotiations which had never been carried out. These alleged promises, however, do not appear in the treaty.” See also BGC, Nitsitapiisini, pp. 68–79; and Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 106. 41 Government of Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs, News Release 2-02326, September 10, 2003, “Siksika Nation and Canada Reach $82 Million Specific Claim Agreement.” Available online at: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/nr/prs/s-d2003/2-02326_e.html [Accessed 11 February 2007]. 42 D. J. Hall, “Clifford Sifton and Canadian Indian Administration 1896–1905”, Prairie Forum, Vol. 2, no. 2 (1977): pp. 127–51, p. 130; E. Brian Titley, “W. M. Graham: Indian Agent Extraordinaire”,

38 Missionaries from several denominations played an ambivalent role during the process of subjecting the Siksikaitsitapi to the new regime. Ostensibly they came to offer “salvation” through Christianity, suffering privations and the rigours of the harsh climate in order to proselytise. In practice, their actions and influence extended beyond the religious sphere.43 When expedient, missionaries aided colonial governments. It is notable that, prior to the negotiating the numbered treaties, Methodist missionary George McDougall was commissioned by the Lieutenant- General of the Territories to visit First Nations “to explain and assure the natives of the West ... that commissioners would be sent in to make treaties.”44 His son, John McDougall, also a missionary, was similarly commissioned in 1874 to prepare “the way among the Indians for the coming in of the NWMP.”45 John McDougall saw himself as a pioneer: he appropriately titled his memoir Opening the Great West, Experiences of a Missionary in 1875–76. Together with Constantine Scollen, an Oblate priest working among the Cree and Blackfoot, John McDougall attended the signing of Treaties Six and Seven in 1876–77. Both had sent reports to Ottawa in 1876, advocating the signing of a Blackfoot treaty. Scollen included information on the Blackfoot “character, habits, and condition”46 to assist officials in the negotiations. In the United States, Jesuit missionary Pierre Jean De Smet, an old friend of the Siksikaitsitapi, had been present at the signing of the 1855 treaty, assisting by drawing a map with the agreed new boundaries.47 Clearly, despite these missionaries’ posturing as spiritual saviours, they became intermediaries in dispossessing First Nations peoples of their lands. Missionaries’ conviction that “civilisation” offered a better life to First Nations peoples overrode any misgivings on its deleterious effects, which they had themselves denounced—the illegal liquor trade being but one example.48 Yet, for all their expressed concerns, missionaries’

Prairie Forum, Vol. 8, no. 1 (1983): pp. 25–41, p. 25; and Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” p. 23. 43 McDougall, Opening the Great West, pp. 7–9, notes that missionaries’ meetings with the First Nations encompassed “a course of lectures in Christian civilization, process of government, and the history of eastern Canada.” Moreover, religious and commercial interests overlapped in the McDougall’s missionary work. See also James McGregor, Father Lacombe, Edmonton: Hurtig, 1975, pp. 198–9, for missionary visits to First Nations in 1869, and p. 258–63 for Lacombe’s assistance to obtain Blackfoot agreement for the railways to cross their territory. 44 McDougall, Opening the Great West, pp. 20–1. 45 Cited by Nix, “Introduction”, in McDougall, Opening the Great West, p. 7; see also p. 17 for McDougall’s claim to have “explained, apologized and sought to give them assurance” for the establishment of another white post in their territory without prior consultation. 46 For Scollen’s report, 8 September 1876, see Morris, Treaties of Canada, pp. 247–9; and for his role in Treaties 6 and 7, McDougall, Opening the Great West, p. 15, n.4. 47 Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 207. 48 Hugh A. Dempsey, Firewater: The Impact of the Whiskey Trade on the Blackfoot Nation, Calgary, Alberta: Fifth House, 2002, p. 175, cites the Reverend John McDougall: “several whisky mills were vigorously at work, demoralizing and decimating the plains tribes.”

39 beliefs could never be reconciled with what they saw as the “heathen” beliefs of First Nations peoples, which necessarily made missionaries advocates of assimilation. Assimilation was motivated by white interests cloaked with a publicly proclaimed altruistic veneer of spreading the benefits of civilisation: to “civilise” the “savages” was to elevate them to a higher order of societies that possessed a state structure and advanced technology (see Chapter 1). Alexander Morris, “Lieutenant- Governor of Manitoba, the North-West Territories, and Kee-wa-tin”, articulated this discourse in his 1880 report after the completion of several Canadian treaties (including Treaty Seven with the Blackfoot). Morris exalted his own contribution to “securing the good will of the Indian tribes, and ... opening up to them a future of promise, based upon the foundations of instruction and the many other advantages of civilized life.”49 These Eurocentric convictions were the ostensible justification for the official proscription of the Potlatch of the Pacific First Nations, and some eighteen kindred ceremonies of the First Nations peoples of the North American Plains and Plateau— for which whites coined the generic name “Sun Dance.”50 The name Sun Dance, although a misnomer for what were distinct ceremonies of these First Nations, including the Blackfoot Ookaan, was widely adopted by practitioners and governments in both Canada and the United States, and is ubiquitous in the documentation. The subtext of this colonial discourse of “civilisation” is the dispossession of First Nations’ lands for the benefit of white “settlers”—a descriptor dissociating them from invasion and conquest—whose needs overrode those of First Nations peoples who, in the words of historian Brian Titley “were denied full citizenship and were treated as a conquered people.”51 Rather than profiting from the “advantages” proclaimed by Morris, the Blackfoot population was drastically reduced during the

49 Morris, Treaties of Canada, “Preface”. 50 Leslie Spier, “The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians: Its Development and Diffusion,” AMNH, Vol. 16, part 7 (1921): pp. 453–527, provides a comparative study of eighteen First Nations that practiced the Sun Dance, including the Blackfoot. For the distinct names for the ceremony see p. 463; see also J. A. Jones, “The Sun Dance of the Northern Ute”, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 157, Anthropological Paper 47, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1955. pp. 207–63; Joseph G. Jorgensen, The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972; Ralph Linton, “The Comanche Sun Dance”, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 37, no. 3 (1935): pp. 420–28; Thomas E. Mails, Sundancing: The Great Sioux Piercing Ritual, [Sioux Falls, SD: Center for Western Studies, 1978] Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1998; Darcy Paige, “George W. Hill’s Account of the Sioux Sun Dance of 1866”, Plains Anthropologist Journal of the Plains Conference, Vol. 24, no. 84, part 1 (1979): pp. 99–112; William K. Powers, War Dance: Plains Indian Musical Performance, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990, p. 120; and Fred W. Voget, The Shoshoni-Crow Sun Dance, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984. 51 See also his A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986.

40 early reserve era, at a time when their lives were subjected to unprecedented official control (see Appendices 1–4). Absent from colonial rhetoric is the fact that those whom Morris saw as “uncivilised” possessed rich and complex cultures, which were devalued through the newcomers’ ethnocentric views. In his seminal Orientalism, Edward Said argued that the Oriental Other was constructed by the West through the constant interchange of scholarly and imaginative ideas about the Orient. Said’s ideas are apt to view the process of “othering” of First Nations peoples of the Americas, including the Siksikaitsitapi. Anthropologist and historian Neil Whitehead has recently argued that the practice of ethnohistory is to be understood as “history that principally refers to cultural others.”52 Whereas “othering” is not a one-way process, the writing of history preserved and prioritised the views of the colonisers, while those of the colonised were only rarely quoted at length in the extant documentation. This is how U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs T. J. Morgan summed up the situation in 1889: “[t]his civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They can not escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it.”53 His words follow the contours of the discourse of the “vanishing Indian” which, as noted earlier, was to come about through assimilation or annihilation (see Chapter 1). First Nations peoples’ lifeways in general, and warring and raiding for horses in particular, posed a threat to settlers and their property. In Canada these activities ebbed from the time of the arrival of the NWMP, although sporadic forays, especially against enemy First Nations across the forty-ninth parallel, took place during the next two decades.54 This occurred notwithstanding the standard provision of treaties in both countries, whereby the signatories undertook to live in peace, not only with whites, but also with other First Nations. The Siksikaitsitapi continued to follow their lifeways, moving camp within their preferred routes, each division having developed “the habit of living in different parts of [their] territory.”55 This travelling within a habitual pattern was calculated to secure their needs for food and shelter, but this changed dramatically as the buffalo herds, their main source of sustenance, were slaughtered to near extinction. This destruction was fuelled by industrial demand in the United States for significant numbers of buffalo robes, which could be procured thanks to powerful and accurate

52 Neil L. Whitehead, “Introduction”, in Whitehead, ed., Histories and Historicities in Amazonia, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003, pp. vii–xx, p. viii. 53 Washburn, American Indian, p. 425. 54 The Commissioners, New West, 1888, p. 48 and 1889, p. 84; and Glenbow Archives, M8458-17, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds; “Life in Crowfoot’s Camp. ca. 1870–1877”, f. 22. 55 BGC, Nitsitapiisinni, p. 6. According to this pattern, “[t]he Siksika were usually found along the northern and eastern part of the territory, the Kainai lived in the central part, while the Pikani camped along the foothills in the west.”

41 weapons. The construction of the railways contributed to the buffalo’s demise by providing the means for the rapid transportation of robes. Grinnell points out that the Winchester repeating rifle introduced a wanton form of killing among the different First Nations that had not existed before, when “no more buffalo were killed than could actually be utilized.”56 Moreover, the U.S. Government and the U.S. Army saw the demise of the bison as a step towards the “domesticating of the western plains”. According to Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”57 The catastrophe dealt the decisive blow to First Nations’ autonomy. It marked the end of the middle ground (see Chapter 1), the period during which “[w]hites needed Indians as allies, as partners in exchange, as sexual partners, [and] as friendly neighbors.”58 The mutual dependency that characterised middle ground relations disappeared with the bison herds: without commodities for exchange what remained was a relationship of dependency that left the Siksikaitsitapi little room for manoeuvring. In 1879 the dwindling herds failed to cross into Canada, remaining on American soil. Able-bodied Blackfoot crossed the border (encouraged by Dominion officials) to join those who had left earlier in search of buffalo. This precluded widespread famine on the Canadian reserves, where those unable to travel received government assistance.59 This humanitarian attitude indicates that the Dominion was not pursuing Blackfoot extinction. In 1881 the Siksikaitsitapi returned destitute to their Canadian reserves, with little option but to adopt new lifeways. The decline in their population continued unabated until the 1920s.60 If the effects of famine were lessened in Canada, in Montana, according to Grinnell, during “the winter of 1883–84 more than a quarter of the Piegan tribe ... which then numbered about twenty-five or twenty-six hundred, died from starvation.”61 Congress had reduced appropriations from $50,000 in 1878 to $35,000 in 1881, and in his October 1883 report the Commissioner of Indian Affairs noted that in July 1882 an Inspector ascertained that 3,200 persons “presented themselves as actually in need of subsistence.”62 Grinnell claimed that if “the Blackfeet had been obliged to depend on the supplies authorized by the Indian Bureau, the whole tribe

56 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 235. 57 Cited in Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 123–63 and 155; and Gibbon, The Sioux, p. 114. 58 See White, Middle Ground, pp. x, and 50–93. 59 Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 108–38. 60 Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, p. 25; and Appendices 1–4 of this dissertation. 61 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 289. 62 Washburn, American Indian, pp. 352–3; and J. P. Dunn, Jr., Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West 1815–1875, New York: Archer House, 1958, p. 457.

42 might have perished.”63 In April 1884, Major Allen, the incoming agent at the Blackfeet reservation, found that the available rations were inadequate to keep them alive. The Indian Rights Association estimated that “upward of four hundred were starved to death”, but a record kept on a willow stick by Amsskaapipikani Almost-a- Dog recorded 555 deaths.64 The destruction of the bison herds precipitated radical changes in Siksikaitsitapi lifeways. Henceforth they were compelled to seek their subsistence in agriculture and pastoral activities as the basis for a new economy. According to treaty terms, they settled on the reserves and reservation, where they were gradually provided with the rudiments for becoming agriculturalists and ranchers—including seed for planting and cattle for raising stock—under the direction of Indian agents and the tutelage of farming instructors. Teachers to instruct their children were eventually provided, in concert with several Christian denominations. Under this regime, rations were used as a lever to press for the abandonment of Siksikaitsitapi practices unacceptable to whites or deemed to be obstacles to “civilisation.” As previously mentioned, the remaining Blackfoot capacity to negotiate resided in the potential threat that their combined population posed to white settlement, and their potential for violent rebellion in the eyes of the colonisers. Against the wishes of Crowfoot, in 1878 the Kainai—who until then shared a reservation with the Siksika—moved south to a new reserve near the Belly River, thereby weakening somewhat Siksikaitsitapi bargaining power.65 However, the Kainai and Siksika (as was the case with the Pikani) had always been autonomous. The Pikani settled near the Old Man’s River, near the foot of the Porcupine Hills66, where buffalo had been plentiful. Their travelling patterns within the Siksikaitsitapi territory sometimes brought them in close contact with their allies, but as a rule the bands travelled within their own preferred camping grounds. Rather than representing a rupture between the allies, their relocation was consistent with past practice. As the buffalo days ended, the Siksikaitsitapi faced new challenges: physical survival was the first priority, but given the interrelatedness of Siksikaitsitapi secular and sacred realms, the reproduction of a distinct Siksikaitsitapi culture was reliant on the continuation of ceremonies such as Ookaan, at the very time when DIA officials were determined to curtail or eliminate them.

63 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 289–92; Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, pp. 457–60; and Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 108–14. 64 Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 294. 65 Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 110. 66 Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, p. 34.

43 Attacks against the Sun Dance fit into a broader matrix of legislation, official programs, and pejorative attitudes seeking the ultimate “disappearance of the Indian,” either by assimilation or by physical extermination.67 This discourse of extinction gained such wide acceptance in the nineteenth century that, according to historian Steven Conn, “[i]t was a conviction, rather than a prediction, and it was such a ubiquitous belief that it did not exist so much in the realm of empirical observation as in the world of unquestioned assumption.”68 Moreover, as Robert Berkhofer, Jr., argues “[i]n the end, the Indian as stereotyped had to face extermination through acculturation, if not through genocide.”69 Grinnell, who regretted the passing of the old lifeways expressed an unconscionable wish: “perhaps it is best that the Indians should fade away as we seen (sic) them fading to-day.”70 In his view, extinction was “nothing more than the operation of the inexorable natural law that the weaker must perish while the fitter shall survive”.71 This elegiac colonial discourse remained even after the trend of diminishing populations was reversed after the turn of the century, and continued to condition the relationships between First Nations peoples and colonial administrators. Tobias notes that up until the mid- 1940s, “the Indian and the Indian reserve were still regarded as transitory feature of Canadian society.”72 Having fulfilled their purpose of obtaining First Nations’ lands, the burden of treaty payments was viewed subsequently as an imposition. Canada and the United States coincided in their approach to what was commonly referred to as “the Indian problem”, although not entirely. In the eastern half of both countries, historian Roger Nichols observes, “pioneer actions and government programs continued to disrupt tribal life and bring permanent changes to native peoples.” Two significant differences were the bitter contest for land between large settler populations and agricultural First Nations; and the forced removal of thousands of First Nations peoples in the United States on a scale that had no parallel in Canada.73 The U.S. Removal Act of 1830 sanctioned the removal of First Nations

67 Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada, p. 219, notes: “Although only a small proportion openly called for destroying the tribes, many western Americans wanted the government to push the tribal people out of their way.” He also asserts that Canadians shared the same values. See also Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books, [1984] revised ed., 2001; and Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings, 2003. 68 Steven Conn, History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 31. 69 Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., “Commentary”, in Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, eds., Indian- White Relations: A Persistent Paradox, Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1976, p. 81; and Stanley, “As Long As the Sun Shines”, p. 13. 70 Grinnell, “Tenure of Land among the Indians,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 9, no. 1 (1907): pp. 1–11, p. 6. 71 Ibid. 72 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” p. 25. 73 Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada, p. 175.

44 peoples to lands west of the Mississippi River through forced marches, during which many lives were lost. Removal was justified on a belief—which had currency since the 1780s—that First Nations peoples were destined to vanish completely, sooner or later. Hence, removal was touted as “the only ‘humane’ policy” for postponing “the date of final extinction,” and as such, its advocates “could see removal as ‘philanthropy’ rather than tyranny, forced diaspora, or genocide.”74 As noted by Walter McClintock, an amateur ethnographer who from 1896 travelled extensively among the Siksikaitsitapi, whites’ bitter animosity towards Indians “was universal along the frontier” and found “expression in that laconic but barbarous saying, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’”75 Removal escalated inter-tribal conflict by forcing increased competition for diminishing resources. The U.S. 1887 General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, provided for the further carving-up of reservation lands, as well as conferring citizenship on allottees. Theodore Roosevelt called it “a mighty pulverizing engine to break-up the tribal mass.”76 This Act, envisaged as an effective way to terminate tribal ownership, was promoted as a step towards “civilisation.” Assimilation through education of the young was viewed as a benevolent means of extinction in Canada and the United States: “to have the Indian educated out of them.”77 In the oft-cited words of Captain Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1879, the motto was “[k]ill the Indian in him, and save the man.”78 These discourses whereby white superiority is linked to the inevitable extinction of First Nations peoples provide the discursive backdrop for attempts to eradicate Ookaan during the late eighteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Straddling both countries, the three Siksikaitsitapi reserves in Alberta and the Blackfeet reservation in Montana represent a microcosm of the attitudes in both states to ceremonies known as Sun Dances. What follows places particular emphasis on the Canadian reserves, where the numerical strength of the Siksikaitsitapi in

74 Prucha, “United States Indian Policies, 1815–1860”, pp. 29–39; Arrell M. Gibson, “Indian Land Transfers”, in Handbook of North American Indians edited by William C. Sturtevant, Volume 4 History of Indian-White Relations edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn. Washington: Smithsonian Institution 1988, pp. 211–229; and Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings, pp. 56–7. 75 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 371. Alden T. Vaughan, “From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian”, American Historical Review, Vol. 87, no. 4 (1982): pp. 917–53, p. 937 argues that “the stereotypical frontier view that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” was an American reality long before General Sheridan coined the infamous phrase. 76Quoted in Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis, “Asgaya-Dihi”, in Susan Lobo and Steve Talbot, eds., Native American Voices: A Reader, Foreword by José Barreiro, Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001, pp. 234–41, p. 236. See also Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World, p. 481. 77 Cited in James R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [1997] rpt. 2003, p. 151, n. 1. 78 Paper delivered by Capt. Richard C. Pratt at an 1892 convention. Available from History Matters at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/ [Accessed 21 August 2007].

45 comparison with that of other First Nations provided the basis for a wider repertoire of contention. It was also on the Canadian reserves that Blackfoot resistance was most inveterate.

2.4 Spelling the End of Siksikaitsitapi Autonomy before the 1880s

The conditions for the assault on Siksikaitsitapi beliefs derived from their loss of self-sufficiency consequent upon westward expansion, which brought dislocation, violence, disease, and famine to First Nations peoples of the northwestern Plains. They had remained autonomous while in the East towns and cities multiplied, and the legislation that would later be applied to them took shape. The position of the Blackfoot vis-à-vis white colonisers (see Chapter 3) is sketched here in order to provide the context within which they signed treaties requiring them to settle on reserves. The end of Siksikaitsitapi autonomy in the 1880s was not the outcome of military defeat, although violent conflict had been a constant between the Siksikaitsitapi and whites trespassing on their territory. The determination of the Siksikaitsitapi to prevent their tribal enemies from obtaining firearms fuelled animosity against traders who supplied them. In 1806 a friendly encounter between explorer Meriwether Lewis and eight young Pikani ended with one Pikani dead and a second injured while attempting to steal firearms from Lewis’s party. This incident imperilled future relations with Americans, whose intrusions into Siksikaitsitapi domains as traders and trappers were violently resisted.79 It has been already mentioned that violent encounters took place between Blackfoot war-parties and whites in 1810 and 1833, where Fort Piegan was destroyed. In 1842, white traders killed and scalped thirty Blackfoot.80 Several years of violence between the Pikani and settlers in Montana, sometimes called the “Piegan Wars”, culminated in the “Baker Massacre”81 of January 1870, when the U.S. Army massacred 173 members of Chief Heavy Runner’s (or Bear Chief’s) band—affected at the time by smallpox— including ninety women and fifty children under twelve years of age; forty-four lodges were destroyed and several hundred horses were stolen. This was a state- sanctioned attempt at annihilating an entire band, perpetrated by troops under Brevet Colonel Eugene M. Baker. Ostensibly they were searching for Mountain Chief’s band, believed to be harbouring the killers of Malcolm Clark, a white man. Baker’s

79 Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 387–94. 80 Lewis, The Effects of White Contact, pp. 23–5; and Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 47–51 and 66–7. 81 Wesley C. Wilson, “The U.S. Army and the Piegans—The Baker Massacre of 1870”, North Dakota History, Vol. 32, no. 1 (1965): pp. 40–58; George W. Manypenny, Our Indian Wards, Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1880; and Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, 1958.

46 instructions from General Philip H. Sheridan were: “I want them struck. Tell Baker to strike them hard.”82 The massacre bears the hallmarks of genocide as subsequently (1948) defined by the United Nations as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.83 When viewed against the broader context of so-called “pacification” actions by the U.S. Army against those “officially termed hostiles,”84 the killing without reason or provocation, of women, children and the elderly, can hardly be described in terms other than genocidal. In Congressman Daniel Vorhees’ words, the killing of Heavy Runner’s band “cannot be justified before the civilization of the age”85. Actions such as this episode provide the reason why scholars often place ironic inverted commas around “civilisation”. The Siksikaitsitapi collective decision to refrain from entering an all-out war against the United States to revenge the massacre marked the beginning of a new era of accommodation as a means of ensuring physical survival.86 Nothing in the scale of this massacre marred the relationship between the Blackfoot and the Dominion, although violent episodes were not entirely absent north of the forty-ninth parallel.87 Conflicts were reduced because of more pragmatic British practices such as obtaining furs, horses, and provisions from First Nations suppliers. By contrast, American companies sent white trappers into Siksikaitsitapi territory to obtain furs. The Siksikaitsitapi regarded these simply as “poachers” and “attacked them as trespassers.”88

82 A testimony by Kai Otokan (Bear Head), a survivor is reproduced in Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 299–303. See also Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 236–53; and James Welch and Paul Steckler, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994, pp. 25–47. 83 Resolution 260 (III) A, United Nations General Assembly, 9 December 1948, especially Article II. Available from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at: http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm [Accessed 8 August 2007]. 84 Greene, Battles and Skirmishes, p. xvii. 85 Cited in Welch, Killing Custer, p. 34. 86 Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 236–53. 87 Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada, p. 207. 88 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 27.

47 Their effectiveness in keeping intruders from their combined territory resulted in a prevailing image of the Blackfoot as “a great warlike nation.”89 In the words of Canada’s Lieutenant-Governor Morris, the Blackfoot were “some of the most warlike and intelligent but intractable bands of the North-West.”90 The U.S. Commissioner Hiram Price similarly deployed the label “intractable” to describe all Indians in 1882: “an untutored and intractable people ... naturally indolent, improvident, and shiftless, and very impatient of restraint or discipline.”91 Protecting territorial borders against white encroachment hardly seems to justify the label “intractable”. The relationship between the Blackfoot and the NWMP indicates that they were not as intractable as Morris claimed.92 It demonstrates rather that the “warlike” label was reductive. However, even at the nadir of their fortunes, the strength in numbers of the Siksikaitsitapi alliance fuelled white fears, which were significant in buttressing the negotiating position of the Siksikaitsitapi with the colonisers.93 This was perhaps less the case in the United States, where the Baker massacre in 1870 and the devastating famine in 1883–1884 weakened the Amsskaapipikani, not only numerically, but also in terms of their capacity to resist acculturation. The detrimental effects of violence upon the Siksikaitsitapi population attributable to white encroachment were far outstripped by those of “virgin soil” diseases, a fate that befell First Nations peoples throughout the Americas.94 The introduction of European goods gave impetus to the florescence of the cultures of First Nations of the northern Plains during the nineteenth century,95 and European pathogens featured significantly as vectors of their decline. By the late-nineteenth century the Blackfoot population had been severely diminished by several epidemics of smallpox. Major epidemics occurred in 1781 among the Pikani at Red Deer, who lost half of their number; 1837–8, when an estimated 6,000, or two-thirds of the entire Siksikaitsitapi population died96; 1845, when “small-pox almost swept the Plains bare of Indians”; 1857–8, when “small-pox carried off great numbers”97; and

89 Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, p. 25; and Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 209. 90 Morris, Treaties of Canada, p. 245. 91 Washburn, American Indian, p. 316. 92 McDougall, Opening the Great West, p. 13. 93 Stanley, “As Long As the Sun Shines”, p. 12. 94 For an overview, see Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation of America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 33, no. 2 (1976): pp. 289–99; and Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, pp. 91–133. 95 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 34, refers to the increased wealth among the Siksikaitsitapi as an effect of the fur trade. 96 Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 28–29, and 65–66. 97 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 287–88.

48 1869–70, when c. 2,200 Blackfoot deaths occurred.98 Hugh Dempsey’s assessment of the impact on Siksikaitsitapi strength of this last episode is worth quoting at length, because it encapsulates the shifting power differential between the Siksikaitsitapi and whites:

After the plague, the Blackfeet began to rebuild their lives. But it never was quite the same, for the epidemic had taken many of their best chiefs and warriors. Never again were they to be quite so arrogant and troublesome to Hudson’s Bay traders nor to cast so much terror over such a large territory. The Blackfoot needed time to readjust and grow, but, before they could do so, white man’s civilization was upon them.99 Indeed, until the first part of the twentieth century, the four Siksikaitsitapi divisions continued to endure loss of life from diseases such as scrofula (tuberculous lymph nodes100), erysipelas, venereal disease and tuberculosis; and epidemics of influenza, measles and whooping cough.101 In the colonial discourse of “civilisation”, depopulation was represented as an inevitable cost, regrettable but necessary. The destruction of the traditional lifeways of First Nations peoples “would serve what reformers believed was a greater good: the expansion of ‘civilized’ society”.102 Added to the debilitating impact of white disease, the introduction of adulterated alcohol by American bootleggers was the catalyst for an alarming increase in intra-tribal violence, causing many deaths among the Siksikaitsitapi. Hugh Dempsey’s study, Firewater: The Impact of the Whisky Trade on the Blackfoot Nation, documents the extent of the damage. He notes that alcohol was part of the fur trade since the late eighteenth century, but from the 1860s it had disastrous effects among the Siksikaitsitapi. He cites engineer Frank Wilkeson, who visited the infamous Fort Whoop-Up in 1871, as reporting the boast of whiskey traders that:

Far from being an injury to the United States ... they were a great benefit as they keep the Indians poor, and kill directly or indirectly more Indians of the most warlike tribe on the continent [the Blackfoot] every year, at no cost to the United States government, than the more regular army did in ten years!103

98 Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 59–60, citing The Weekly Manitoban (Fort Garry), 16 September 1871. More than a thousand Pikani died, and the Siksika and Kainai suffered 600 deaths each. The Sarcees, a minor tribe under Blackfoot protection were reduced from 50 to 12 lodges. 99 Ibid., p. 61. 100 Oxford English Dictionary, Available online at: http://dictionary.oed.com [Accessed 10 August 2007]. 101 Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, p. 6. 102 Hoxie, Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, p. 39. 103 Dempsey, Firewater, pp. 7–25, 141 and 224.

49 In late 1872 Canadian traders claimed that eighty-nine deaths occurred among the Blackfoot during the previous year because of the illegal trade.104 John McDougall attributed forty-two Blackfoot deaths to drinking between 1873–74.105 The HBC lost business to the whiskey traders and pressured the Dominion into action,106 and missionaries added their own concern. The Siksikaitsitapi remembered this time in their “winter counts” the pictographic records kept on buffalo robes, as the “time we Indians killed ourselves by drinking.”107 In 1874, the NWMP arrived to end the illegal trade. Their deployment—following the massacre of Assiniboines in the Cypress Hills by American wolfers in 1873—consolidated a friendly relationship with the Blackfoot, which then translated into a good relationship with the Dominion. At the signing of Treaty Seven, Crowfoot acknowledged that, without Mounted Police intervention, the whisky traders would have annihilated the Blackfoot.108 On this occasion, the interests of bona fide Canadian traders and the Siksikaitsitapi converged, and the result was beneficial to both parties. However, the cumulative effects of violence, disease and alcohol attendant upon white contact weakened the Siksikaitsitapi numerically, although their autonomy remained so long as they continued to pursue the buffalo and to conduct a profitable trade.

2.5 Political Manoeuvring Within a New Order

Diplomacy was a well-practised art among the Blackfoot, whose leaders’ oratorical skills were remarked in early encounters with whites.109 The oratory from both sides during treaty negotiations set the discursive parameters for the future relationship between the Blackfoot and Her Majesty’s government, although the rhetorical flourishes did not always translate into concrete actions. Nevertheless, the Blackfoot adopted Queen Victoria as “The Great Mother”, and often stressed their status as her “children” when politically expedient. Ania Loomba notes that colonialism “is not the only history” of colonised societies.110 Indeed, the repertoire of contention available to the Siksikaitsitapi in the

104 Ibid., p. 127. 105 Gray, Booze, pp. 22–3. 106 Dempsey, Firewater, pp. 127–30. 107 Ibid., p. 141, and 234, n. 21, citing “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings, Siksika Indian, 19 July 1939. Lucien & Jane Hanks, Papers.” 108 Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta, p. 15. 109 In 1789 trader David Thompson refers to “Sakatow, the orator”, as a Blackfoot civil chief whose office was hereditary. Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative, p. 346. Although his appraisal of Sakatow has been contested by Kidd, Blackfoot Ethnography, p. 139, there is no doubt that oratory was a well-practiced art among the Blackfoot, which was evident during the signing of Treaty 7, for example. I was alerted to Kidd’s argument by Conaty, “Economic Models”, p. 406. 110 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 2nd ed. 2005, p. 20.

50 1880s was conditioned by their intertribal alliances and enmities that predated white arrival. From the perspective of government officials, the need for continued peace demanded a degree of diplomacy, especially during the 1880s when they feared armed rebellion. The question as to whether the Siksikaitsitapi would align themselves with the colonisers—and what would be the limits to any collaboration— was determined by pre-existing alliances and conflicts. For example, during the so- called Sioux Wars of 1876–77—which have occupied much space in popular as well as academic histories, and spawned countless mythologies111—the Blackfoot refused to join the Sioux, their sworn enemies,112 in a war of extermination against whites, planned to begin against the U.S. Army and to continue into Canada. Instead, Crowfoot offered Siksika reinforcements to the Mounted Police. Although the offer was declined, it earned him a message of appreciation from Queen Victoria.113 A similar offer was made, and politely refused, during the Riel Rebellion (1885), although Siksikaitsitapi scouts—already in Mounted Police employment since 1874—lent their skills in quelling the rebellion.114 This time, the Dominion rewarded Siksikaitsitapi loyalty by financing a visit to Ontario and Quebec by Chiefs Crowfoot and Three Bulls (Siksika), Red Crow and One Spot (Kainai), and North Axe (Pikani).115 In his “Foreword” to Dempsey’s biography of Crowfoot, Paul Sharp observes that, as a result, Crowfoot “became something of a hero”, although only to “Romantics”, who interpreted his loyalty as denoting “an affection for the Crown and a respect for the redcoated justice of the Northwest Mounted Police”. Sharp adds “[r]ealists such as Father Lacombe [a Jesuit priest well acquainted with northwest politics] understood that he worked for peace because of a shrewd appraisal of self- interest.”116 It would appear, however, that the time was not considered appropriate by the Siksikaitsitapi to accept an alliance with the Sioux, against whom they had fought many fierce battles. These circumstances exemplify the intricate web of inter- tribal and First Nations-white relationships that prevailed in the northwestern Plains

111 The final defeat of armed resistance in the United States was marked by the U.S. Army massacre of Chief Big Foot’s Minneconjou Lakota band at Wounded Knee on 29 December 1890. It was a sequel to the annihilation of Custer’s troops in Little Bighorn. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; and Greene, Battles and Skirmishes. 112 Glenbow Archives, M8188, “Bull Plume’s Winter Count” (annotated by W.R. Haynes, Anglican missionary), records a battle in 1839 “at the Belly River Buttes [combining the] Blackfoot, Bloods, Piegans against the Sioux.” Despite peace treaties with the Sioux the Blackfoot remain loyal to the Dominion. See Wilton Goodstriker, “Otsisti Pakssaisstoyiih Pi (the year when the winter was open and cold [1877])”, in Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council et al., True Spirit and Original Intent, pp. 3– 64, pp. 7–11. 113 Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 87–92, citing Sessional Papers of Canada 1877, no. 9, 23–4. 114 LAC, DIA, AR 1885, p. xlix. For an anthology on the rebellion, see F. Laurie Barron, and James B. Waldram, eds., 1885 And After: Native Society in Transition, Regina: University of Regina, Canadian Plains Research Center, 1986. 115 LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 74: “Too much praise cannot be given Red Crow for his staunch loyalty during the rebellion ... The same must be said of the Piegans”. See also LAC, DIA, AR, 1886, p. x. 116 Paul F. Sharp, “Foreword”, in Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. xi–xii.

51 towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, despite this complexity, in the end, regulations aimed at the Sun Dance were applied with equal force to all practitioners, each of whom responded according to their own circumstances.

2.6 The Cultural Centrality of Ookaan

A brief introduction to the interrelatedness between the sacred and secular realms in the Siksikaitsitapi worldview117, articulated by the BGC in 2001, will assist in understanding Ookaan’s centrality to the Siksikaitsitapi. It gives a précis of how “spirituality and beliefs permeate [their] entire existence”118:

Ihtsi-pai-tapi-yopa is the name we give to the Essence of All Life. This is Creator, the Source of all Life. Ihtsi-pai-tapi-yopa made all living things equal; humans were not given the right to rule over or exploit the rest of nature. We recognize plants, animals and rocks as other beings, who are different from us but also our equals ... We share the earth with four-legged animals, plants, rocks and the earth itself. We call these ksahkomi-tapiksi (Earth Beings). The spomi- tapi-ksi (Above Beings) live in the sky. Among these are Natosi (the Sun), his wife Kokomi-kisomm (the Moon) and their son Ipiso- Waahsa (the Morning Star). Other stars, thunder, the sky and many birds are also spomi-tapi-ksi ... In and near the water live the water birds, beaver, otter and muskrat. These have often helped our people by showing us how to use their powers. Other water beings, such as horned snakes, are dangerous and try to take us into the water with them. This is why we offer food or tobacco to the water spirits whenever we cross a river or lake. Our word for these water beings is soyii-tapiksi (bold and italics in original).119 The recognition of animate and inanimate beings, and their capacity for imparting knowledge and sharing their power with humans, links every Blackfoot activity to a wider realm. Contrasting the Enlightenment ideology of human mastery over nature, the Siksikaitsitapi view the natural world as a source of knowledge that is of direct assistance in their lives. The Naa-to-yi-ta-piiksi (Spirit Beings) “changed themselves into human form and taught [the Siksikaitsitapi] ancestors the ceremonies and songs that [they] could use to call on them for help”.120 Within this paradigm, Hernandez notes that language and storytelling function as part of a lifelong educational process that “requires adherence to specific protocols, expectations, attitudes, purposes and responsibilities (among other things).” Within this worldview, she adds, it is

117 Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 494: “World-view is the common English translation for the German Weltanschauung, meaning overarching philosophy or outlook, or conception of the world. 118 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 8. 119 Ibid., pp. 8–9; and Conaty, “Economic Models,” p. 405. In citing Conaty, Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 7–8 and 120, introduces spelling errors. See also Bastien, Ways of Knowing, pp. 11–12. 120 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 13.

52 necessary “to sacrifice in order to receive knowledge.”121 Blackfoot Stories and the ceremonies associated with them, Hernandez argues, “are based on a ‘cosmovision’ that holds the nature of knowledge to be one part of all of the energies in the universe, which are all interrelated and very much alive.”122 The centrality of Ookaan resides in the fact that it links the Siksikaitsitapi to the Above Beings—including the Star Beings, Natosi, Kokomi-kisomm, and Ipiso- Waahsa—through whose intervention Paii (Scarface), a Siksikaitsitapi ancestor, received knowledge on the manner of conducting this ceremony (see Chapter 5). Sacrifices offered during Ookaan renew the relationship between the Siksikaitsitapi and the Above Beings to whom the Blackfoot look for assistance. The proposed eradication of Ookaan would have severed this link and threatened Siksikaitsitapi spiritual beliefs. If successful, it would have undermined many mechanisms for Siksikaitsitapi social reproduction (see anon). As such, it impinged on the maintenance of a separate Siksikaitsitapi identity. The significance of Ookaan is evident from its description by anthropologist Clark Wissler as a “complex” composed of unrelated ceremonies, a

true tribal festival, or demonstration of ceremonial functions (including transfers of sacred bundles and societies’ membership) in which practically every important ritual owner and organization had a place.123 The following sketch of the ceremony will assist in understanding the import of regulations that, although proscribing only certain aspects of the ceremony, had far- reaching consequences for its survival. “Dances”—a shortened name used in the documentation when referring to religious practices of First Nations of the Plains and Plateau sharing some similarities with Ookaan—were viewed with suspicion by whites, especially officials who feared the potent combination of religious fervour and rebellion.124 The violent repression of

121 Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 1–2. 122 Ibid. 123 Clark Wissler, “The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians”, AMNH, Vol. 16, part 3 (1918): pp. 223– 70, p. 229. In 1918 Wissler and Blackfoot-speaking David Duvall, son of a Peigan woman and a French frontiersman, documented a version of the Sun Dance among the Piegan in Montana “regarded as proper” (before European interference). See also Lucien M. Hanks, Jr., and Jane Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust: A Study of the Blackfoot Reserve of Alberta, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950, p. 25. 124 David Cahill’s study “Popular Religion and Appropriation: The Example of Corpus Christi in Eighteenth-Century Cuzco”, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 31, no. 2 (1996): pp. 67–110, is illustrative of how religion, albeit highly syncretic, continued to pose a threat to colonial Spanish rule some 250 years after the initial conquest. See also Cahill, “El Visitador General Areche y su campaña iconoclasta contra la Cultura Andina,” in Ramón Mujica, ed., Visión y Símbolos: del virreinato criollo a la República Peruana, Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2007, pp. 83–111. Nicholas A. Robins, Native

53 the Ghost Dance religion by the U.S. Army illustrates this point.125 According to pioneering anthropologist Leslie Spier, the collective descriptor “Sun Dance” is a misnomer coined by Europeans for distinct ceremonial complexes practised by most of the Plains First Nations, and possibly derives “from the Dakota wiwanyag wacipi, ‘sun gazing dance’”126. In the Siksikaitsitapi case, the name Sun Dance elides the difference between the central sacred rite, Ookaan, and the broader social aspects of the coming together of the bands during Ako-katssinn (see Chapter 1). While sharing certain characteristics attributed to intertribal diffusion, the ceremonial practices to which the name Sun Dance was applied are not identical and bear distinct names. Anthropologist D. B. Shimkin observed that noteworthy tribal differences refer to “the social organization, motivations, and mythological connotations associated with the dance”; he provides a taxonomy of the common characteristics of the ceremonies named Sun Dances, as practised by different First Nations:

a) initiation as a result of a vow; b) ceremonial approach to the site of the ceremony; c) formation of a Circle Camp and pitching a tipi for the vower and sponsor inside the circle; d) erection “with great formality” of a ... forked tree as the centre pole; e) ritual construction of a “Medicine” lodge around the centre pole; f) “dancing, fasting and thirsting” for several days and nights; g) recounting of war deeds and the giving away of property and; h) self-sacrifice by those who had vowed to “have themselves pierced through the pectoral muscles.127 Objections to the Sun Dance focused principally on two characteristics in Shimkin’s list: the “piercing” or self-sacrifice ritual; and the exchanges of property that occurred during the circle camp. Self-mutilation was viewed as a “heathen” practice that could cause “Indians” to revert to their “savage” ways. The giving away of property as a form of reciprocity that was intrinsic to Siksikaitsitapi ceremonial life was viewed as contrary to white notions of thrift. Ookaan featured several variations of flesh offerings to Natosi, which were outlawed. Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone) uses the term “taking the cut” to refer to a rite performed by male warriors during which cuts are made “through the right shoulder blade and ... on each side of his breast then running a

Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, is a study of anticolonial rebellious movements borne out of religious fervour. 125 Mooney, Ghost Dance, [1896] rpt. 1973; Michael Hittman, Wovoka and the Ghost Dance, ed. Don Lynch, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, First Bison Books printing, 1997; Benjamin R. Kracht, “The Kiowa Ghost Dance, 1894–1916: An Unheralded Revitalization Movement”, Ethnohistory, Vol. 39, no. 4 (1992): pp. 452–7; and Alice Beck Kehoe, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization, Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1989. 126 Spier, “The Sun Dance”, p. 459. 127 D. B. Shimkin, “The Wind River Shoshone Sun Dance,” Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 151, Anthropological Papers, no. 41, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1947, pp. 397–484, pp. 403–5.

54 sharpened stick through the skin ... a shield was fastened to the stick in his shoulder blade while two ropes were fastened to the two sticks on his breast.” After embracing the centre post “he backs off until he comes to the end of the rope and starts to dance ... trying to break the skin which the ropes are fastened to”.128 This offering, which only between two and five participants underwent each year, was in reciprocity for the favourable outcome of a vow made when seeking aid from Natosi at times of illness or life-threatening danger.129 Wissler found no evidence of coercion (“catching”130) being used to force participation in this ritual, although he did not discount the possibility of its having been tolerated.131 Whites erroneously believed that the ritual—which they dubbed the “making of braves”—was a rite of passage for becoming a warrior.132 Other sacrifices of flesh, by both men and women, took place during Ookaan, but received less attention. The cutting of a portion of a finger was one form of ritual offering. Another consisted in cutting very small pieces of flesh, to be buried around the Sacred Pole.133 These self-mortification practices that sought to maintain reciprocity with Natosi both repelled and attracted whites. They were the most objectionable features of Sun Dances for missionaries and government officials, and became the object of statutory proscription.134 The so-called “making of braves” occasionally attracted sponsorship for Ookaan from the white population, which missionaries attributed to “an appetite for the sensational and novel”.135 While some

128 Glenbow Archive, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds, f. 891. 129 McLean (sic, Maclean), Sun Dance, pp. 6–7;” Wissler, “Sun Dance,” pp. 262–3; and Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 264. 130 “Catching” refers here to a specific form of coercion, for example, when a Medicine Pipe Bundle needed to be transferred, the current owner and his assistants would “catch” a candidate who, after being touched with the pipe, would be physically carried to the current pipe owner’s tepee wrapped in a blanket. Refusal to acquire the Medicine Pipe Bundle by going through the required initiation and making the requisite payment in kind to the previous owner could bring bad luck and even death to the one “caught”. Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 48, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”, and f. 24 “Old Bull via Mary White Elk.” July 26, 1937. 131 Wissler “Sun Dance,” p. 263. For Medicine Pipe “catching,” see Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f.10, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”. 132 LAC, DIA, AR, 1888, lviii: “the most important feature in the performance, namely the torture test ... if passed successfully established the reputation of the subject of it as a “brave.” See also McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 170; Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 263; and M4738-227, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “The Making of a Brave” [1955–1956]. 133 Wissler, “Sun Dance,” pp. 265–6. Note that flesh scarring and the severing of sections of a finger were common when mourning the loss of a relative, and flesh offerings to Natosi took place during times of personal danger, such as during war raids. For an example, see Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 201. 134 Titley, “W. M. Graham”, p. 28. 135 LAC, DIA, AR, 1896, pp. 295–6, “Report from Commissioner Forget”; LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 23 March 1914 from J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Sec’y. DIA, to W. J. Dilworth, Blood Agency”, to the effect that “any white men attending these dances ... will be liable to be prosecuted”. See also Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 263, citing John Maclean’s point that “[t]he chief attraction to the pale-face is what has been ignorantly termed “making braves”. Hugh A. Dempsey, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks, Calgary: Fifth House, 1998, p. 91, reproduces a photograph taken by Maclean of the Kainai Ma-toki (women’s society) lodge in the 1890s”, which reveals the presence of other white visitors. LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511 and 60,511-1. “Letter 13 August

55 agents tried to discourage Ookaan by withdrawing the regular distribution of rations during the circle camp, in some occasions white sponsorship made-up for the loss. It seems to have escaped the notice of those who recoiled at self-mortification that this was and is a Christian practice with a long pedigree, but it did not escape Grinnell’s attention. He described the sacrifice as akin to a penance, not unlike acts of self- denial “in our own centres of enlightened civilization.”136 McClintock also drew the parallel with Christianity, naming a chapter in The Old North Trail on the origins of Ookaan, “Legend of Poïa, The Christ Story of the Blackfeet.”137 The historical origins of the Sun Dance remain uncertain, with Shimkin arguing that, among the Algonquian Plains First Nations, it possibly began as late as 1700.138 However, for the Siksikaitsitapi, the origins of Ookaan are contained in their oral stories, transmitted from generation to generation, and which are set in “time immemorial,” or non-historical mythical time (see Chapters 4 & 5). In keeping with Natosi’s teachings, Ookaan is held annually, when the wild-fruit (saskatoons) ripens at the end of July or early in August, during the “Moon of a Big Circle Encampment.”139 Each Siksikaitsitapi tribe holds a separate ceremony at which all of the tribal bands occupy a predetermined place within the circle camp. Visitors are welcome, camping outside the circle. During Ako-katssinn, meetings of the I-kun-uh’-kah-tsi, the Siksikaitsitapi age-graded societies are held, and preparations are made for Ookaan, the four-day long central sacred rite. Because membership in the societies is spread among different bands, this had been the ideal time to hold their meetings during the nomadic era. For example, the Ma’toki (Buffalo Women’s Society) hold their secret meetings at which new members are initiated, which culminate with a public dance by the members. Although separate from Ookaan, the meetings of the societies contribute to the importance of the circle camp.140 Ookaan is critical to propitiate Natosi by showing appreciation for benefits received. For the ceremony to take place, a married woman—whose virtue must be

1889 from agent F. C. Cornish to Indian Commissioner, Regina” to the effect that the duration of the Sarcee Sun Dance was lengthened “at the special request of the white people, who had given them lots of money to do so.” 136 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 259 and 269–70. 137 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 491. 138 Shimkin, “The Wind River Shoshone Sun Dance,” pp. 472–3. See also Karl H. Schlesier, “Rethinking The Midewiwin And The Plains Ceremonial Called The Sun Dance”, Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 35, no. 127 (1990): pp. 1–27. 139 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 20; McLean (sic, Maclean), Sun Dance, p. 1; Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 6. Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 328, notes that the gathering “for all the members of the once-great Piegan group of Natives”, used to take place during the second week of July. 140 Ibid., p. 430.

56 beyond reproach, for it would be under public scrutiny—requests assistance from Natosi when facing hardship or illness of a close relative or self. She vows to lead the ceremony should her request be granted, thereby becoming the “Holy Woman” or “Mother” to the whole tribe.141 Grinnell provides a transcription of one such vow offered by a mother on behalf of her son:

Listen, Sun. Pity me. You have seen my life. You know that I am pure. I have never committed adultery with any man. Now, therefore, I ask you to pity me. I will build you a lodge. Let my son survive. Bring him back to health, so that I may build this lodge for you.142 A man can promise to sponsor Ookaan, but a sister, wife, or another woman would need to make the vow.143 The vower then acquires by transfer the Natoas Bundle from the Holy Woman who had built the Sun lodge the previous year. This bundle has great religious significance, evident in the Blackfoot Stories that relate its handing down to the Siksikaitsitapi by Elk Woman (see Chapter 3).144 As with the ceremonial transfer of any item deemed to be natoyi or “Medicine”, the transfer requires a payment in kind, which, during the early reserve era amounted to several horses, blankets and other valued goods. These transfers fell under the category of “giveaways”, although their private nature shielded them from official scrutiny. As the largest gathering of the year, the circle camp provides the ideal space for cultural reproduction.145 Opportunities for attaining social prestige abound at this time, most notably by the recounting of Naamaahkaani, or deeds of valour (“counting coup”) that enhanced the social status of individuals and impressed upon the young the importance of Siksikaitsitapi values and ideals. At this time, those with leadership ambitions can advance their cause by courting followers with feasting and

141 The public vow implies faithfulness to the marriage vows, because it is an obligation to speak against the woman if an infraction is known, a reason for the expression “the going forward of the tongues”. Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 233. The punishment from Natosi for making a vow when unchaste was “death to the liar and suffering to the relatives.” Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 27. 142 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 264. 143 Wissler, “Sun Dance,” pp. 232–33. 144 Ibid., p. 241: the Blackfoot Stories related to this bundle include, “Elk Woman”, “The Woman- who-married-a-star”, “Scarface”, “Cuts-wood”, “Otter-woman”, and “The Scabby-round-robe”. Several of these bundles were in existence at any one time, which indicates that it was possible for those with the requisite authority to duplicate them ritually. See also Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of The Blackfoot, pp. 83–3. McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 491–505 provides a combined version of the story of Scarface, and that of the Woman Who Married a Star, So-at-sa-ki (Feather Woman), who married Morning Star and was given the Natoas when she returned to her people, pp. 495–6. In 1937 there were at least four Natoas in the Siksika tribe, according to Old Bull, Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 24, “Old Bull via Mary White Elk.” July 26, 1937: “Mrs. Water Chief has 2; Mrs White Headed Chief has two. Mrs. One Gun may or may not have one. One of Mrs. WHC’s is from the Blood. Her other one came from Duck Chief’s wife as she died, and Mrs. WHC gave a horse for it.” 145 Wissler, “Social Life”, pp. 1–64; and “Sun Dance,” pp. 223–70.

57 gifts.146 Ako-katssinn provides a forum for displaying individual wealth, which can be a sign of possessing sacred power,147 but more importantly for displays of generosity. Moreover, during the time when the bands travelled separately, most marriages were arranged and took place during the circle encampment. Aspiring grooms could win favour from their prospective fathers-in-law by hunting on their behalf.148 Given that vowing to lead the ceremony was a means of securing divine intervention in cases of extreme need, Ookaan became critical during times of collective hardship.149 Moreover, when social mobility through war and raiding was curtailed, ceremonial life remained a crucial space to seek social advancement. Nor was the occasion without entertainment value; the re-enactment of sham battles in which the Blackfoot defeated and scalped their Crow enemies elicited much laughter and applause.150 Finally, Ako-katssinn provided an annual holiday, a time for playing games and enjoying some respite from the pressures of life.151 Hanks and Hanks, Jr., described the gathering as “an occasion for joyful renewing of acquaintance, exchanging property, and feasting bosom companions.”152 Indeed, “a football match between picked sides among the younger Indians” took place during Ookaan in 1921.153 Whites often downplayed the significance of the Sun Dance. In 1888, NWMP Superintendent Deane opined: “it serves no useful purpose whatever, and might be profitably replaced by some other form of entertainment.” However, for the Siksikaitsitapi, giving up this gathering, where all facets of their lifeways intersected, would have been tantamount to surrendering the long-held values, beliefs, and practices that shaped their identity. This might explain Ookaan’s persistence despite prohibition and the threat of jail for the organisers. Far from being merely a religious

146 Wissler, “Social Life,” pp. 22–3. 147 Power was bestowed by sacred beings, including Earth Beings, Above Beings and beings who live in and near the water, such as “water birds, beaver, otter and muskrat” who have taught the Blackfoot “how to use their powers.” BGC, Nitsitapiisinni, p. 9. 148 Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 9, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk.” 149 LAC, DIA, AR, 1888, p. 95: “One unfortunate result however of the past prevalence of sickness is that, unlike the last two or three years, the Indians are this summer making a sun dance, It not unfrequently happens, that in cases of severe illness an Indian’s relations will promise, in case of his recovery, a dance to the sun.” 150 Maclean, Sun Dance, p. 4; Mountain Horse, My People, p. 61; and Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, p. 89, who records a sham fight: “one person shoots, another dies, a tipi is being trashed, a woman in the tipi abducted etc. etc.” 151 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “RCMP, ‘K’ Division, Lethbridge, Calgary Sub- District, Gleichen Detachment, Corpl. E. E. Harper’s Report 25 July, 1921” (henceforth “Corpl. Harper’s Report”). Report also kept at Glenbow Archives, M4738, G. H. Gooderham fonds, f. 9. See also f. 1, “The Indian Waltz”, for a social dance at the Blackfoot Reserve in 1921. 152 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 25. 153 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “Corpl. Harper’s Report”.

58 ceremony, as the largest annual gathering, Ookaan provided an ideal space for the reproduction of Siksikaitsitapi culture, and for Siksikaitsitapi social cohesion. Such motives explain Siksikaitsitapi resistance against efforts to extirpate the practice both in Canada and the United States.

2.7 Regulations and Official Attitudes against Sun Dances

The position of Superintendent General of Indian Affairs was occupied in Canada by the Minister of the Interior, who delegated administration and policy-making to a deputy.154 During the Siksikaitsitapi transition to reserve life, Lawrence Vankoughnet (1874–1893) occupied this position. His successor Hayter Reed was in turn replaced in 1896 with James A. Smart, who left the day-to-day running of the Department to Secretary J. D. McLean. With few exceptions (such as Reed, who served as Indian agent and rose through the ranks), these officials had no first-hand knowledge of their wards, which was also the case in the United States.155 Reed’s familiarity, however, was applied to the detriment, not the assistance, of First Nations.156 At the provincial level, the Commissioner for Indian Affairs in Regina transmitted Ottawa’s directives and oversaw the inspection of Indian agencies and schools in the Northwest. However, this office was abolished in 1898 and its headquarters transferred to Winnipeg. Business thereafter was conducted directly by correspondence between Indian agents and Ottawa. Three inspectorates were created in Manitoba and three in the North-West Territories.157 Inspectors ostensibly visited the reserves annually, but the numerous reserves and their remoteness sometimes made this unfeasible. Inspectors’ reports and Indian agents’ reports were published in the yearly Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs, which provide brief references to the conduct of Sun Dances. Throughout the various reorganisations of the DIA, the directive to eradicate Sun Dances remained a constant. Some officials took a hard line against the

154 Hall, “Clifford Sifton”, p. 120. David Mills was Minister of the Interior 1876–78; John A. Macdonald 1878–87; Thomas White 1887–88; Edgar Dewdney 1888–92; Thomas Mayne Daly 1892– 96, Clifford Sifton occupied the post in Laurier’s Government, 1896–1905; and Frank Oliver succeeded Sifton in April 1905–11; Robert Rogers 1911–12; William James Roche 1913–17; Arthur Meighen 1917–20; James Loughheed 1920–21; and Charles Stewart 1921–26. Information on Ministries available online from Privy Council Office, Government of Canada, at: http://www.pco- bcp.gc.ca. 155 Edward Day Harris, III, Preserving a Vision of the American West: The Life of George Bird Grinnell, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1995, p. 434, notes that legislators in charge of Indian policy in the United States in the late-nineteenth century had no actual experience with the Indians themselves. 156 It was Reed who designed the pass system, F. Laurie Barron, “The Indian Pass System in the Canadian West, 1882–1935”, Prairie Forum, Vol. 13, no. 1 (1988): pp. 25–42, p. 29. 157 Glenbow Archives, M4738, G. H. Gooderham fonds, Box 2, f. 12, “My Friend the Indian, His Past, Present and Future, An address to the Historical Society, Calgary, March 10, 1961.”

59 ceremony, as was the case with William Morris Graham, who was agent (1897), inspector (1904) and later Commissioner for Greater Production for the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta (1918–1932). His autocratic style earned him the sobriquet of the “Kaiser of the West”. As inspector and commissioner, he unsuccessfully lobbied for Ottawa to take a harder line against the continuation of Sun Dances.158 Overseeing implementation of the existing measures, however, remained difficult due to the distances involved. It was ultimately left to Indian agents to act according to the circumstances on their reserves. Consequently, an agent’s attitude to the Sun Dance could be decisive. Differences arose even within each Blackfoot reserve, and conditions could alter with the appointment of each new agent.159 When disputes arose, the Mounted Police were called upon to uphold agents’ directives, but their first priority was to maintain peace. When agent F. C. Cornish requested police intervention while a “Sarcee” Sun Dance was in progress in 1889, Hayter Reed, then Commissioner for the North-West Territories, wrote to Ottawa as follows:

I have pointed out to [Cornish] that the Department would never sanction the adoption of force to prevent the repetition of Sun Dances, and recommended dissuasion as being the means most likely to be successful.160 Given that Cornish claimed a large white contingent “had persuaded [Chief] ‘Bulls Head’ to have the ceremony for making of braves”, it is remarkable that Reed disowned his subordinate’s actions and that Ottawa concurred with Reed. It was the agent who was expected to prevent Sun Dances, but without resorting to force. If he was unwilling or unable to stop them, the failure was all his—tolerance to avoid confrontation was the written rule, but the desire to stop Sun Dances remained. Moreover, while agents were urged to use “extreme caution as to arrests and none should be made if dance begun”, First Nations peoples were not privy to these sub rosa directives.161 In 1905 the motivations behind the accommodation shown to the Siksikaitsitapi were articulated in a letter written by Superintendent Primrose to his superiors in Regina at the request of Day Chief, where he avers:

158 Titley, “W.M. Graham”, pp. 28–9. 159 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 302, f. 658-05, “Letter 5 August 1905, Supt. P. C. H. Primrose, Commanding “D” Division, to Commissioner RNWMP Regina”. 160 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511-1, “Letter 1306, 17 August 1889, Hayter Reed, Commissioner North-West Territories to Deputy Supt. General of Indian Affairs.” 161 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511-1, “Telegram 12 June 1893 from Hayter Reed”.

60 I do not wish to be an alarmist, but one of these Indians could cause us a whole heap of trouble if he wished, which would be intensified if he happens to have a following162 The letter followed a dispute between Agent Robert N. Wilson and Day Chief at the Kainai Reserve over reduced rations and the pasturing of cattle belonging to the Mormon community in the town of Cardston. The agent insulted Day Chief “and threatened to take his medal away and to degrade him from the position of Chief, and make him an ordinary Indian.”163 Historian George Gooderham (1889–1977), who was the Indian agent at the Siksika reserve for twenty six years (1920–1946), later argued that “[n]either Indian Agents nor Mounted Police reported that the regulations were enforced prior to 1896.”164 He recounted that in 1895, when he was six years old and his father, John H. Gooderham was sub-agent at the Piapot’s reserve (Cree), he had witnessed the last “making of a brave”. John Gooderham, who spoke the Cree language fluently, became agent at the Piegan (1904–1907) and Siksika (1907–1919) reserves, and in 1920, after his death, George replaced him as Siksika agent. As was the case with Indian agents, missionaries’ individual attitudes toward the Sun Dance covered a wide spectrum. Some missionaries, such as the Reverend J. Huggonard, were strongly opposed to the Sun Dance, which they viewed as “adverse to Christianity and civilization.”165 They lobbied the government, published protests in local newspapers, and condemned it in their sermons. Other missionaries such as Maclean accommodated Siksikaitsitapi beliefs, hoping to win adepts for Christianity in the long term. In 1939, an Anglican missionary attempted to modify the annual Siksika Tobacco Dance by “planting” a cross in the tobacco seed bed, although intimating: “I am taking a wild chance on the possibility of misinterpretation but ... I would sooner take chances ... than sit down and do nothing.”166 Many Siksikaitsitapi had no problems accepting Christianity, but saw no reason to give up their traditional beliefs, which in their view were not irreconcilable.

162 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 302, f. 658-05, “Letter 5 August 1905, Supt. P. C. H. Primrose, Commanding “D” Division, to Commissioner RNWMP Regina”. This communication followed a request by Day Chief. 163 Ibid. 164 Glenbow Archive, M4738, G. H. Gooderham fonds, Box 1, f. 4, “The Making of a Brave” [1955– 1956]. 165 LAC, DIA, AR, 1896, p. 347, “Report by Rev. J. Hugonnard, Principal, Red Deer Industrial School, Alberta”; and seven years later, LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 449785, 20 November 1913, Rev. J. Hugonnard, Principal, Indian Industrial School, Qu’Appelle, Sask., to Secretary, DIA”, requesting “steps be taken to abolish Indian dances.” See also LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Letter 24 October 1901, from missionary Arthur B. Owen, St. Paul’s Mission [Blood Reserve], Macleod to Major Howe, Commander of the Police Force, Macleod, Alta.” 166 Glenbow Archive, M1234, Archdeacon J. W. Tims Family fonds, “Letter 19 June 1939, John W. House to the Archdeacon”.

61 However, missionaries’ insistence that converts must renounce polygamous marriages before being baptised was more difficult to accommodate because it involved the dissolution of families. Agents and missionaries in the front line of the civilising effort believed that adults would never abandon their “pagan” beliefs.167 However, it was hoped that Christian education of the young would prevent the continuity of Ookaan. Missionaries vied to educate children in boarding schools, sometimes locking them in at night to prevent them running back to their families,168 especially so as to prevent their participation in the reserve’s social and ceremonial life.169 Missionaries, however, had no licit means of barring determined parents from taking their children home.170 It is worth noting that Blackfoot leaders were not averse to availing themselves of educational opportunities—especially reading and writing—for their children as a vehicle for the furtherance of tribal interests, and indeed saw the government-sponsored education of Blackfoot children as a treaty right.171 During the early reserve era keeping students from returning home for the summer, and thus from attending Ookaan, presented practical problems, manifest in this report:

the girls in the boarding school did not go out to the [Circle] camp this summer, as formerly. The boys were allowed out ... for thirteen days, on account of the assistant principal and matron leaving at the end of the June quarter, and the rest of the staff were released for the holidays.172 The systematic and state-sponsored nature of Ookaan’s prohibition, and the avowed official aim to replace Siksikaitsitapi beliefs with Christianity, raise the spectre of cultural genocide. Prohibition aimed at eroding the maintenance of a distinct Siksikaitsitapi culture and education of the young in Christian schools pursued the same goal. Were it successful, the eradication of Ookaan had the potential to cause Blackfoot social disintegration by removing one of the central means of transmission

167 See for an example, LAC, DIA, AR, 1887, p. 27. 168 After a fire at St. Paul’s Mission, Blood Reserve, it transpired that children were locked-in at night. See LAC, RG 18, Vol. 112, f. 665, “Letter 5 October 1895 to Commissioner NWMP, Regina from S. B. Steele, Sup. NWMP”: “I have ordered Inspector Jarvis to cause that system to be at once discontinued, and informed the Principal that in the event of fire occurring, and loss of life ... he would be tried for manslaughter, and the other persons in ... the Mission as accessories.” 169 LAC, DIA, AR, 1893, p. 251, re File Hills Boarding School. 170 LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 142. The Siksika, for example, removed their children from school during the 1885 Riel Rebellion. 171 Samek, Blackfoot Confederacy, p. 125; for Red Crow’s attitude to residential schools, see Dempsey, Red Crow, p. 207. The valuing of a white education, which began in the early reserve era, was subsequently strengthened by the need “to compete in the modern world” as Pikani Audrey Weasel Traveller points out. She stresses that together with these tools, the Blackfoot community expects the maintenance of “traditional values such as respect, honesty and generosity”: Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, p. 8 172 LAC, DIA, AR, 1897, pp. 133–4.

62 of their cultural heritage to the young, a crucial mechanism for cultural and social reproduction. At the same time, there is no evidence that prohibition of Sun Dances was viewed as a step towards the physical eradication of its practitioners. Reducing the expenditure associated with treaty obligations—viewed as an imposition rather than fair payment for the appropriation of land and the destruction of First Nations’ means of survival—appears to have been the Government’s overriding priority. Self- sufficiency was expected to deliver this outcome.173 DIA correspondence leaves no doubt that, insofar as Ookaan was perceived as an obstacle against attaining this goal, Indian agents were to do their utmost to eradicate it. However, in 1884 a total ban was deemed to be premature and a security risk. Consequently, legislation (47 Vic. cap. 28) remained short of total prohibition.174 According to subsection 1 of section 149 of the Indian Act,

Every Indian or other person who engages in, or assists in celebrating or encourages either directly or indirectly another to celebrate any Indian festival, dance or other ceremony of which the giving away of paying or giving back of money, goods or articles of any sort forms a part, or is a feature, whether such gift of money, goods or articles takes place before, at, or after the celebration of the dance or who engages or assists in any celebration or dance of which the wounding or mutilation of the dead or living body of any human being or animal forms a part or is a feature, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months and not less than two months; Provided that nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent the holding of any agricultural show or exhibition or the giving of prizes for exhibits thereat.175 The hypocrisy of the legislation is manifest, in that it prohibits “Indians” making gifts of any type, and prohibits any mutilation of persons or animals during their ceremonies, while at the same time exempting these activities when carried out by whites. It seems ironic in the extreme that during this time “Indian” children at the Regina Industrial School donated money earned by working under an outing system “to religious work.”176 This double standard was not lost on the Blackfoot. In 1915, Pikani leader Bull Plume wrote to the DIA outlining Blackfoot opposition to the ban on gifts. He argued that giving presents to friends was no different than “the present

173 Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 130ff. 174 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511-1. “Letter 9 July 1895, Hayter Reed, Deputy of the Supt. General of Indian Affairs, Ottawa, to C. C. Chipman, Esq., Commissioner, HBC, Winnipeg, Manitoba”: “You are doubtless well aware of the antagonistic effect of Sun Dances upon our efforts to improve our Indians, and can understand why our strongest efforts are put forth to discourage them, although the time is not considered right for suppressing them by law.” See also Surtees, “Canadian Indian Policies”, p. 92. 175 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3. “Letter 15 March 1917, J. D. McLean to Reverend Ross.” 176 LAC, DIA, AR, 1896, p. 351.

63 we gave to King George and Government of the sixteen hundred dollars in the year 1914” (a donation to the war effort). He further claims that only “Indian made goods” will be given as presents, including “coats, pants, moccasins, beaded belts, neck beads, stone pipe tobac[c]o, pocket knife, handkerchief, a blanket that we can do without”. In regard to valuable items such as “wagon, harness, rig[ ]s ... saddle, horses, cattle, furniture”, he declares “we are pleased that the Department stop us from doing so.”177 Letter writing is a classic example of how the Siksikaitsitapi appropriated methods and discourses of the colonisers and deployed them in their own interests. How could officials object to giving away presents that the Siksikaitsitapi could do without? Was this not following the precepts of Christian charity? Moreover, Bull Plume was happy that valuable equipment could not be given away. It is clear from the lists above that gifts consisted mostly of “traditional” Siksikaitsitapi items, including white goods available in the buffalo days, with horses being the notable exception. The hidden transcript of Bull Plume’s letter was that transfers of sacred bundles, involving significant exchanges of property, continued to take place despite the prohibition of “giveaways.”178 In 1885, during the North-West Rebellion, Commissioner Reed introduced a “pass system” designed to curtail travelling by those on reserves, which was approved post facto by his superiors. This system, F. Laurie Barron argues, “was perceived by administrators as a necessary weapon in the war against those forces which perpetuated an ‘uncivilized’ Indian society.” Prosecution of infractors relied on the Vagrant Act, and using “such means as exist for marking ... displeasure towards those who leave without first having obtained passes.”179 Although in violation of treaty rights, this system—which was militarily expedient during the Riel Rebellion—was deployed in order to segregate First Nations peoples from European settlements, and to prevent them from attending Sun Dances in reserves other than their own. The Siksikaitsitapi cherished such visits, which provided an opportunity for reunions with extended family members, and actively resisted the measures.

As with Sun Dance regulations, official implementation of the pass system also had its hidden transcripts. The Mounted Police were aware that there was no “legal right to arrest any Indian unless he ... committed some offence” and the law would not be on their side “should an illegal arrest be attempted and resistance offered”. Such occurrence would have been disastrous “for [their] prestige with the

177 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-3. “Letter 11 February 1915, Bull Plume to DIA, Ottawa.” 178 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “Corpl. Harper’s Report”, referring to the transfer of a Medicine Pipe Bundle and the payment in kind. 179 Barron, “The Indian Pass System”, pp. 29–34.

64 Indians.”180 In 1888 Police Superintendent R. B. Deane wrote that “some [Indians] seem to be aware that in point of law they have as much right to roam about the country as white men, and that confinement to a reserve was not one of the provisions of their treaty.”181 It is clear from these admissions that the DIA and the Mounted Police colluded to create the impression that the pass system had legal force. Nevertheless, settlers expected the Mounted Police to stop armed “Indians being allowed to roam the country”182. Enforcement of the illegal pass system exposes the much-vaunted Mounted Police’s “fairness” as a construct. It serves as a warning to historians following the trail of the documents that the letter of the law was often a mere opening gambit for day-to-day negotiations in the contact zone. As was the case with Sun Dance regulations, implementation of the pass system varied in accordance with the attitudes of individual Indian agents who authorised travel passes. Although much was made of the desirability of confining First Nations peoples to their reserves, with a view to economising, agents sometimes gave passes to large groups to hunt for their own food, thereby broadening the system.183 Moreover, agents required cooperation, particularly from First Nations leaders, to ensure the successful discharge of their duties. These leaders oversaw their followers’ compliance with agents’ directives, and it was therefore expedient for the agent to maintain cordial relations with them. It is possible that denying travel permits could have placed agents in an invidious position. In 1902 a Mounted Police report claimed “upwards of 250” tepees were erected during Ookaan at the Kainai reserve, with visitors from other reserves including the Siksika, Pikani and Sarcee. However, “the visiting Indians had passes signed by their Agents.” The same occurred at the Piegan reserve that year.184 Moreover, in 1917 the agent at the Piegan reserve interpreted the regulation as preventing visitors from participating in the ceremony, but not from attending as observers, he claimed that the “scout and police have always been instructed to watch for strange Indians taking part which is

180 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 1354, 76-1896- part 3 “Memorandum 9 July 1896, Office of the Commissioner NWMP to Commissioner NWMP, Regina; and “Letter 22 May 1896, Supt. Commanding “E” Division, Calgary to Commissioner NWPM Regina”, which notes a prior circular sent in May 1893 “re sending Indians back, that no order is to be given them to return.” 181 Commissioners, New West, 1888, p. 68. 182 Commissioners, New West, 1889, p. 62. 183 Ibid., p. 43; and Hugh A. Dempsey, “Native Peoples and Calgary,” in Centennial City: Calgary 1894–1994, University of Calgary, ed., Calgary: The University of Calgary, 1994. p. 27, n. 8, citing LAC, RG 18, Vol. 1077, f. 321. 184 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “NWMP, Stand Off Detachment, Corpl. B. H. Robertson’s Report 28 July 1902”, including extract from Const. Geoghegan’s Report 12 July 1902.

65 forbidden but no notice of visitors has been taken. If they are there as sight-seers (sic) only.”185 Foucault’s notion of individuals “simultaneously undergoing and exercising power” (see Chapter 1) seems appropriate to this context, where agents’ need for cooperation from their charges was part of a moral economy that was being constantly reworked within the contact zone of the reserve. Eventually, the legally questionable pass system, with its innate potential for harming the social fabric, was dismantled without ever having achieved the aims of its instigators. In 1890 Indian Agents were given the power of a Justice of the Peace, increasing thereby their control over their charges. By 1892 the official view was that the time was right for adopting “more energetic measures” without compromising safety, as would have been the case earlier on.186 In 1895, the Potlatch and Sun Dance were subjected to additional regulations.187 In 1896, a DIA reorganisation by the new Minister for the Interior, Clifford Sifton,188 ushered in a new era of enforcement of regulations against the Sun Dance, but the official line merely to discourage the practice remained.189 It is remarkable that under this regime of prohibition, the Indian Commissioner in Regina gave written permission in June 1897 for the Siksika to hold Ookaan. While he declined a request for financial assistance for the ceremony, he assured the Blackfoot that there would be “no interference therewith on this occasion”190, provided certain conditions were met: it would last only five days; it would not be compulsory; no torture or giving away of property would take place; there would be no interference with workers “before, during or after the dance;” children would not be taken away from school; and the Siksika “will engage to fill the existing Schools to their full capacity.”191 These conditions draw a clear picture of the goals of assimilation, which posits persuasion, not force, as the method used to attract young Siksikaitsitapi to white schools. Less clear is how the commissioner

185 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, F. 60,511-4 part 1, “Letter 14 June 1917, H. A. Gunn, Indian Agent, Brocket Alberta to the Secretary, DIA, Ottawa.” 186 LAC, DIA, AR, 1892, p. xix. 187 Samek, Blackfoot Confederacy, 129, n.20 “An Act to Further amend the Indian Act, 1880,” S. C. 1884, c. 27 (47 Vict.), clause 3. 188 Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” pp.129–30. Sifton became Laurier’s Minister of the Interior in 1896. He reorganised DIA (replaced Reed with Smart) but did not formulate “any drastic Indian policy”. 189 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511-1, “Telegram 9 June 1896, F. H. Paget to Indian Agent, Birtle”: “Can only stop dance if ‘give away’ feature, mutilation or torture form part of ceremony. Seventeen hundred fourteen amended. If on Reserve may arrest visitors for trespassing: amended sub-section two, section twenty two. If ex pedient (sic) better prevent if possible but proceed cautiously.” 190 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60511-1, “Letter 3 June 1897, Indian Commissioner, Regina to Indian Agent Blackfoot Agency.” 191 Ibid.

66 planned overseeing their compliance. Outside the strict letter of the legislation, DIA officials had no discretion to widen the Indian Act’s limitations of Sun Dances, because any additional regulations could not be legally enforced.192 The directive, repeated as a mantra, was for agents to discourage the Sun Dance by using dissuasion, with legal means being a last resort. In this manner, no airing of the regulations could take place in the courts, effectively avoiding judicial scrutiny of the DIA’s methods that would have occurred in the course of any litigation. The determination by officials and missionaries to eradicate public performances by First Nations peoples ran contrary to a popular interest, both in Canada and the United States. “Indian” participation in shows and exhibitions in settlers’ towns, such as the Calgary Stampede, or “Wild West Shows” such as that of Buffalo Bill Cody, attracted big crowds. Officials in both countries tried unsuccessfully to curb these displays of “Indian” culture.193 In the United States a directive to stop these performances was issued in 1890, while in Canada Section 149 of the Indian Act was amended in 1914 as follows:

2. Any Indian in the Province of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia or the Territories who participates in any Indian dance outside the bounds of his own reserve, or who participates in any show, exhibition, performance, stampede or pageant in aboriginal costume without the consent of the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs or his authorized Agency and any person who induces or employs any Indian to take part in such dance, show, exhibition, performance, stampede or pageant, or induces any Indian to leave his reserve or employs any Indian for such a purpose, whether the dance, show, performance, exhibition, stampede or pageant has taken place or not, shall on summary conviction be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty five dollars or to imprisonment for one month, or to both penalty and imprisonment.194 The need for this additional prohibition indicates the extent of the DIA’s efforts to eradicate First Nations’ cultures. It is clear from the above that regulations were formulated with little thought for the hardship that confinement caused to First Nations peoples, whose lives heretofore had been spent travelling. These actions were out of step with the general white population’s sentiments: their curiosity towards the horses, costumes and performances of First Nations peoples ensured the financial success of events in which the latter participated. Consequently organisers

192 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-4-1, “Letter 8 August 1913, Asst. Deputy and Secretary, J. D. McLean, to Chief Inspector of Indian Agencies, Winnipeg.” 193 For the United States, see Washburn, American Indian, pp. 458–59; and for Canada, LAC, RG 10, Vol 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 6 May 1914, Principal of Indian Industrial School Qu’Appelle, Sask.”, asking to prevent Indians from attending local celebrations. 194 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” p. 23.

67 pressured the DIA, often successfully, for exemptions to this rule.195 Dilworth, in charge of the Blood Agency, summarised the position as follows:

I might say that these fairs depend largely on the Indians, for their racing events. It seems as if the Directors of local Fairs are of the opinion that no fair would be a success, unless there were full attendance of Indians, with their race horses (sic). This procedure, is detrimental to the progress of the Indians who as a people are naturally, sports[illegible]. The interest enlivened amongst these Indians, in Broncho (sic) busting, Horse racing, etc at the Stampede and Fairs from 1912 to the present, has worked great harm to them. The fact that Tom Three Persons, a Blood Indian won the belt and championship at the Calgary Stampede in 1912, has been responsible for the condition, that every boy on the Blood reserve between the ages of 17 and 23, wishes to be ... Tom Three Persons, and all they think about is saddles, chapps, silver spurs, Race and bucking horses, etc a full equipment of the above accoutrements makes him a hero in his own eyes, and in the eyes of the admiring young women on the reserve.196

As George Gooderham noted, Indians loved “parades, fairs and stampedes,”197 which allowed them to exhibit skills from their hunting days. Between their pride and the enjoyment of the general white population, agents were left to implement unworkable restrictions with the added difficulty that the DIA itself granted exemptions. However, the regulations against Sun Dances continued to be periodically reinforced and extended. In 1918, an amendment to Section 149 of the Indian Act by Sec. 7 of Chap. 26, 8–9 Geo. V, made “the giving away and mutilating features ... summary instead of indictable offences.” Agents had by this time magisterial powers “to try Indians, whites or others” for these offences.198 In 1921 the Indian Act was yet again amended to further impede the Sun Dance, Potlatch or other rituals; agents and the Mounted Police received instructions “to stop formation of large gatherings and break up pagan camp meetings.”199 Intending to enforce his superiors’ orders, Agent Gooderham and Inspector Jim Spalding, NWMP, proceeded to the circle camp where the Siksika had congregated in preparation for Ookaan. Chief Weasel Calf was

195 In 1914 permission was granted to attend the Banff celebrations to the Bearspaw’s Band, Stony Agency, after representations were made by a private company. LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 1 July, 1914, General Manager, Brewster Transport Co., Ltd. to Mr. J. Waddy, Indian Agent, Morley, Alberta.” 196 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-4 part 1, C-10145, “Letter 2 February 1917, J. D. Dilworth, Blood Agent to J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Ottawa.” 197 Glenbow Archives, M4738-217, G. H. Gooderham fonds, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Lord Burnham and Chief Yellowhorse”, Dec. 1955. 198 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-4A, “Letter 4 October 1918 from Asst. Deputy and Secretary [McLean].” 199 Glenbow Archives, M4738-259 and M4738-372, G. H. Gooderham fonds, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Weasel Calf and His Favourite Wife” April 1956; and “Indian Religious Rituals,” May 16, 1973.

68 adamant in his assertion of the Siksikaitsitapi right to practice the ceremony. He told his interpellators that

They only wanted to live in [p]eace and they met this way once a year in a friendly way to pray to the Unseen God of the Sun for their sick, for good crops and that they might be happy. In this he said, they were only carrying out what had been taught them by their Fathers and which had been the custom of his tribe for the past 500 years.”200 It is notable that praying for “good crops” had been incorporated into Ookaan. More interesting is the colourful account Gooderham wrote thirty-eight years later. He describes the reception of the two officials, who were provided with a “democrat [horse-drawn carriage] chair” and a canvas sunshade on the edges of the circle camp. Following Weasel Calf’s assertion that “this was a religious camp which was the Indian[’]s way to worship his God before the whiteman (sic) came ... it would remain at all costs and ... no white savage would be allowed in the camp”,201 Gooderham and Spalding “permitted” the continuation of the ceremony “on condition that no whites were allowed to enter”, which is precisely what Weasel Calf demanded. Spalding, however, deployed two police to remain at the camp to report on the proceedings, assisted by two Siksika interpreters. This decision allowed the Mounted Police to save face. However, the two police kept their distance from areas barred to whites, such as the Ookaan vower’s tepee and, although they attended the transfer of a Medicine Pipe, and witnessed the “catching” of David Bull Bear, the new owner— and his payment of two horses to Little Light, the previous owner—no charges were pressed against this blatant breach of the regulations.202 Again, these circumstances denote the laissez faire attitude of the Mounted Police to religious observations, at least as far as the Siksikaitsitapi were concerned. The foregoing demonstrates that although legislative efforts against Sun Dances continued, no resources were allocated for the forceful implementation of the prohibition. Reed himself admitted that effective action required “nothing short of over-powering force ... even were the dances declared illegal”203, which strictly speaking, they were not, despite widespread belief among First Nations peoples that this was the case—a belief encouraged by the DIA and the Mounted Police. When Gooderham recalled the incident, many years later, he admitted: “frankly, they were

200 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ‘K’ Division, Lethbridge, Calgary Sub-District, “Inspector J.W. Spalding’s Report 27 July 1921”. 201 Ibid. 202 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “Corpl. Harper’s Report”. 203 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3876, f. 91,749, “Letter 21 June 1892, Hayter Reed, Commissioner of Indian Affairs North-West Territories, to Superintendent General, Ottawa”.

69 two against many [four hundred according to Spalding204] and even in the [1920s] men of Weasel Calf’s calibre were not to be trifled with on such a serious matter as freedom of religion!” Gooderham expressed no objection to Ookaan in his later writings. By his own account, he even attended and participated in a Siksika social dance during the winter of 1921.205 Oblivious to the accommodation that existed on the reserves, prohibition appears to have gathered its own bureaucratic momentum in Ottawa. Having embarked upon extirpation of the Sun Dance, it was of little moment that First Nations peoples were, according to DIA’s own reports, making steady advances toward “civilisation”. By the 1920s many Blackfoot were profitable ranchers. Indeed, in 1917 it was reported that

The agricultural and stock raising industries among [Prairie] Indians have met with such a measure of success that rationing is now practically a thing of the past, except in the case of those who are aged or invalids, and therefore unable to support themselves.206 That prohibition continued, despite the Blackfoot omitting the self-torture ritual, is also telling of the goals of assimilation. The reasons for this obdurate attitude are explored in the following sub-section. However, it is clear that officials purposefully invoked the regulations in ways that exceeded the letter of the law, in order to place obstacles to the Sun Dance. Although the intention here is not to provide a parallel account of legislative efforts against the Sun Dance in the United States, suffice to say that the ceremony was harshly dealt with from 1869, when the U.S. Government appointed missionaries from different denominations as Indian agents in charge of the reservations. Historian Alvin Josephy, Jr., remarks that after 1869, when President Grant “began turning over the full responsibility for the administration of Indian agencies to American churches and missionary bodies”, the missionaries and representatives from the different churches—Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, Quakers, Congregationalists, Reformed Dutch, Episcopalians, and Baptists—“filled the office of agent and were in full charge of educational and other activities on the reservation”. He notes the dictatorial methods they followed, “fanatically determined to Christianise their wards and destroy everything they considered heathenish.” With military backing, they “banned Indian ceremonies and dances, the telling of Indian legends and myths, and all other manifestations of

204 Ibid. 205 Glenbow Archives, M4738, G. H. Gooderham fonds, “The Indian Waltz”. 206 LAC, DIA, AR, 1917, p. 11.

70 Indian religion.”207 He further notes that in 1883, when the Sun Dance was made an “offense” of the Court of Indian Offenses, the Secretary of the Interior, Henry M. Teller railed against what he described as

the savage and barbarous practices that are calculated to continue [the Indians] in their savagery ... non-progressive degraded Indians are allowed to exhibit before the young and susceptible children all the debauchery, diabolism, and savagery of the worst state of the Indian race. Every man familiar with Indian life will bear witness to the pernicious influence of these savage rites and heathenish customs ... These dances, or feasts, as they are sometimes called, ought, in my judgment, to be discontinued, and if the Indians now supported by the Government are not willing to discontinue them, the agents should be instructed to compel such discontinuance ... [a] great hindrance to the civilization of the Indian is the influence of the medicine men, who are always found with the anti-progressive party. The medicine men resort to various artifices and devices to keep the people under their influence ... steps should be taken to compel these impostors to abandon this deception and discontinue these practices, which are not only without benefit to the Indians but positively injurious to them.208 This tirade encompasses several discourses familiar from the Canadian example: of white superiority; of civilisation and progress versus savagery and degradation; of Christianity versus diabolism (or heathenism) and debauchery; and, finally, the accusation of self-interest against the Grandparents, those Elders who were the keepers of tribal knowledge.209 The 1883 regulations banning the Sun Dance from 1883 under the Court of Indian Offenses dictated that

any Indian who shall engage in the sun dance, the scalp dance, or war dance, or in any other similar feast, so called, shall be deemed guilty of an offense, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished for the first offense by the withholding of his rations for not exceeding ten days or by imprisonment for not exceeding ten days ... Any Indian who shall engage in the practices of so-called medicine men, or who shall resort to any artifice or device to keep the Indians from the reservation from adopting and following civilized habits and pursuits, or shall adopt any means to prevent the attendance of children at school, or shall use any rites and customs, shall be deemed to be guilty of an offense, and upon conviction thereof, for the first offense shall be imprisoned for not less than ten nor more than thirty days”.210

207 Josephy, Jr., Now that the Buffalo’s Gone, pp. 83–4. 208 Ibid., pp. 84–5. 209 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 2 February 1917 from Blood Agent”; 60,511-4A, “Letter 508558, 14 February 1918, Jas. McDonald, Griswold Agent to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Ottawa”. 210 Ibid., pp. 85.

71 This regulation of the Sun Dance remained without effect until 1904.211 Nevertheless, under the Court of Offenses, efforts at prohibition had begun earlier. For example, in 1887 the agent at the Blackfeet reservation, Major Baldwin, ordered the Indian Police at the Blackfeet reservation in Montana to stop Ookaan, with force where necessary, and bribed individuals with the offer of a brood mare if they refrained from participating.212 At the same time, agent Baldwin failed in his care of duty to his charges, and according to Amsskaapipikani Brocky, “if it were not for the queen, the indians here would all have frozen before now. No blankets have been issued to us this fall. All these clothes come from the north [Canada].”213 At the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, 1883 was the last year when a Sun Dance was held in public, with subsequent ceremonies going underground. According to ceremonialist Fools Crow, permission was given to hold a Sun Dance in 1928 and 1929, the latter at government’s request.214 Prohibition was lifted in 1934, when the New Deal administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with John Collier as Commissioner for Indian Affairs, restored freedom of religion and gave First Nations the right to revive their cultures through the Indian Reorganization Act (also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act).215 Fools Crow notes that in 1952 written permission was given to include the “piercing”, which was incorporated into the public ceremony. Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone) avers that the Siksikaitsitapi in Canada had complied with the prohibition of self-torture, and as a consequence lost the authority necessary to renew its practice. The Crow, who had stopped the Sun Dance in 1875, re-introduced it in 1941 by borrowing it from the Wind River Shoshoni as part of their own cultural revitalisation.216

2.8 The Rationale for the Assault on Ookaan

Ookaan was viewed as “demoralizing and barbarous”, and as an obstacle to “civilisation.”217 Apart from its impeding the acceptance of Christianity, some

211 Macgregor et al., Warriors Without Weapons, pp. 91, and 104, n. 9. 212 Harris III, Preserving a Vision, pp. 419–20, citing Grinnell’s diaries, Braun Research Library, Field Notes and Diaries of George Bird Grinnell, Grinnell Manuscript Collection; see also Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 310. 213 Ibid., p. 419. 214 Mails, Sundancing, p. 6. 215 Josephy, Jr., Now that the Buffalo’s Gone, pp. 86–7; Taylor, Standing Alone, p. 159. 216 Voget, Shoshoni-Crow Sun Dance, pp. 273–75, argues that the Crow had stopped practicing the ceremony in 1875, but continued to practice the ceremonies of the Sacred Tobacco and Peyotism, despite the risk of being jailed. 217 See for example, for Canada, LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 2 February 1917 from Blood Agent”; 60,511-4A, “Letter 508558, 14 February 1918, James McDonald, Griswold Agent to

72 missionaries argued that it incited lust and unsettled marital relations.218 In the secular realm, it slowed the transition from tribalism to individualism that Alexis de Tocqueville posited in the 1830s as being the chief characteristic of Americans who, thanks to American liberalism, had equal opportunities to achieve material success. Tribalism, with its communal approach, was viewed as running counter to those ideals.219 The stereotype of “Indians” as lacking in individual drive, however, was challenged by anthropologist Esther S. Goldfrank, who averred that “Blood society in the buffalo days was highly individualistic and competitive ...[and in] the reserve period, it remained so.”220 Notwithstanding, the fact that individual achievement was pursued does not mean that those who attained honour would not observe generosity towards their less successful comrades. Whites interpreted this community orientation as communistic, and expected that “civilisation” would erode such views. In 1893 Hayter Reed, Canada’s Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, succinctly expressed the rationale for eradicating indigenous cultures:

The problem which confronts the department in the territories is a most difficult one: to redeem from a state of partial savagery a horde of Indians dominated by tribal law and aboriginal customs and to transform them into competent agriculturists, ranchers, or mechanics ... if the progress continues as steady in the future, it will not be long before the Indians of the North-west Territories will be able to provide themselves with the necessaries of life.221 The individuality Reed posits as desirable echoes Homi Bhabha’s concept of “mimicry”. Bhabha argues that colonisers desire to replicate their own image in the colonised, to a degree that is “almost the same, but not quite”.222 Inequality was enshrined in the Indian Act, leaving no room for equality in Reed’s vision of progress and order, in which a “horde” becomes transformed into competent and autarchic individuals. In 1920, Duncan Campbell Scott—poet, essayist and Deputy

Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Ottawa”: “Dances have a demoralizing effect on the Indians and I do not see much use in spending money to educate them if they are allowed to go back to their old pagan ways.” For the United States, see Mails, Sundancing, p. 3. 218 Commissioners, New West, 1889, pp. 37–53, p. 42: Appendix E, Annual Report of Superintendent Deane, Commanding “K” Division; LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Letter 30 October 1901, Supt. Joseph Howe, Commander of the Police Force, Macleod, Alberta, to Commissioner NWMP (Regina)”; and Letter 24 October 1901, Rev. Arthur B. Owen to Major Howe, Commander of the Police Force, Macleod, outlining a complaint. In 1900, however, “a missionary who had, unobserved watched some of these dances ... saw nothing of a gross character”; and LAC, DIA, AR, 1900, p. 224. 219 Berkhofer, Jr., White Man’s Indian. 220 Esther Schiff Goldfrank, Changing Configurations in the Social Organization of a Blackfoot Tribe During the Reserve Period (The Blood of Alberta, Canada), in Monographs of the American Ethnological Society 8, ed. by A. Irving Hallowell, [New York: J. J. Augustin, 1945] Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966, pp. 3 and 70. 221 LAC, DIA, AR, 1893, p. xvii. 222 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, esp. chapter 4, “Of Mimicry and Man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse”, London: Routledge, rpt. 1997, p. 86 (italics in the original).

73 Superintendent General of Indian Affairs—encapsulated the prevailing attitude of his day:

Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian department.223 Likewise, in the United States, Berkhofer noted, “[a]lthough American society espoused an ethic of equality, white reformers like their compatriots did not really believe in racial equality or in cultural pluralism.”224 Even at a time when enfranchising Indians was contemplated, debates in both countries demonstrated how ingrained was the discourse of white racial superiority. The persistence of the Sun Dance precluded the realisation of Reed’s vision. It impeded the unfettered acceptance of Christian doctrine and thus impeded “civilisation”, although “civilised” practices did not always improve the lives of First Nations. The Blackfoot returned to living in tepees during the summer months having noticed that living in cabins increased illness.225 Yet, a nomadic life was used as a marker separating the “civilised” from the “savage.” Moreover, acceptance as Christians required that the Siksikaitsitapi should renounce their multiple wives, which perforce would cause the dissolution of long-established family units and conjugal partnerships226. Government officials saw in Christianity an instrument for the eventual disappearance of First Nations peoples’ cultures and separate identities. In short, one set of beliefs had to be eradicated before another could take its place. Assimilation was expected to alleviate the government’s obligations under treaties, but while Ookaan (and similar ceremonies) prevailed, assimilation would always fall short of white expectations, because the ceremony reinvigorated traditional Siksikaitsitapi lifeways.

223 E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986, p. 56. 224 Berkhofer, Jr., “Commentary”, p. 83. Whites complained in 1885 against the presence of Indians, who were in demand as wood cutters outside their reserves, see LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 76; According to the Macleod Gazette in 1887, “the reserve idea was all wrong, not because it segregated Indians ... but because it did not do the job properly”, see Gray, Booze, p. 45. 225 LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, pp. 156–7; and 1892, p. 185; and AR, 1893, p. 166 for Cree bands who did the same. 226 Father Peter Prando, a Jesuit who built a mission near the Blackfeet reservation in 1881, set as a condition for baptising chief White Calf, “that he give up three of his four wives.” Howard L. Harrod, Mission Among the Blackfeet, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 59–60.

74 Objections to the Sun Dance were articulated out of an ostensible concern for the welfare of First Nations.227 The ceremony allegedly had a “demoralizing” effect on work practices. According to Reed:

by the Indians congregating in this way for a dance, they lose at least from four to six weeks of the time, in which they should be at work, repairing their fences, and breaking new land, and summer fallowing: besides which it unsettles them from steady work for a longer period.228 The success of agents required cooperation from their charges. This was measured by the recorded progress towards civilisation achieved on their reserves. The markers of such progress were held to comprise an increase in agricultural production; the number of permanent homes built; attendance of children at school; and the absence of conflict between the Siksikaitsitapi and settlers. It was hardly surprising, then, that some agents blamed Ookaan for any shortcomings. In 1885, Siksika agent Magnus Begg called it “an unmitigated nuisance.”229 A frequent complaint concerned the loss of working days it caused, which some reports claimed was up to six weeks. In 1914 the new agent at the Blood reserve, W. J. Dilworth, complained that the ceremony materially interfered “with the progress of the work” and requested cutting its duration to two weeks. McLean responded: “the policy of the Department has been to discourage the Indians from holding these dances, as they take the Indians from their work and have a demoralising effect upon them.”230 Such charges are repeated like a mantra. Clearly, the regulations did not prohibit the Sun Dance, but rather only certain components. In practice, however, independently of compliance with the regulations, Indian agents were constantly pushed to dissuade their charges from continuing the ceremony. Another objection to Ookaan (as with the Potlatch of the Pacific First Nations) relates to the expenses incurred by the sponsors, which were seen as financially crippling and as contravening white notions of thrift. Wissler argued that coercion might have been exerted in order that vowers would come forward, given that Ookaan was held every year and indeed was “necessary to the general

227 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Letter 30 January 1901, James A. Smart to Fred White, Comptroller NWMP”. 228 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3876 f. 91749, “Letter 21 June 1892, Hayter Reed, Commissioner of Indian Affairs North-West Territories, to Superintendent General, Ottawa”. 229 LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 76. 230 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-3, “Letter 10 March 1914, W. J. Dilworth, Blood Agency, to J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary”; and “Letter 23 March 1914, J. D. McLean to W. J. Dilworth, Indian Agent, Blood Agency.”

75 welfare.”231 This was confirmed by Teddy Yellow Fly’s claim in 1921 that, in the absence of a vower, “the Old Indians ask some woman who has put on a Dance before to do so again.”232 Ben Calf Robe, a highly respected Siksika “Grandfather” recounts his expenses when sponsoring Ookaan c. 1929:

I gave up all my best Horses, including my three favorite work Horses ... my sister contributed ten or fifteen herd Horses, but I gave a lot more. I even paid for the sacred sweatbath ... It is our custom to pay for every part of a holy initiation. The more sacrifices you make, the more valuable your initiation will be in the future ... I provided enough Hudson[’s] Bay blankets, and other dry goods, to cover the whole path where the Holy Woman and her attendants walked to give out the sacred-tongue-sacrament.233 Apart from the sponsor’s disbursements, property changed hands at many junctures during Ookaan, and indeed throughout Ako-katssinn. For example, during initiations into societies and during transfers of sacred objects—Medicine Pipe Bundles, Beaver Bundles, tepees, shields, headdresses and weasel suits. Some sacred objects could not be kept indefinitely without incurring bad luck, which meant that transfer had to take place within a certain period.234 Old Bull noted that a Medicine Pipe Bundle had to be transferred outside the band of the current owner every four years. The current owner and his assistants would choose the new owner by “catching” him.235 This practice was unpopular because the previous owner could pick the best horses of the new owner as payment. Refusal to become the new holder of the bundle or to surrender the horses could bring bad luck and even death to the one “caught” or someone else in the family.236 These were the “giveaways” that the law aimed to prevent. Ookaan was an ideal time for displaying generosity, indispensable for gaining prestige among the Siksikaitsitapi. Most notably, it was customary to distribute gifts after Naamaahkaan (counting coup). This rubric applied to feats such as touching an enemy before striking him the deathblow, capturing enemy weapons, shields, or sacred objects. Naamaahkaan took place at several junctures during Ookaan, such as

231 Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 232. 232 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “Corpl. Harper’s Report.” 233 Ben Calf Robe with Adolf and Beverly Hungry Wolf, Siksiká: a Blackfoot Legacy, Invermere, BC: Good Medicine Books, 1979. p. 44. 234 Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 3, “Interview with Many Guns via Mary Royal, 21 August 1938.” 235 Glenbow Archives, M8458-19, Jane Richardson’s Blackfoot (Siksika) research – Medicine and Curing Power, “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”. 236 Ibid., “Interview with Old Bull via Mary White Elk”.

76 prior to the ritual lighting of the sacred fire.237 The circle encampment also provided secular opportunities for gift giving, such as when marriages took place, with prospective in-laws sending horses and other property to a groom’s family, and receiving similar gifts in return.238 The lack of provision for their future needs by the Siksikaitsitapi was a constant complaint by agents and missionaries, which was used as the justification for the prohibition on gifts. Generosity, which is consonant with Christian teachings, was condemned when practiced by the Siksikaitsitapi in accord with their traditions. Like Henry Teller, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 1883, in 1917 Dilworth argued that Ookaan served the interests of “Medicine Men,” whose motives were crass:

It is the old men and women who keep this dance going. It is not the sublime religious festival it is pictured to be. The purposes of the old men are to keep alive the traditions of the past and to be benefited at each Sun Dance to the extent of several horses. In reality, the objects are mercenary.239 Comparison with other contemporary accounts reveals several fallacies in this assertion. Even missionaries (e.g. Maclean) were able to appreciate the multivalent significance of Ookaan. By ascribing material gain as the ceremonialists’ (Grandfathers’) main motivation, Dilworth misrepresented Ookaan’s spiritual and social significance. Another motivation behind efforts to eradicate the Sun Dance, was the afore mentioned belief that it was a “war dance,” a necessary step for the initiation of “braves.” The Siksikaitsitapi habit of carrying rifles increased those fears240. Given that the Siksikaitsitapi were never at war with the Dominion, their right to bear arms or to “purchase all the fixed ammunition or ball cartridge they require”241 was never

237 According to Maclean, Sun Dance, p. 3, “No child or woman was allowed to supply the fuel, but young men who had performed some valorous deed.” See also Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 245–50; and Calf Robe, Siksiká, p. 40, who notes that after counting coup, Three Suns, a wealthy Siksika warrior, would distribute enough stores to fill two wagons. Conaty, “Economic Models”, p. 405, notes that counting coup occurs at the beginning and at the end of all Blackfoot ceremonies. 238 Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 10, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”. The Sun Dance was the ideal place to display the woman’s possessions. Those who were poor would marry prior to the circle camp to avoid embarrassment. 239 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 2 February 1917 from Blood Agent”; 60,511-4A, “Letter 508558, 14 February 1918, Jas. McDonald, Griswold Agent to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Ottawa.” 240 In 1902, the combined firepower of the Siksikaitsitapi consisted of 118 rifles and 82 shotguns. LAC, DIA, AR, 1902, Part II, p. 147. 241 LAC, DIA, AR, 1879, p. 283; and Report by Pikani agent Magnus Begg, LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 76. LAC, RG 18, Vol. 1354 f. 76, notes that “The Superintendent General may ... prohibit ... the sale, gift, or other disposal, to any Indian ... in the North West Territories ... of any fixed ammunition or ball cartridge”. In the case of the Blackfoot, the Superintendent General did not see fit to invoke this option.

77 circumscribed; indeed, the Siksikaitsitapi Chiefs had been given Winchester carbines under the provisions of Treaty Seven. When a kindred Cree ceremony (Thirst Dance) took place in neighbouring Qu’Appelle in the early 1880s, the terror of settlers was attributed to the “formidable appearance” the Cree presented “in their dancing costumes ... to individuals unaccustomed to them.”242 A Mounted Police force was promptly dispatched. Such fears were realised in the Northwest Rebellion in 1885, when some Cree bands took up arms in support of Riel’s secessionist movement. Large gatherings such as the circle camp provided an ideal meeting space to discuss possible alliances against whites. In 1889 Superintendent Steel drew a link between the Sun Dance and the persistence of horse raids despite the best efforts of the Mounted Police to prevent them:

it has the effect of reviving too vividly old associations. Old warriors take this occasion of relating their experience of former days, counting their scalps and giving the number of horses they were successful in stealing. This has a pernicious effect on the young men; it makes them unsettled and anxious to emulate the deeds of their forefathers.243 The fact that the Blackfoot maintained neutrality during 1885 strengthened their position in their dealings with the DIA vis-à-vis those Cree bands that had joined Riel. While the Blackfoot continued gathering annually in the circle camp and holding Ookaan, albeit with some restrictions, other First Nations had their rations reduced or cancelled for similar behaviour.244 Having chosen diplomacy over armed rebellion, the Siksika earned thereby some tolerance from the DIA towards Ookaan. However, on those occasions when a harsher approach was taken, the Siksikaitsitapi responded with equal determination.

2.9 Implementation of the Prohibition

Endeavours to suppress the Sun Dance were inconsistently applied across the reserves where Indian agents exercised their own judgment. They could summon the Mounted Police to enforce the regulations, but Ottawa’s invariable policy was to use dissuasion rather than force, not merely to prevent the acts proscribed but, if

242 LAC, DIA, AR, 1884, p. xii. 243 Commissioners, New West, 1889, p. 65. 244 LAC, DIA, AR, 1889, part 1, page 78: “I regret to add that a thirst dance was held on Ermineskin’s reserve last August, ... the issue of rations was greatly reduced, and in many cases cut off”. LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60,511 and f. 60,511-1, “Letter 13 August 1889, Agent Cornish, Sarcee Agency to Indian Commissioner, Regina”, advising that rations were stopped during Sun Dance and Chief Bulls Head was advised of “the wish of the White Chiefs that the Sun dance should cease”. In 1897 a Cree was jailed for two months for holding “an Indian ‘Give-away’ dance.” See LAC, RG 18, Vol. 1382, f. 75-1897, 25 January 1897, but the Superintendent Commanding “C” Division recommended an early release because “he is an old man and very feeble.”

78 possible, to eradicate the ceremony altogether.245 Some agents had no objection to the ceremony,246 but whatever their personal views, their job was to implement the regulations in accordance with the DIA’s policies. This paramount obligation needs to be borne in mind in any reading of their annual reports. The conduct of the Sun Dance was a familiar if minor trope in agents’ annual reports, which provided census data and several economic indicators such as acres under cultivation, yields and equipment inventories. Whereas day-to-day matters were handled through correspondence, annual reports showcased agents’ compliance with policy, budgets, and the progress toward civilisation of those under their tutelage. These reports abound in quasi-formulaic predictions of the imminent demise of the Sun Dance due to a purported dwindling interest, and forecast that once older Blackfoot died, the new Christian-educated generations would reject traditional beliefs.247 The purpose of these predictions might have been to justify to their superiors in Ottawa the continuation of Sun Dances. What information the annual reports do contain about Ookaan is often cursory. For example, the Siksika agent’s 1886 report notes: “The sun dance came off as usual this year, the berries being so plentiful that it lasted seven days, but I think the Indians are gradually losing interest in it.” A more vibrant picture was retained in Joe Crowfoot’s memory: “the great Sun Dance Camp was an impressive sight. Hundreds of lodges were pitched in a great circle.”248 Perhaps Joe Crowfoot’s memory was failing by the time he recounted this day; or perhaps the agent was playing down the importance of the occasion. A classic example of lack of reporting is provided by a controversy (discussed anon) involving the Kainai, the Mounted Police and agent James Wilson in the late 1890s, but which does not rate a mention in annual reports. Understanding the limitations of annual reports shifts the focus of historical enquiry to correspondence and testimonies by participants, including those in year counts, the painted records kept by Siksikaitsitapi “historians” on tanned skins and which contain the most important events of each year (see Chapter 4).

The annual reports hardly mention the practical steps taken by agents to persuade their charges into giving up Sun Dances, keeping their superiors unaware of their methods. In 1891 Commissioner Reed advised the Rev. J. W. Tims, a

245 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3. Letter 23 March 1914, J.D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary: “I beg to say that the policy of the Department has been to discourage the Indians from holding these dances.” 246 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-4 part 1. Letter from Pikani Agent, 14 June 1917: “the intention is to hold a sun dance here for which I could see no objections from observations made during the last three years.” 247 See for example LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 74; 1886, p. 138; and 1895 p. 36. 248 LAC, DIA, AR, 1886, p. 138; and Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 199–200, “Interview with Joe Crowfoot 4 March 1957”.

79 missionary at the Siksika reserve, that he proposed circulating an order “that no [beef] tongues or other articles be given to Indians for the purpose of this dance.”249 Evidently, by refusing to supply whole beef tongues (indispensable as a sacrament during Ookaan), Reed went beyond the Indian Act, which only contemplated action if regulations were flaunted. Reading annual reports and correspondence “against the grain”, it would appear that, rather than adhering strictly to the regulations, agents were encouraged to use any means to eradicate the Sun Dance. It is evident that some First Nations were unaware of the exact content of the regulations and that the official tactic of withholding information was a means of exerting undue pressure. The DIA’s response to a written request from Cree Chief Thunderchild for permission to hold a Sun Dance in 1917 is in this respect most revealing:

the Department cannot sanction any violation of the provisions of the Act ... in the interests of the Indians, the Chiefs and Councillors of a band are expected to co-operate with the Indian Agent in his efforts to advance the Indians towards the adoption of the customs of civilisation.250 This response assumed that the legislation would be violated as a matter of course, but did not specify how. It could be interpreted as a veiled threat to Thunderchild, because the Indian Act empowered officials to remove from office any chief deemed uncooperative.251 This might explain why, as noted previously, Crowfoot assisted in phasing out the self-torture during the Siksika Ookaan in 1888.252 In the example of Thunderchild, ambiguity in official correspondence created the impression that the Sun Dance per se was illegal. Prohibition was not the only strategy deployed to circumscribe Sun Dances. From 1886, the DIA began sponsoring alternative events as acceptable replacements. In 1889, Reed reported some success in introducing “as a substitute something more profitable in the way of harvest homes,”253 a picnic or racing day, with the Department providing a steer for a feast. The Apatohsipikani and the Kainai had agreed, Commissioner Forget reported, “to substitute Dominion Day sports for the

249 Glenbow Archive, M1234, Archdeacon J. W. Tims Family fonds, “Letter 21 April 1891”. 250 LAC, RG10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-4-1, “Letter 2 June 1917, from J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary”. 251 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” p. 20, notes that the 1895 regulation was geared to the removal of “band leaders in the West” resisting “the Government’s efforts to discourage the practice of traditional Indian beliefs and values”. In 1902 several chiefs were removed during efforts “to suppress illegal dancing.” LAC, DIA, AR, 1902, p. 188. BGC, Nitsitapiisinni, p. 69: “Indian Agents ran ... council meetings and often selected the chiefs and members of council.” 252 LAC, DIA, AR, 1888, p. lxvii. 253 LAC, DIA, AR, 1889, p. 172.

80 objectionable dance.” The Siksika, he regrets, were “more obdurate and the dance went on, though stripped this year of nearly all its former glory ... [but he did] ... not anticipate its recurrence next year.”254 These predictions of the demise of Ookaan failed to materialise. In 1895, the Indian agent at the Blood reserve, James Wilson, gave the ration house instructions to cut beef tongues in half, rendering them useless for Ookaan. His actions prevented the Kainai from holding the ceremony between 1894–99. In 1900 Chief Red Crow intervened, threatening to kill his own cattle if necessary to procure the required tongues. When Wilson threatened to withdraw rations, Red Crow likewise threatened to kill his own cattle to feed the crowd.255 Dempsey notes that this final stand was the decisive blow to Wilson’s opposition, and the Kainai were henceforth able to continue gathering for Ookaan undisturbed. Across the Forty-ninth parallel, Indian Agents tried “to induce the Blackfeet to observe the Fourth of July instead [of Ookaan].”256 Similar strategies were used, such as the withdrawal of rations in order to exert pressure against holding the ceremony. McClintock documented two speeches against the prohibition by members of the Kainai and the Amsskaapipikani, respectively. The first speech is attributed to Natosi Nepe-e (Brings-down-the-Sun) (1905):

The white race have always cheated and deceived us. They have deprived us of our country. Now they are trying to take away our religion, by putting a stop to the ceremonial sacred to the Sun. Our religion was given to us by the Sun and Moon, and we will never give it up, while the Sun and Moon last. The white people have given us no good reason why they wish to take away our religion. We do not fight, nor drink whisky at our ceremonials, and there is nothing harmful that can come from them. We have been struggling to keep up our religion, in order that our people may be happy, and that they may lead better lives. When I began preparations for a Sun ceremonial this spring, in accordance with the vow, made by one of our women for the healing of her sick son, the agent shut off our rations. He would not allow my family to receive the food, upon which we are dependent. Because of these things my heart has become bitter, and I have made a vow, that I will have nothing more to do with the white race.257

The speech refutes effectively the superiority of “civilisation” as Natosi Nepe-e labels whites as “cheaters and deceivers”, labels ironically often used to describe

254 LAC, DIA, AR, 1896, pp. 301–2. 255 It appears that the Sun Dance was held for in 1900 Agent James Wilson “would not give them another steer to kill for the races after last year,” and Blood Chief, Red Crow, advised Deane that the Kainai “consider themselves entitled to have a Sun Dance, since the steer for the 1st. July races has been denied to them.” LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Correspondence re Blood Sun Dance”. 256 Samek, Blackfoot Confederacy, p. 131. 257 McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 384–5.

81 “Indians”. Clearly, he alludes to treaties that served to dispossess his people of their land. He defies the prohibition of Ookaan and condemns the withholding of rations. Whether intentionally or not, Natosi Nepe-e (or McClintock as transcriber) utilises terms that echo Christian practices: “we fast and pray ... to lead good lives and to act more kindly towards each other”. The second speech, by Stock-stchi (1910) favourably compares Ookaan with white dances:

We know that there is nothing injurious to our people in the Sun- dance. On the other hand, we have seen much that is bad at the dances of the white people. It has been our custom, during many years, to assemble once every summer for this festival, in honour of the Sun God. We fast and pray, that we may be able to lead good lives and to act more kindly towards each other. I do not understand why the white men desire to put an end to our religious ceremonials. What harm can they do to our people? If they deprive us of our religion, we will have nothing left, for we know of no other than can take its place.258 Stock-stchi repeats word for word one of Natosi Nepe-e’s sentences, drawing further attention to McClintock’s as transcriber. Whether the two men used the same expression, or whether McClintock creatively contributed to the speech, rather than merely transcribed it, it is evident that he felt compelled to record Siksikaitsitapi dissatisfaction with the prohibition. That prohibition was ineffective was demonstrated by McClintock’s attendance at a ceremony during his sojourn with the Siksikaitsitapi. For all that, McClintock disparaged Siksikaitsitapi beliefs, which he addressed as the “mental and spiritual slavery of the Blackfeet, under their ‘Medicine’ superstitions.”259 McClintock’s apparent ambivalence exemplifies white attitudes toward the spiritual beliefs of First Nations peoples.

2.10 Failure of the Implementation

Inconsistency prevailed in official and non-official white attitudes towards the cultures of First Nations peoples. While policies and regulations sought their eventual assimilation, whites held a fascination for the “Indian” Other. The exoticisation of the Other for which Said coined the term Orientalism was here also in play. However, thanks to this attraction, spaces were opened for the display of skills and regalia valued by First Nations peoples, thereby contributing a further modicum of pride in their culture. Official ambivalence was most evident in the stream of high-ranking visitors to the reserves. In September 1889 the Governor-

258 Ibid., p. 508. 259 Ibid.

82 General visited the Blood reserve, where he was received in “the usual manner”, indicative of the familiarity of these occasions: “A large number of Indians assembled to do him honor. A pow-wow was held and a sham fight was given, showing the Indian method of warfare, which was highly interesting.”260 This double bind of simultaneously valuing and devaluing First Nations peoples’ cultures continued despite strengthening regulations to eradicate them. Not all agents took a hard line against the Sun Dance, but those who did encountered many obstacles. When the Sun Dance could not be held on a reserve, it was possible to attend a ceremony at another reserve, taking advantage of the inconsistencies in the implementation of travel restrictions.261 William Morris Graham, an official who rose through the ranks to become Commissioner for the Prairie Provinces in the 1920s, was determined to stamp out Sun Dances. He noted the danger of allowing “those of the Hobbema, Blood and other Alberta Agencies to make the [Sun Dance] an annual practice [because] the Indians of other Bands will probably wish to follow an example which we should not allow.”262 Directives to extirpate the Sun Dance remained in place and, as mentioned before, the legislation was progressively strengthened, although not the means for its implementation, which left matters in the hands of individual agents, assisted by the Mounted Police. However, the need for cooperation between two arms of the services introduced a weakness, because they did not always act in unison, even though, in official correspondence, the Police always professed to support the DIA’s policies.263 Much had been made of the friendship between the Blackfoot and the Mounted Police, to whom the Siksikaitsitapi periodically looked for assistance against agents. Lacking other means of redress, seeking support from the police was part of the Blackfoot repertoire of contention, a strategy that served to voice their complaints, because the police never failed to report them to their superiors and to the DIA. This strategy helped to break the Ookaan deadlock between the Kainai and James Wilson in 1900. Two years later the controversy, which reached the heads of both services in Ottawa, had still not been settled. This episode underscored the lack of common purpose between the two services, which the Siksikaitsitapi exploited to their own ends.

260 Commissioners, New West, 1889, pp. 71–2. 261 LAC, DIA, AR, 1886, p. 122, The Agent in charge of Birtle Agency (Treaty 4) reports regarding the Sun Dance: “I succeeded in persuading them to abandon, but I find them of very little use, while these dances are permitted on other reserves.” 262 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-4A, “Letter July 1920, W. M. Graham, Commissioner of Indian Affairs [Prairie Provinces] to D. C. Scott, Esq., Deputy Supt. General”. See also Titley, “W.M. Graham”. 263 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Correspondence re Blood Sun Dance”.

83 The overriding priority of the Mounted Police was to combat crime, and assimilation of First Nations peoples appears to have been secondary, which was one of the reasons for complaint by the DIA.264 In 1889, however, it was agent Pocklington who defended his charges in court against the Mounted Police. Justice Macleod found against the Mounted Police for interfering with a Sun Dance by arresting two men during the ceremony without a warrant.265 Such actions need to be taken into account before making blanket claims as to the prohibition of Sun Dances.

2.11 Siksikaitsitapi Responses to Prohibition

The Siksikaitsitapi divisions were numerous and had been a formidable power in the region during the buffalo days, and some of their “haughty” bearing was maintained afterwards.266 Nowhere else was this spirit more evident than in their resistance to the attack on Ookaan. As a militarily undefeated alliance, the Blackfoot maintained a pride that officials found irksome. In 1889 NWMP Superintendent Deane’s Annual Report notes the “Blood think they are the cream of creation”; and in 1906 their agent reported that after twenty-five years of reservation, their “prominent characteristic” was “a proud and imperious spirit.”267 Despite the foregoing, the Siksikaitsitapi were pragmatic in their response to measures curtailing Ookaan, and reportedly even welcomed some measures that they considered to be beneficial. They compromised to secure its continuation, but not to the extent of giving it up altogether. When approached to eliminate the practice of self-torture, the Blackfoot at the Canadian reserves agreed.268 Big Bravo told Duvall in 1911 that those who underwent the self-torture ritual “generally die shortly after they have done so”, and people attributed this to undergoing the ritual, which was “as if they had made an offer of themselves to the Sun.”269 Wissler suggested that this practice had been borrowed from the Arapaho, and had not “thoroughly adjusted to its place” when it

264 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Correspondence re Blood Sun Dance”. In 1902 the Mounted Police reported the encampment of 250 tepees: “the general conduct of these Indians would compare more than favourably with the same number of whites of all classes and both sex (sic) encamped under the same circumstances.” 265 LAC, RG 18, Series A-1, Vol. 36, f. 817-89: “the Indian Agent took a very strong stand against the Police, in all his actions, and left no stone unturned to show them in the wrong”. 266 Commissioners, New West, 1889, p. 42. 267 LAC, DIA, AR, 1906, p. 165; and Commissioners, New West, 1889, p. 42. 268 LAC, DIA, AR, 1889, Part I, p. 167, Agent Magnus Begg reports: “Last July during the sun dance the Indians were preparing to have some braves made in the usual way by torture. When the Rev. Mr. Tims and myself arrived ... I explained to the chiefs that it was against the wishes of the Department ... and asked them to do away with that part of the performance, which they agreed to at once.” 269 Glenbow Archives, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds, f. 891, “20 April 1911 Interview with Big Bravo”.

84 was discontinued.270 In 1885, for example, no “candidates for the torture act” came forward at the Siksika Ookaan.271 “Catching” as a form of coercion when transferring a Medicine Pipe Bundle was another practice whose prohibition was welcomed. Siksika Mary White Elk noted that “[p]eople hated to be ‘caught’”, because they stood to lose their favourite horses.272 Conversely, the pass system was an unacceptable constraint resisted by the Siksikaitsitapi, for it impeded visits to their distant relatives and attendance at Sun Dances on other reserves.273 In 1916 the Siksika retaliated against the measure by withdrawing their children from school, arguing that they did “not do any more dancing than their white neighbours and that they see no good reason why they should be singled out in this particular.”274 By drawing attention to the double standards, the Blackfoot signalled their refusal to inhabit a subservient role. Officials praised Crowfoot’s assistance with the phasing out of self-torture as a victory for the civilising project. In 1887, “[o]n account of his willingness in helping the Indian Department officials in their work amongst the Indians”, the Department erected a “good house” for Crowfoot.275 However, despite his good relations with whites, Crowfoot elevated Siksikaitsitapi beliefs “over anything the white man had to offer.”276 Although he did not join in the sacred rites of Ookaan, he always took his place in the circle encampment with his Moccasin Band. Even during visits by dignitaries, Crowfoot observed Siksikaitsitapi mourning practices, dressing in rags when one of his children died.277 Despite his friendship with priests, to his dying day he continued to have multiple wives. That his priest friends and the authorities did not take issue with this breach demonstrates that favouritism tempered the force of regulations. Moreover, when he died, his favourite horse was shot to accompany him to the Sand Hills in accord with Siksikaitsitapi beliefs. It is possible

270 Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 262. 271 LAC, DIA, AR, 1885, p. 76. 272 Glenbow Archives, M8458, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, f. 48, “Old Bull via Mary White Elk”: “Man may hide if he hears owner is coming, hating to lose his fine horses ... [the Government] forbade an owner’s choosing of his successor. Forced it to be voluntary.” 273 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 1382, f. 75-1897, “Correspondence re Blood Indian Sun Dance”. Letter 7 May 1897 to Commissioner NWMP Regina”. 274 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Extract from J. A. Markle, Inspector on the Crowfoot Boarding School, 14 February 1916”. A similar complaint was made in 1904 in Kutawa, when “a dance had been given by the school mistress to her friends. The Indians thought that if the white people were allowed to dance on the reserve, they should be allowed to dance their way.” LAC, RG 18, Vol. 273, f. 328-04. 275 LAC, DIA, AR, 1887, p. 100. DIA also erected a house for Red Crow. 276 Glenbow Archives, M4738, Gooderham Papers, f. 1, “Blackfoot Biographies, Black Fever”: “Crowfoot may have embraced Christianity in superficial manner at times, but during his last illness he returned to his native religion ... Black Fever remembered the consternation of the missionaries at the presence of numerous medicine men at the deathbed of the Chief, and the wrangle about his burial when his body was removed from the Christian cemetery.” 277 Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 201.

85 that Crowfoot himself was not fond of self-torture, because prior to his death he told his wives “there should be no severing of fingers and scarring of their flesh when they mourned his passing.”278 Crowfoot’s attitude demonstrates how accommodation worked during the early reserve era, but also that officials were prepared to overlook their own regulations when expedient to do so. The Siksikaitsitapi response to alternative celebrations, as already noted, was to accommodate the new activities without giving up Ookaan. There were reports of some Siksikaitsitapi wishing to end it: “most of the Indians who have taken cattle are against it.”279 These reports, if true, hint at some internal dissension, only to be expected within any large group. At the same time, these views might have been expressly articulated for official ears; after all, if interest in the practice was lacking, as claimed in the reports, no further action should have been required to discourage Ookaan. Efforts at assimilation were further diluted because of the competing denominational interests of missionaries. For example, in 1891, during a meeting convened by Rev. Trivett to persuade the Kainai to give up the Sun Dance, the Kainai chiefs promised to send their children to the Reverend’s school, if he would help them to secure the release from prison of “Good Young Man”. Paradoxically, as noted by Police Superintendent Steele, “the reason the Indians were anxious for his release is, that he is required to put up the lodge if they are to get up a Sun dance this year.”280 With some exceptions, the Siksikaitsitapi continued gathering annually for Ookaan on both sides of the border.281 In June 1897, a letter from the Indian Commissioner in Regina suggests that the Siksika had boldly requested not merely permission, but even DIA’s sponsorship for Ookaan. Although no assistance was granted, officials chose not to interfere “on account of its religious nature in their eyes and of the representations which have been made.”282 Further exploration is required in order to ascertain the circumstances under which permission was given. There could have been ongoing negotiations between the Siksika and the DIA that might explain DIA’s decision. However, what is clear is that the much-vaunted Sun Dance “prohibition” had its hidden transcripts.

278 Ibid., p. 213. 279 LAC, DIA, AR, 1897, pp. 133–4. 280 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 51, f. 313-1891, Report NWMP Fort Macleod, 9 April 1891. 281 Samek, Blackfoot Confederacy, p. 131. 282 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3825, f. 60511-1, “Letter Indian Commissioner, Regina to Siksika Indian Agent, 3 June 1897”.

86 Compared with some of their Cree neighbours, the Blackfoot suffered less interference with their ceremonies.283 While the Mounted Police were able to detain Crees and Salteaux without a warrant, they earned a judicial rebuff when they took similar actions against the Kainai. NWMP Superintendent Steele’s notes: “you will see that while we must have a warrant for Blood arrest, it is not in the opinion of the Indian Commissioner required for the weaker bands of Indians”. It is evident that the Blackfoot were aware that so long as no self-torture, giving-away of property, or alcohol consumption occurred during Ookaan, the agent could not disallow it. In the notebook in which he recorded his Winter Count circa 1910, Chief Bull Plume noted, “Duncan Scott [Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs 1913–32]. He told me that dancing was not forbidden.”284 The Siksikaitsitapi professed their compliance with the limitations and, in 1914, their agent concurred with their view:

No drinking or other immoral conduct has been indulged in. The grounds have been competently policed at all times day and night. No white visitors have been allowed. The duration of this dance has been the shortest time known to all the old timers; another feature there has been no horses sold as against 208 last year.285 In the light of such reports, ongoing harassment of Sun Dances seems unjustified; yet it continued. In 1914, after more than two decades of legislated prohibition, the new Agent at the Blood Reserve, W. J. Dilworth, wrote to the Assistant Deputy and Secretary of the Department of Indian Affairs, claiming, “[t]he Sun Dance has been held here yearly no obstacle has been put in its way.”286 Indeed, according to DIA’s annual reports, Ookaan continued at the three Siksikaitsitapi reserves. Christianity slowly gained adepts, but it lived side-by-side with traditional beliefs and, most of those who embraced it, did so superficially.287 Even leaders deemed to be “progressive” invariably maintained multiple wives and, when gravely ill, sought comfort in their traditional beliefs, not in Christianity. In 1921 Kainai Chief Shot in Both Sides deployed the white discourse of thrift to persuade the DIA to intercede concerning a directive by the Acting Indian Agent:

Hunt Blood Agent objects our holding Sundance before treaty day July 14 all Indians wish to hold dance 4 to 13 July then break camp

283 LAC, RG 18, Series A-1, Vol. 36 f. 817-89. 284 Glenbow Archives, M8188, Bull Plume’s Winter Count. 285 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826 f. 60511-3, “Extract from report Blood Agent July 2, 1914”. 286 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-3, “Letter 10 March 1914, W. J. Dilworth, Blood Agency, to J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary.” My emphasis. 287 LAC, DIA, AR, 1914, According to the 1914 census, c. 25 percent Blackfoot listed their religion as Christian.

87 and go for treaty money this will be much better as otherwise Indians would waste treaty money on dance wire me Cardston.288 This request serves as a reminder that, within contact zones, some aspects deemed beneficial by the colonised may readily be incorporated while others simultaneously are rejected—Indian Affairs officials did not always dictate how Siksikaitsitapi cultural transformation should proceed. Denying Siksikaitsitapi agency would be tantamount to endorsing the colonialist discourse that First Nations peoples were neophytes.

2.12 Conclusion

A clear understanding of the centrality of Ookaan in Blackfoot culture is crucial for gauging the potential impact of its prohibition. It appears that the regulations aimed at eradicating, inter alia, this most important Siksikaitsitapi ceremony continued to be reinforced regardless of their advances towards self-sufficiency contained in DIA’s annual reports.289 This suggests that the expressed rationale for the attack on Ookaan was a mere subterfuge, and that the true objective was eradicating Siksikaitsitapi culture to pave the way for Christianity and thus for assimilation, in order to fulfil Duncan Campbell Scott’s desiderata of “no Indian question, and no Indian department.” Forty-three years after Siksikaitsitapi settlement on reserves, familiarity with their lifeways and those of other First Nations had not resulted in a better intercultural understanding. Scott’s words echo the vanishing discourse of the early nineteenth century. Once in possession of First Nations’ lands, the cost of treaty promises was seen as a burden on the public purse. Fulfilling Scott’s desiderata required full Siksikaitsitapi integration into the body politic, and therefore their disappearance as a separate people. Ookaan was an obstacle to this goal, and this was the fundamental reason for the ongoing harassment.

Despite its public opposition to the Sun Dance, the DIA was biding its time, expecting the practice to disappear of its own accord, as was so often predicted by white observers. It was just a matter of time before those Siksikaitsitapi who knew and lived the buffalo days would die and, with them, their religious beliefs. This at least is what officials and missionaries hoped for, but they were to be disappointed in the long run. The limited reach of the regulations prohibiting aspects of the Sun Dance and curtailing travel, plus the tolerant approach to implementation in the

288 LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60,511-4A, Telegram 24 June 1921, Chief Shot in Both Sides to Commissioner Indian Affairs.” 289 See for example LAC, DIA, AR, 1896, pp. 301–2.

88 specific case of the Blackfoot, absolves the legislators from a charge of cultural genocide. However, DIA’s correspondence amply demonstrates that Indian agents were encouraged by their superiors, where possible, to go beyond the legislation to prevent Sun Dances. A personal letter to Indian Commissioner David Laird (Winnipeg) from the NWMP Controller Fred White (Ottawa) stated: “We all agree that the ‘Sun Dance’ ought to be suppressed.”290 In the final analysis, this de facto if not de jure prohibition had the potential for harming Blackfoot culture. That such an outcome was averted is a testimony to Siksikaitsitapi determination, but also to the machinations of successive officials in Ottawa being unequal to the challenge of deploying sufficient resources and manpower for full implementation of the restrictions. The Siksikaitsitapi were unequivocal in their refusal to give up Ookaan. If anything, their resistance to acculturation was stimulated by the demands placed on them by government officials. Against overzealous agents such as James Wilson, they succeeded by playing his authority off against that of the Mounted Police. Having compromised by eliminating some forbidden practices, they asserted their right to practice Ookaan. In 1939 Goldfrank reported: “the Kainai Sun Lodge has been raised annually since 1910, sixteen women vowing it, sometimes two of them jointly.”291 The Many Guns Winter Count likewise records that, with few exceptions, the Siksika continued to gather for Ookaan during the first four decades of the twentieth century.292 By mid-century, a new Indian Act was promulgated, and “most of the provisions for aggressive civilization and compulsory enfranchisement were deleted.”293 As regards the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, the changes in the 1934 legislation did not seem to have a great impact on the ongoing official campaign against Ookaan. Siksikaitsitapi culture had been radically transformed before they had first- hand contact with Europeans. In the first half-century after Treaty Seven, they exercised agency by defining the pace of their own cultural transformation. Without rejecting Christianity, the Blackfoot refused to abandon the practice of Ookaan. The Siksikaitsitapi experience exposes the underbelly of the “civilisation” enterprise and, incidentally also its potential deployment for genocidal behaviour. If the transformation of Ookaan during the early reserve era was consistent with the cultural revitalisation fuelled by the propinquity of the new living arrangements,

290 LAC, RG 18, Vol. 205, f. 136-01, “Correspondence re Blood Sun Dance. Letter 28 February 1902”. 291 Goldfrank, Changing Configurations, p. 43. 292 Glenbow Archives, M8078 F300/35, “Many Guns’ Winter Count” (via Paul Fox). 293 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” p. 23 and 30, citing Statutes of Canada 1951.

89 there were other aspects of Siksikaitsitapi culture that became transformed out of sheer necessity. Dress practices were transformed forcibly because of the individual and communal destitution attendant upon the destruction of the buffalo herds. Chapter Three provides an analysis of dress transformations in search of further threads of continuity, and seeks to interpret how old dress practices translated into the new.

90 CHAPTER 3

MATERIAL CULTURE AS A SITE OF COLONIAL NEGOTIATION AND CONTESTATION: THE GRAMMAR OF BLACKFOOT LEADERSHIP DRESS 1750–1930

3.1 Introduction

Having analysed the persistence of Ookaan during the early reserve era, in the face of official attempts at forcing the Siksikaitsitapi to abandon the practice, this chapter turns to material culture in order to seek threads of continuity within the transformations of Siksikaitsitapi culture attendant upon colonisation. It examines the nexus between dress, gender and power during a watershed period of Siksikaitsitapi exposure to the effects of colonialism, and thenceforth life under full colonial rule. It focuses on the political and gendered semiotics of Siksikaitsitapi dress. More specifically, it analyses the transformation of Blackfoot elite dress that reflected, first, their encounters with whites during the fur trade era (from c. 1820), and second, their transition to life in reserves in Canada and reservations in the United States (c. 1880). This chapter argues that, within this rapidly changing milieu, elite Blackfoot dress was transformed in creative and pragmatic ways that can be correlated with previously established intertribal gift-giving practices and diplomatic protocols. Seeking the threads of continuity within a tapestry of transformation, this chapter analyses how negotiation and contestation by the colonised were reflected in the sartorial choices of the Siksikaitsitapi elite. It proposes a reading of dress practices that draws attention to the manner in which the Siksikaitsitapi elite acted as self-interested and proactive participants in cultural transformation, rather than as passive victims of colonisation.

Focusing on dress practices as a dimension of intercultural relations lends complexity to the history of colonialism, because the materiality of sartorial choices as individual and collective projections of identity speaks its own language. As in McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message”, the practicality, diversity, and artistry of Blackfoot dress reflect the complexity of Blackfoot culture. Moreover, the shared characteristics between Blackfoot dress and that of other First Nations peoples of the northern Plains encodes a history of intertribal relations. The semiotics

91 of Blackfoot dress constituted a system of signs that, like other semiotic systems, was complemented by a “linguistic admixture.”1 Independently of language, the signifieds of Siksikaitsitapi dress could be “read” by those with an emic view of Siksikaitsitapi culture. Some of these signifieds were documented by outsiders, although it would have been impossible to narrate exhaustively these complex, fluid, and variable semiotic codes. The details mentioned in extant documents, however, will suffice for the purposes of this chapter, which is concerned with a radical dress transformation spanning one century, rather than with subtle changes or personal variation in dress design. The threads of continuity that emerge from an interpretation of dress practices provide one means of understanding that colonialism, as noted by Loomba, “is not the only history”2 of colonised societies. It is the purpose here to pay due attention to Blackfoot history before the white encounter, including, following Loomba, “ideologies, practices and hierarchies”3 that can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the process of colonisation.

The materiality of dress is utilised in this chapter to analyse the complexity of cultural transformations in the encounter between Blackfoot and whites, which are interpreted here as a process of “transculturation” (see Chapter 1). Peter Burke notes, apropos the encounter model, that academics deploy many terms to refer to the “cultural borrowings” attendant upon cultural interaction:

appropriation, exchange, reception, transfer, negotiation, resistance, syncretism, acculturation, enculturation, inculturation, interculturation, transculturation, hybridization (mestizaje), creolization and the interpenetration of cultures.”4

Burke argues that this variety reveals “a new conception of culture as bricolage,5 in which the process of appropriation and assimilation is not marginal but central.”6 It is

1 Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, trans., New York: Hill and Wang, 2nd rpt. 1977, pp. 10–11. 2 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 20. 3 Ibid. 4 Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 208. 5 Burke does not define bricolage, which in the original French means “do-it-yourself”. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the term was used in 1960 by R. G. Cohn to refer to “fiddling and tinkering with [literary] devices” by C. Lévi-Strauss in literary criticism in his 1962 La Pensée Sauvage. 6 Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 208.

92 worth restating that despite their heterogeneity, cultures maintain a coherence that is not easily threatened by cultural borrowings, what Burke calls “the creativity of reception and the renegotiation of meanings.” The redeployment of borrowings to a new context imbues different meanings to a degree that dispels the notion that “what was received was the same as what was given.”7 This is particularly apposite when analysing the transformation of Siksikaitsitapi dress across a century of gradually increasing contact with whites.

The chapter analyses dress during the era in which the lives and lifeways of the First Nations of the northwestern Plains were being transformed through an intensification of contact with traders. The presence of small numbers of white traders from the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries heralded the arrival of large numbers of colonisers, especially in the closing decades of the latter. The scarcity resulting from the excessive killing of buffalo, both by whites and First Nations peoples, translated into a scarcity of other game and thus into a shortage of traditional dress materials at a time when the wearing of European clothing was also becoming commonplace. At the same time as Siksikaitsitapi self-sufficiency came to an end, their increased dependence on government rations and clothing handouts conspired with white efforts to accelerate acculturation into white lifeways. The contact zone of the reserve as defined by treaty gave the colonisers unprecedented control over the everyday lives of the Siksikaitsitapi, and the ability to reconfigure tribal politics by exercising influence on leadership choices. Leadership positions increasingly became subject to approval by the colonial administration.8 The remoteness of Siksikaitsitapi territory had only delayed the imposition of colonial rule advancing westward in both the United States and Canada. In tandem with the rapidly changing political landscape, the complex semiotics of Siksikaitsitapi dress underwent transformation. However, this chapter argues that although colonial processes wrought many changes to the fluid modus vivendi of First Nations peoples of the northwestern Plains, the changes in Siksikaitsitapi dress did not always reflect white dictates.

7 Ibid., p. 188.

93 Reading dress as an indicator of changing social and political phenomena and, in particular, as an indicator of intercultural social relationships is valuable because the study of bodily representation allows us to “address human processes for constituting the social self, social organization, and shared notions of authority and value”9, as well as changes of these representations over time in response to internal and external influences. Dress, in particular, can be interpreted as a text that reflects not merely material conditions, such as the availability or scarcity of the materials utilised in its manufacture, but also the existence of networks and the workings of cultural appropriation, what Stephen Greenblatt termed “self-fashioning”. In his study Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Greenblatt argues that “the power to impose a shape upon oneself is an aspect of the more general power to control identity—that of others at least as often as one’s own.”10 This chapter will provide the historical context within which Siksikaitsitapi self- fashioning through dress can be viewed as embodying a fluid Siksikaitsitapi identity before, during, and after sustained contact with Europeans.

Plains dress is particularly apposite for this purpose, because of its capacity to signify to a wide audience—its grammar being understood by a large number of Plains First Nations—the personal qualities and achievements of its wearer within the secular and the sacred domains, which, as noted in a previous chapter, were indivisible to the Siksikaitsitapi. Moreover, the extensive use of dress as a gift of intertribal diplomacy, combined with the normative fluidity of cultural practices, contributed to the spread of dress traits and consequently to the hybridity of Plains dress. The function of Plains dress as a semiotic system has received much attention from anthropologists, in particular male ceremonial costume.11 However, interest has often centred on documenting ancient practice before “contamination” by white

8 Wealthy leaders could fulfil their reciprocal obligations to their followers independently and therefore did not require white approval to maintain their authority. In contrast, chiefs sanctioned by white officials relied on white supplied goods to fulfil their obligation to provide for their followers. 9 Hildi Hendrickson, “Introduction”, in her ed., Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, p. 2. 10 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 1. 11 See for example Thomas E. Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains, New York: Marlowe and Co., rpt. 1996, an extensive collection of dress traits that combines a wide number of sources. The

94 contact, and not on dress transformation per se, with the attendant danger of objectifying and fetishising dress as a relic. The emphasis in the extant documentation is synchronic; the approach here is diachronic.

The documentary basis for this chapter consists for the most part of “colonial” representations that are imbued, some more overtly than others, with dominant contemporary discourses of white superiority and “Indian” savagery (see Chapters 1 & 2). They collectively form a continuum that either disparaged indigenous peoples as “degraded” or exalted them as “noble”, often containing both views within one text. Despite the ideologically charged character of these texts, they include representations of Siksikaitsitapi dress by early traders, artists, and the amateur and professional ethnographers who encountered the Siksikaitsitapi from the early decades of the nineteenth century, and as such constitute an invaluable repository of primary sources for pre- and early contact Siksikaitsitapi history. This is a body of work that will continue to be revisited by those seeking to expand our understanding of early Siksikaitsitapi history.

Individual traders, travellers, and colonists had separate agendas and a wide range of attitudes towards the First Nations peoples of the Plains. An introduction to some of these early traders and travellers who documented Blackfoot lifeways will therefore serve to exemplify some of the disparate discursive positions that account for the heterogeneity of early Blackfoot representations during the two eras on which this chapter focuses: the fur trade era and the reserve era. During the fur trade era, painter George Catlin produced the earliest known portraits of the Siksikaitsitapi during his stay at Fort Union in 1832 (see Chapter 1). Catlin’s images focused on elite Blackfoot, and the flattering comments he made about Blackfoot dress need to be understood in that context. The travels in the Upper Missouri in 1833–1834 of Prussian Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied in the company of Swiss artist Karl Bodmer also documented elite Blackfoot.12 Maximilian’s and

title, and the first line of the “Introduction”: “When I was a little boy”, plus the title of the last chapter, “Relocation and Decline”, speak volumes about the author’s nostalgia for the past. 12 Ruud, Ed., Karl Bodmer’s North American Prints; John C. Ewers et. al., Vanishing Frontier, 1984; and William J. Orr and Joseph C. Porter, eds., “A Journey Through the Nebraska Region in 1833 and 1834: From the Diaries of prince Maximilian of Wied”, trans. by William J. Orr, Nebraska History, Vol. 64, no. 3 (1983): pp. 325–40.

95 Bodmer’s combined textual and pictorial representations provide invaluable glimpses of a moment in history that otherwise might have gone unrecorded. In his 1998 Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and North American Indians, Harry Liebersohn argues that Maximilian’s and Bodmer’s representations “embodied a distinctly Romantic vision of native aristocracy” while at the same time “their words and images were as faithful to the original as human circumstances would permit.”13 In their different ways Catlin, and Maximilian and Bodmer, focused their gaze on Blackfoot leaders. This was understandable, because diplomacy required acknowledging the authority of leaders. Moreover, because they wore the most attractive costumes, which at the same time encoded their accomplishments as warriors, leaders were the most obvious subjects of choice for Maximilian’s publication project, which was calculated to showcase the highest achievements of First Nations peoples’ culture, and not the dreary everyday. Consequently, these representations fit into the discourse of the “noble savage”, an image with a long genealogy that is traced back to Dryden’s 1670 play, The Conquest of Granada, wherein the noble savage is equated with nature, an image that was applied to Native Americans by “Europeans [who] have tended to imagine the Indian rather than to know Native people.”14 Maximilian’s project was conceived and executed following Alexander von Humboldt’s scientific travel model.15 At a time when little was known of First Nations peoples of the northwestern Plains, Maximilian’s and Bodmer’s sojourn to the Upper Missouri produced a rich hoard of textual and visual representations.

Traders’ journals, in contrast to the journals of “aristocrat” travellers, are filled with everyday events, and reflect the antagonisms attendant upon close contact and the pursuit of profit within a competitive environment. This is illustrated in the Journal (1799–1814) of Alexander Henry The Younger, a trader from a prominent New Jersey family whose first contacts with the Siksikaitsitapi occurred, not amid the pomp and ceremony of ritualised trade, but in more prosaic circumstances. In his

13 Harry Liebersohn, Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and North American Indians, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rpt. 2001, p. 4. 14 Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture, Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992, pp. 5–9. 15 Liebersohn, Aristocratic Encounters, p. 136–37.

96 introduction to the publication of Henry’s Journal, editor Elliott Coues describes Henry’s activities as “the humble routine of traffic with the Indians, whom he cheated and debauched as a matter of course, with assiduity and success, upon strict business principles and after the most approved methods.” In Coues’s words, this was a “sordid and not seldom nefarious environment, during dreary months of isolation and desolation”, when Henry wrote with “unterrified hand” not just about his First Nations customers, but also about English, Scotch, French, and American characters.16 As can be appreciated from the foregoing, early representations of the Siksikaitsitapi need to be interpreted not just within the broader context of an advancing colonialism, but also with due regard for the specific circumstances surrounding their production.

A starkly different approach to representing the Siksikaitsitapi was that of Grinnell who, as mentioned in Chapter 1, was a naturalist and amateur ethnographer who spent many summers with the Siksikaitsitapi during the late nineteenth century, and whose well-respected Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People was first published in 1892. Another amateur ethnographer, McClintock, also published a study of the Blackfoot, The Old North Trail (1992 [1910]), undertaken during a long sojourn in their territory that commenced in the spring of 1896. Both texts were based on extensive travels during which both men hunted and camped among the Blackfoot. The main purpose of Grinnell’s and McClintock’s adventure travel under the guidance of the Siksikaitsitapi was not initially ethnographic—both were university educated, but neither had trained in ethnology. Both men belonged to wealthy eastern families and their summer hunting expeditions in the West were motivated by a love of the outdoors. Both were adopted by the Siksikaitsitapi, and as such had access to knowledge of all matters concerning Siksikaitsitapi culture; and both became advocates for the Siksikaitsitapi, even though Grinnell played a much larger role as such. Consequently, Grinnell’s and McClintock’s representations of the Siksikaitsitapi are quite substantial and extremely detailed. Their discursive position within the context of their time is framed by the belief in the superiority of civilisation and the inevitable demise of First Nations peoples that also motivated photographer Edward S. Curtis to compile his twenty-volume encyclopaedia The

16 Henry The Younger, Journals, pp. 525 and 725.

97 North American Indian, between 1907 and 1930, in which he sought to document the dying moments of a race.17 Curtis famously travelled with a box of Indian paraphernalia, according to Thomas King, “in case he ran into Indians who did not look as the Indian was supposed to look.”18

The backdrop for the publications by Grinnell, McClintock and Curtis was provided by the professionalisation of anthropology in the United States under the influence of Franz Boas, who taught at Columbia University between 1896–1936. As mentioned in the introduction to this dissertation, Boasian anthropologists advocated cultural relativism in order to discard notions that the indigenous cultures of North America were in “a primitive stage in human evolution”. It is worth re-stating these disciplinary perspectives because they had a large bearing on the approach to documenting Siksikaitsitapi culture. Rather than viewing cultures as protean, Boasians valued First Nations peoples’ past over their present, which had been “contaminated” by European contact. The practice of salvage ethnology sought to document, not how people lived, but how they remembered their ancestral past, which was thought by Boasians to have been unchanging until white contact.

Grinnell and McClintock were influenced by this project of “salvage”, which formed part of the discourse of extinction that prevailed since the early part of the nineteenth century (see Chapters 1 & 2). The activities of professional ethnographers, who descended on the reserves during the early twentieth century, were also part of the “salvage” project. The representations of the sartorial practices of the Siksikaitsitapi emerging from this documentation were not limited to the observations of the authors, but also contained information on the distant Siksikaitsitapi past obtained from Siksikaitsitapi informants whose lives spanned two eras: non-sedentary life during the “buffalo days” and life on the reserves. The historical value of these texts resides in their having been written at a time when two radically different worldviews converged, commingled, and were transformed. This documentation, strongly based on the first-hand experience of the informants, is simultaneously emic and etic and, as with any mediated testimony, is subject to different forms of manipulation. The informants have control of the flow and content

17 Curtis, The North American Indian, p. 6.

98 of the data, and the ethnographer has editorial control of the published material (see Chapter 4).

Such representations, notwithstanding widely divergent degrees of familiarity with the culture they portrayed, were for the most part written and edited by non- Siksikaitsitapi. One evident exception is the work of the first Blackfoot (amateur) ethnographer David C. Duvall, who conducted extensive interviews with Blackfoot during the early twentieth century. Duvall was the son of French Canadian Charles Duvall and Yellow Bird (Louise Big Plume), a Pikani, and he considered the Pikani to be his people. He possessed reading and writing skills, and he spoke Blackfoot fluently. Thus he was able to transcribe and translate his interviews in the Blackfoot language, which he then forwarded to his employer, Clark Wissler, then curator of Ethnology and Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. Sociologist and anthropologist Alice Beck Kehoe highlights the importance of Duvall’s collaboration with Wissler, who published four papers that bore the hallmarks of Duvall’s work, although Duvall only appeared as co-author in Mythology of the Blackfoot.19 Duvall’s liminal position between two cultures allowed him to interpret and translate Blackfoot culture with a degree of accuracy that would have been beyond non-Blackfoot speaking ethnographers, although as the “junior” member of the team, his work was largely framed by Wissler’s directives and editorial prerogatives, which were dictated by the practice of “salvage”. Therefore, the tenor of the Duvall-Wissler collaboration was dictated by the quest for authenticity and the recording of the disappearing cultures that led Wissler and others to emphasise “traditional” culture to the detriment of contemporary practice.

The present chapter interrogates the early Siksikaitsitapi historiography with the express purpose of constructing a perspective of power based on the deployment of dress within the middle ground. Moreover, it analyses a gender dimension that, until recently, has been neglected in the historiography of Native America. Women’s absence from key events of the colonial encounter can be revelatory of their social position within their own culture, but also of the ethnocentric and gender biases of

18 Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Toronto: Anansi Press, 2003, p. 34.

99 the authors of the ethnological documentation.20 White women remained absent from the fur trade, being considered too frail for a life in which their indigenous counterparts thrived. This stark difference demonstrates the need to analyse the performance of Siksikaitsitapi women through culturally specific perspectives. I will therefore engage with the arguments proposed by anthropologists familiar with the Siksikaitsitapi, and the manifold ways open to Siksikaitsitapi women to acquire power. In particular, I will make use of the writings of Alice Kehoe, whose approach is grounded in Siksikaitsitapi mythology and is backed by extensive ethnographic research. While these perspectives do not provide the full emic view available to insiders of the culture, they do provide alternative readings of the experiences of the Siksikaitsitapi that counterbalance the male-oriented perspectives so prominent in early Siksikaitsitapi historiography.

This chapter’s analysis of Blackfoot elite dress focuses on two sites of encounter between Blackfoot and whites: the fur trading post before the imposition of colonial rule; and the reserve, which marks the subjugation of the Blackfoot to colonial rule. The significance of these sites resides in the fact that both functioned in accordance with white rules of inclusion and exclusion, but that simultaneously their purposes could only be achieved with the cooperation of indigenous groups. In the former, the safety of the occupants and the conduct of profitable business deals required acceptance and patronage by the region’s First Nations. In the latter, mutual cooperation was paramount to the success of colonisation while safeguarding the life and property of the colonisers from possible attack by the dispossessed First Nations. It is argued here that the need for cooperation between Blackfoot and whites permitted a certain degree of diplomatic manoeuvring and negotiation to occur (a topic already discussed at length in Chapter 2 of this dissertation). By focusing on these two sites of intercultural contact, this chapter examines the links between dress, gender, and power within the context of specific encounters between the Blackfoot

19 Kehoe, “Introduction”, pp. vi–xii. She notes that other Blackfoot referred to Duvall as “that French man”. She also notes that Duvall’s problematic identity was mentioned as a possible reason for his suicide in 1911. 20 It is not the intention here to explicate the position of Blackfoot women via Western feminist theory, which addresses radically different kinds of oppression and does not engage with structures of female power within the indigenous cultures of North America.

100 and whites. This analysis provides a view of the colonised as engaged participants in cultural transformation, and not merely as the objects of the coloniser’s designs.

It is noteworthy that intercultural exchange in the northern Plains did not begin with the arrival of whites. Diplomatic and trading networks, and even warfare, provided an arena for intertribal negotiation in which dress played an important role as the preferred gift of diplomacy. As a result of intertribal exchange, the dress of the First Nations peoples of the northern Plains that Europeans encountered was already hybrid.21 This hybridity, however, had more to do with style, and less to do with meaning. While stylistic traits may have been incorporated into Blackfoot dress from time to time, the ensemble remained sufficiently distinct to serve as an identity marker and even as an embodiment of Blackfoot identity. In 1832 George Catlin noted the distinctions between Crow and Blackfoot dress.22

The complex meanings encoded in dress, although specific to each tribe, would have been available to those with an emic view, friends as well as foes. The existence of such a semiotic system provides an entrée into the richness of Siksikaitsitapi cultural practices and their intertwining with religion in the Siksikaitsitapi worldview, which contradicts depictions of the Siksikaitsitapi as neophytes. Dress was a marker of status, but also a source of personal and communal pride. Moreover, the variety of dress provides evidence of the heterogeneity of Siksikaitsitapi subjectivities, and the many paths for achieving status within their worldview. In this regard, the aim here is not to represent an essentialist perspective of Siksikaitsitapi dress practices, nor to attempt to recover an “authentic” precolonial subjectivity that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak23 warns against, but on the contrary, to view these practices as a sign of an ever-transforming and viable culture, and, within this context, to view cultural identity as an ongoing production.

21 For the characteristics of dress in the Plains see Walton, et al., After the Buffalo were Gone, 1985; Ronald P. Koch, Dress Clothing of the Plains Indians, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977; Mails, Mystic Warriors; and Mails, Dog Soldiers, Bear Men and Buffalo Women, New Jersey: Prentis Hall, 1973. For the earlier impact of European dress on Native Americans in the Northeast, see Marshall Joseph Becker, “Matchcoats: Cultural Conservatism and Change in One Aspect of Native American Clothing”, Ethnohistory, Vol. 52, no. 4 (2005): pp. 727–87. 22 Ewers, Artists of the Old West, pp. 54–63. 23 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice”, Wedge Vol. 7, no. 8 (1985), pp. 120–30, cited in Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 21.

101 3.2 Dress Hybridity within the Intertribal Arena

The Blackfoot dress ensemble, including headdresses (war bonnets) and items of personal adornment (belts, necklaces, earrings and face paint), shared many characteristics with those of other Plains First Nations. This is illustrated by the similarities in the clothes worn by leaders from different nations painted by Catlin in his 1932 portraits. Intertribal trade accounted for such similarities. The use of hair locks to adorn shirts and dresses, for example, seems to have been widespread among the First Nations peoples of the northwestern plains. Like horned headdresses, these garments were reserved for those who had earned the right to wear them in accordance with the specific worldviews of their communities.

However, despite this hybridity, Blackfoot dress was sufficiently distinct as to be identifiable as Blackfoot by friends and foes.24 Soft tanned and whitened25 (with white clay) elk, deer, mountain sheep and antelope skins were used for shirts, dresses and leggings, which were decorated with dyed porcupine quills, strips of animal skins (such as otter and ermine), shells, hooves, elk teeth, and even human hair. In winter this outfit was supplemented with a plain or quilled buffalo robe. Necklaces and earrings were fashioned from a variety of animal skins, feathers, claws, bone carvings, shells and wood. Feathers and pelts were incorporated into designs in a multiplicity of ways, both for hair adornment and warmth in winter.26 The design of Blackfoot dress altered according to individual circumstance; designs were sometimes received as visions in a dream, and some garments were acquired as

24 For Blackfoot dress materials, patterns, and distribution, see Wissler, “Material Culture”, 1910; and “Costumes of the Plains Indians”, 1915. Blackfoot dress was “identifiable by the preference for large triangles, hourglasses, and diamonds, usually against a background of white. In many instances, the figures are composed of a myriad of tiny squares producing a stepped effect ... the overlay stitch was employed”: Walton et al, After the Buffalo, p. 57. For Blackfoot bonnets, see Glenbow Archives, M4376, f. 27, David C. Duvall fonds, “Dress and Ceremonies”. Three different war bonnets were used among the Pikani, according to Big Brave: “the straight up bonnet” and the “straight up bonnet with the boss ribs”, both made of eagle tail feathers; and the “horned bonnet”, fringed with weasel strip fringe with a pair of horns. Blackfoot shirts often had “large circular designs on the breast and back.” 25 It is possible that whitening, which is still practiced by the Blackfoot, was not a general practice in 1832, when Catlin described Blackfoot dress as: “chiefly dressed black, or of a dark brown colour; from which circumstance, in all probability, they having black leggings or moccasins, have got the name of Blackfeet”. Catlin, Letters, “Letter 8”. 26 Henry The Younger, Journals, pp. 525 and 725.

102 trophies of war.27 Deciphering these variations, however, was within reach of those with inside knowledge of Siksikaitsitapi culture. Catlin noted:

[T]here is a distinctive mode in each tribe, of stitching or ornamenting with the porcupine quills, which constitute one of the principal ornaments to all their fine dresses; and which can be easily recognized, by any one a little familiar with their modes, as belonging to such or such a tribe.28

The Great Plains was a contested terrain whose occupiers often spoke more than one language and, when required, communicated through sign language, their lingua franca.29 The visual messages encoded in dress were an extension of that sign language and as such were recognisable beyond tribal boundaries.30 Dress traits in the Plains were in a constant state of adaptation for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Survival depended on First Nations’ readiness to incorporate new technologies, and trade networks and war provided this opportunity.31 Dress featured prominently in gift exchanges within intertribal networks, during trade, visiting, peace-treaty meetings, and even during meetings with enemies at times of truce. A captured shirt or war bonnet encoded power and was as dutifully cared for as its local counterparts. This resulted in a dress code that was marked by myriad individual combinations and permutations of shape, colour and design, which bespoke each First Nation’s cultural and geographical specificities. A stark distinction separated everyday from ceremonial and war attire. While minimum dress was worn during the

27 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 352, on achieving supernatural power through vision quest. Big Bear’s father, after receiving the design through a dream, made a “red flannel coat trimed (sic) with otter skin around its edges with many brass buttons on it”: Glenbow Archives, M4376, f. 608–9, David C. Duvall fonds. 28 Catlin, Letters, “Letter 5”. 29 Nancy Bonvillain, Native Nations: Cultures and Histories of Native North America, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001, p. 180, cites one Arapaho individual whose lexicon included 3,500 signs. McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 403, attended a meeting where representatives of sixteen First Nations “talked freely and rapidly in gesture speech”. For intertribal rivalry see Dempsey, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks, pp. 81–4: the Blackfoot defended their territory from Cree and Métis from the north, Kootenay and Stoney from the west, Crow and Shoshoni from the south, and Assiniboine and Sioux from the east. 30 According to Nii’ta’kaiksa’maikoan (Pete Standing Alone), the Kainai used weasel pelts for their clothing, and, for this reason “were referred to as the weasel people” or Aapaitsitapi by other groups, a name which was mistakenly translated as Blood. Cited in Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 10. 31 Prehistoric trade took place at Mandan and Arikara villages, among others: Thomas F. Schilz, “Robes, Rum, and Rifles”, Montana The Magazine of Western History Vol. 40, no. 1 (1990): pp. 2– 13, p. 4.

103 hunt, personal sacred items or “Medicine” (see Chapter 1) were indispensable when raiding enemy camps, and the dress worn during ceremonies, such as initiations into the I-kun-uh’-kah-tsi, was codified according to the rules of each society. An array of European items available through intertribal trade long before direct contact added to this complexity, including glass beads, brass tacks, bells, stroud (coarse woven cloth),32blankets, and hats. The hybridity of Siksikaitsitapi dress thus resulted from the established practice of incorporating non-Siksikaitsitapi items that were deemed to be not only more practical, but also aesthetically pleasing.

3.3 The Interface Between Dress and the Sacred

The links between dress and the production of Siksikaitsitapi identity need to be explored in order to appreciate better how elite dress was transformed as a result of white contact. Dress, as other cultural, political and social practices of the Siksikaitsitapi, is interconnected with a sacred realm whose links to the present are constantly being renegotiated. Hernandez points up how the shared notions of what it means to be Siksikaitsitapi are linked to the Blackfoot Stories (a term she prefers over myth) and the Blackfoot worldview.33 The link between the Blackfoot Stories and dress is evident in the story of Scarface, which belongs to the Star Stories cycle. Scarface was a poor ancestor who travelled west and lived for a time with Natosi (the Sun), his wife Kokomi-kisomm (the Moon), and their young son, Ipiso-waahsa (Morning Star).34 The several versions of the story, documented during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, are dealt with at length in Chapter 5 of this dissertation. A composite extract will suffice here to establish the story’s links to Blackfoot dress. During his quest to have a scar removed from his face—a condition

32 Becker, “Matchcoats”, p. 767. Manufactured in Stroud, England, this cloth was made from recycled woollen rags; Catlin noted some changes in Blackfoot dress patterns and decoration “since the days of Alexander Henry twenty years earlier”, with trade beads providing decorations on Blackfoot women’s dresses. Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 59. 33 Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 36–52 and pp. 44–52 for the broader function of the Blackfoot Star Stories; Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, pp. 5–18; and for the function of myth, William Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore”, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 78 (1965): pp. 3–20, pp. 4 and 16. 34 Morning Star is the name given to Venus. See versions of this sacred story in: McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 524 (he translates Scarface as Poïa); R. N. Wilson, translates Scarface as Uk-ske, see Glenbow Archives, M4422, R. N. Wilson fonds; Uhlenbeck, ed., Original Blackfoot Texts, pp. 50–7; and Glenbow Archives, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds.

104 imposed on him by the woman he wished to marry—Scarface killed seven birds that were attacking Morning Star. In consideration, the Sun removed his scar and gave him a suit of clothing consisting of an elk shirt and leggings. It was ornamented with weasel (ermine) tails and seven bands of dyed porcupine quills that symbolised the birds’ tracks. The sleeves and leggings were fringed with “hair” taken from the birds’ scalps. When Scarface returned to his people, his dress was taken as a sign that he had become akáinauàsiu (“full grown in age”), a word that is often translated as “chief”.35 It is not possible to affirm categorically whether the story of Scarface reflects Siksikaitsitapi practice, or whether Siksikaitsitapi practice was shaped by the story, but what is certain is that this story inscribes the underlying dialectical relationship between dress and power in Siksikaitsitapi culture, as well as the link between secular power and the sacred realm.

In the version provided by Duvall, Scarface’s suit is uncannily close to the first-hand contemporary accounts and paintings of Blackfoot dress:

on the breast of the shirt was a plate of quills worked in and a plate of the same on the back of shirt... represented the Sun, strips of the quills were worked in, up and down the outside seams of legging and same on the sleeves, the strips ... being about three to four inches wide, the sleeves and leggings were fringed with hair locks ... representing the scalps of the cranes Scarface killed.36

The dress worn by Scarface in primordial times illustrates the connection between the sacred stories and history. The design of the quilled disk and seams is not unlike that of the shirt worn by Kainai chief Stu-mick-o-súks (Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat) painted by Catlin in 1832.37 Moreover, the Scarface story links the Siksikaitsitapi

35 Akainawa’si, and nina [which is elsewhere translated as “my father” and “man”] are also translated as “chief”: Glenbow Archives, M8458-4, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal (interpreter)”, 25 and 30 August 1938; Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 51ff, citing Thompson, refers to Sakatow or orator, as the term for a civil chief. He also explains changes to the position of war chief after the introduction of the horse. 36 Glenbow Archives, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds. 37 George Catlin, Stu-mick-o-súks or Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., Accession number 1985.66.149, available online from the Smithsonian American Art Museum at: http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/catlinclassroom/index.html [Accessed 2 Sept. 2007]; and Idem, Letters, “Letters 4 and 5”; in Letter 5 he notes: “There is no tribe, perhaps, on the Continent, who dress more comfortably, and more gaudily, than the Blackfeet, unless it be the tribe of Crows”.

105 practice of inscribing war deeds on dress, as well as the ideology that exalts such actions, to the sacred. The suit worn by Scarface was also like that worn by Ipiso- waahsa when he visited the Siksikaitsitapi, who continue to tan their hides white in memory of their “close relationship with Ipiso-waahsa and his father, Natosi.”38 The symbolic power of the suit derived from the prestige associated with martial prowess in Siksikaitsitapi culture, which was consonant with the collective goal of defending Siksikaitsitapi sovereignty and territorial integrity amid strong intertribal challenges.39 It was appropriate that those who emulated Scarface should dress in the finest elk or deer shirt and leggings (buckskins), richly beaded and fringed with highly prized weasel tails or hair locks from enemy scalps.40 There were also dress prohibitions, according to Bullchild:

the red-winged woodpecker’s feathers ... were the most sacred. All Natives respect them, they belong to Creator Sun … the only being that could use [them] on any of his belongings …[a]ll of his clothing was fringed with these … no one else was entitled to use them.41

Although in practice these markers provided a common ground rather than constituting inalterable rules, the correlation between ancient and contemporary dress in the sacred story opens the possibility of its being reworked to fit the present practice. If this was the case, however, it was not reworked to include mention of horses or guns, which were acquired by the Siksikaitsitapi through intertribal trade in the 1730s—before sustained white contact—and which effectively functioned as extensions of dress as signifiers of power and status.42

38 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 28. Italics in the original. 39 Contrary to popular belief, “most men did not go to war, only the trying-hard ones did”, that is, those seeking to improve their social standing. Glenbow Archives, M8458-18, f. 57, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Husband and Wife Relations and Horn Society”, 1938. 40 Weasel-fringed suits could be worn by those who have taken in war one of the following: bow and arrows, spear, shield, kills a person, medicine pipe, scalping: Glenbow Archives, M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal”, 24 August 1938; Henry The Younger, Journals, p. 726: “The young men have a more elegant dress which they put on occasionally, the shirt and leggings being trimmed with human hair and ornamented with fringe and quill work; the hair is always obtained from the head of an enemy ... [t]he gun which they carry in their arms, and the powder-horn and shot-pouch slung on their backs, are necessary appendages to the full dress ... the bow and quiver of arrows are also slung across the back at all times and seasons”. 41 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 331. 42 The Blackfoot obtained horses from the Shoshone, and “firearms and iron from the Cree and Assiniboine”, Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 11. Trader Anthony Henday met the Blackfoot in

106 Another illustration of cultural hybridity in the Plains is the ubiquity of horses and guns as markers of status and most sought-after war trophies, even before sustained white contact. It indicates that white culture transformed the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Plains long before direct contact. For special occasions, horses were “dressed” with elaborate costumes including feathers, beaded cruppers, and martingale chest ornaments (used mostly by women).43 They were painted with symbols that recounted the owner’s war feats, including “coup marks” and “horse raids or number of horses stolen”.44 In 1871, a Siksika leader, Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans), rode to a peace treaty on a white horse with all his deeds drawn in red paint on the hide: “loot, gun-loot, deeds, men killed”. Horses were the most conspicuous markers of status and the most coveted war trophies. They measured wealth and by extension the capacities and daring of their owners. Horse ownership was a direct means to achieve prestige, as is evident in a Blackfoot Story, “How the Blackfeet got the Pinto Ponies.”45 This little-known vignette relates how two youths went to the Southwest, spent more than a year away from their camp, and earned seats at the tribal council after returning with the first “spotted ponies” ever seen by the Blackfoot, which they stole, together with “beautiful wooden saddles decorated with high horns and silver, silver-encrusted bridles, and ... sombreros” embroidered with silver thread. One sombrero was ceremonially offered to the Sun during Ookaan. This vignette illustrates both the workings of cultural appropriation and the adaptability of material culture. According to this account, horses, saddles, and hats

1754–55, by which time they possessed many horses: Olive Patricia Dickason, “A Historical Reconstruction for the Northwestern Plains”, Prairie Forum, Vol. 5, no. 1 (1980): pp. 19–37, p. 29. 43 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 291, described horse adornment during a Sun Dance parade as follows: “[the] saddle had deer-antler pommels with beaded pendants and a beaded buck-skin crupper. Brightly coloured feathers were fastened to [the] horse’s tail and a large cluster of eagle feathers hung from his neck”; for martingales and cruppers, see John C. Ewers, “The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture; with Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes”, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 159, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, [1955] rpt. 1980, pp. 95–7. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a crupper as a “strap buckled to the back of a saddle and looped under the horse’s tail, to prevent the saddle from slipping forward,” and a martingale as a “strap or arrangement of straps fastened at one end to the noseband, bit or reins of a horse, and at the other to its girth”. See also descriptions of horse adornment in Mails, Mystic Warriors, p. 242. 44 Glenbow Archives, M8458-15, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans)” 1938. See horse painting in Mails, Mystic Warriors, pp. 219–23 and 234. Horses were also given names, and some became widely known: Glenbow Archives, M8078, f. 300/35, “Many Guns’ Winter Count” (via Paul Fox). A parade preceding the erection of the Sun Dance pole is described by McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 290, at which women wore their husbands’ eagle feathers during a Scalp dance.

107 were re-inscribed with Siksikaitsitapi meanings by attaching value to their acquisition and incorporating them into Siksikaitsitapi practice as signifiers of status. Moreover, by offering a sombrero to the Sun, the appropriation transcended the secular domain, becoming a sacred offering. It is evident from the foregoing that the acquisition of non-Blackfoot items of material culture was highly prized and not seen as “contamination”. This further explains the hybrid nature of material culture throughout the Plains. The common view of war trophies—including dress items—as symbols of power illustrated in the foregoing vignette, provided a mechanism for the incorporation of non-Blackfoot items of material culture into Blackfoot practice without any loss of cultural coherence. Guns were treated in similar fashion, and obtaining them through war was considered an achievement of the highest order.

3.4 Dress, Power, and Tribal Politics

An understanding of the “ideologies, practices and hierarchies”46 that were in place before the Siksikaitsitapi came into sustained contact with Europeans serves three purposes: it acknowledges that Siksikaitsitapi history did not commence with the white encounter; it demonstrates the complexity of Siksikaitsitapi intratribal politics; and it provides the basis for a more nuanced perspective of the process of “transculturation” resulting from the encounter. Siksikaitsitapi decision-making during the “buffalo days” devolved upon a number of well-respected band members (minor chiefs or councillors) led by a headman or chief. Some among this elite gained wider recognition and were therefore sought to provide advice regarding tribal affairs, although no leader possessed authority over the entire alliance (see Chapter 1). Respect for these leaders stemmed from their achievements in war, their acquisition of Sacred Bundles (and other sacred items considered natoyi or Medicine), and through their generosity.47 Moreover, age-graded societies provided a hierarchy for advancement that started in childhood and culminated in the most

45 Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, pp. 42–3. The story was confirmed by Hugh Welch, a Blackfoot, in correspondence with Leslie Wischmann. 46 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 2005. 47 Wissler, “Social Life”, pp. 22–3. For the concept of “Sacred Bundles” see Crowshoe and Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman, pp. 19–26; and Conaty, “Economic Models”, pp. 403–9.

108 powerful and feared of all societies: The Horns.48 Achievements within these different spheres demonstrated a person’s sacred “power” (see Chapter 2), and were signified in Siksikaitsitapi dress. For example, dress was linked to success in war via a hierarchy of deeds generically recognised as coups. The Siksikaitsitapi recognised as a coup “the capture of a shield, bow, gun, war bonnet, war shirt, or medicine pipe [or an enemy’s scalp].”49 These items were often distributed among the relatives of those returning from a war party, who reciprocated with their most valuable possessions. Within a social context in which honour was gained through generosity and in which ridicule was reserved for stinginess, a beaded suit, fringed with ermine or weasel tails, was highly regarded. War deeds provided a means to leadership regardless of social origin, and the appropriate dress was the sine qua non for a leader. Dress display was not always politically motivated, but provided at a glance irrefutable proof of the status of the wearer.

The ceremonial agenda of Akokatssinn (the Circle Encampment), and Ookaan itself, provided myriad opportunities for the display of dress and regalia. For example, during meetings of the societies and during the ceremonial transfers of sacred objects everyday dress gave way to carefully cared-for garments, which reflected the status of the wearer.50 Dress served to distinguish the members of the various Siksikaitsitapi age-graded societies, which during the circle camp held meetings and conducted initiations of new members. The initiation rite included the bestowal of the society’s dress and the accompanying instruction via prayers, songs, and face painting. Each society had distinct raiment, and within each society the dress of leading members bore distinct features to mark them as such.51 Dress was also on public display at different key moments during Ookaan, for example before raising the holy tree and before lighting the sacred fire, when individuals publicly recounted their past deeds of courage (coups). Moreover, the circle camp also

48 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, p. 119. 49 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 248. The acquisition of knives, axes and tipi-flags is also cited by Siksika Imiten.a. as a coup: Glenbow Archives, M8458, f. 88, M8458-15, and M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Imiten.a”, “Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans)” 1938; and “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal (interpreter)”, 24 August 1938, f. 51. 50 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 291. 51 Dempsey provides one example. The Kainai “Braves Warrior Society” had exclusive wear of a shirt with slits on the body and sleeves. It was adorned by several hundred brass tacks, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks, p. 88; see also Mails, Dog Soldiers, for the distinct dress of Plains Indians societies.

109 provided the best opportunities for aspiring leaders to dispense generosity and attract followers, with dress being one of the most significant articles of reciprocity. These examples do not exhaust the possibilities for the deployment of dress in Siksikaitsitapi culture, but they clearly indicate the importance of dress as a marker of status.

Buckskins, unlike a trophy that once obtained remains forever on its owner’s mantelpiece, circulated through an economy of transfer that prevented undue accumulation by one individual. To acquire the right to wear a Medicine suit, for example, the new owner had to be worthy and possess sufficient wealth. According to emic Siksikaitsitapi logic, markers of power such as hair-fringed suits could only be worn by those who had slain an enemy in battle, although chiefs who had never killed an enemy could acquire them, provided they had attained at least one deed of valour.52 Red painted dress and moccasins served to identify the male owner of a Medicine Pipe (collectively the property of a married couple), a most prestigious possession.53 Bullchild provides a connection for the use of red colour by noting that “Creator Sun” himself wore a

red-earth-painted white buffalo robe around his shoulders, and that was smeared with the red paint all over it, which made it look like it was a red robe. His face and hands, even his hair and all over his body, this red paint was smeared or painted.54

Failure to comply with scrupulous standards of veracity and the appropriate ceremonial transfer required to wear these garments, attracted social derision and even tragedy.55 These transfers served to reproduce Siksikaitsitapi institutions; they were a rite of passage and not a mere gesture, providing the initiate with knowledge in the form of prayers, songs, and apposite face painting. The “purchaser” rewarded

52 Glenbow Archives, M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal”, 24 August 1938; A Chief akainasawa’si (“full grown in age”) can buy a scalp if he has taken in war: (a) a gun; or (b) one of the following: bow and arrows, spear, shield, kills a person, medicine pipe, scalping; and Mails, Mystic Warriors, pp. 247 and 324. 53 Glenbow Archives, M4376-1, f. 143, David C. Duvall fonds. 54 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 350, also notes that, “Creator Sun had the eagle feathers and eagle plume on his head for adornment”. 55 Glenbow Archives, M8458-8, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk (interpreter)”, 12 September 1938: “supernatural ill” would befall those who did not tell “the gospel truth”; and Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249.

110 both the previous owner and the ceremonialist with material goods of significant value, which further contributed to wealth redistribution and the maintenance of a social hierarchy based on the pursuit of common goals.

Seen from this perspective, dress inscribes power within a holistic context in which the secular and the sacred are interwoven. The power inscribed in dress cuts across both domains, with material success attributed to possession of strong Medicine, and with Medicine ownership being “a property distinction because a [woman/]man must possess much before [she/]he can own medicine.”56 Dress imbued with power was not merely a marker of past achievement but also a harbinger of future gain. A war leader who possessed strong Medicine was more likely to lead his followers to success.57 Peacetime or civil leaders also required strong Medicine to ensure good outcomes for themselves and their followers in the hunt, and in the pursuit of the bands’ wellbeing. Success increased their wealth, and their generosity in redistributing that wealth enhanced their status and attracted followers. McClintock provided an account of the role of generosity in Siksikaitsitapi culture:

A Chief must be kind-hearted and open-handed, ever ready to share his food supply with the poorest of his tribe. His tipi must always welcome the stranger, and it devolved upon him to entertain generously the visiting chiefs and delegations from other tribes.58

Generosity also played an important role in leadership practices in Siksikaitsitapi culture. An example of how generosity could lead to prestige, and to possession of

56 Glenbow Archives, M4376-1, ff. 644 and 649, David C. Duvall fonds, for the economic aspects of “medicine” ownership; and Idem f. 619: according to Bear Skin, a man can be considered wealthy if “he has once bought many of the different sacred bundles and lodges ... although he may later on become a poor man”. 57 Glenbow Archives, M8458-8, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk (interpreter)”, 12 September 1938: “All chiefs have power”; John C. Ewers, “When Red and White Men Met”, The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 2, no. 2 (1971): pp. 133– 50, notes that men intending to go to war sought songs and power from the owners of Medicine Pipes and Beaver Bundles; Glenbow Archives, M4376, f. 638–40, David C. Duvall fonds: wise elders who prayed on their behalf would receive part of their booty. 58 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 188; and Larson, “Introduction”, p. vi. A Blackfoot leader who was “stingy” caused “most of the poor people who had lived [in his camp] to move away”. Glenbow Archives, M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal (interpreter)”, 24 August 1938: “A family will up and leave their own bands ... if the chiefs don’t help”. (emphasis in original).

111 the most ostentatious dress, is the existence among the Siksikaitsitapi of the position of Minipuka, the favoured son or daughter of a wealthy family.59 The prestige of the Minipuka was measured by their parents’ generosity when reciprocating gifts (including the most valued items of dress) given to the Minipuka by friends and relatives. After the parents died, it fell to the Minipuka to continue being generous to those in need in his or her band.60 Favoured sons were not expected to go to war, but as adults they could become leaders whose role was to provide for the less well off. Minipuka children occupied a position above their peers, including their own brothers and sisters: they were istuisanaps (others respect them). Throughout their lives, their dress was their mark of distinction.61 This is another instance of the crucial role of dress as a signifier of power in Siksikaitsitapi culture. Siksikaitsitapi leadership positions were open to those capable or willing to exercise generosity, and that authority was not vested in one person, but could be exercised simultaneously by various leaders.

3.5 Women’s Dress and the Politics of Gendered Power

A broader appreciation of First Nations women’s roles and the manifold ways in which they could acquire and exercise power is often absent from early colonial representations. The best known examples of First Nations women as guides and interpreters in white exploration and conquest in The Americas are Malintzin, who accompanied Cortez in the conquest of Mexico, and Sacagawea, who accompanied Lewis and Clark in their epic travels up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Columbia River to reach the Pacific Ocean in 1804–1806.62 Like these two women, many others contributed their talents and survival skills to achievements that, in the historiography, are represented as feats of men.

59 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, pp. 22, and p. 36. See also Oscar Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women among the North Piegan”, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 43, no. 2 (1941): pp. 173–87, esp. 180–1; and Goldfrank, Changing Configurations, pp. 7–8 ff. She spells the term “minipoka”. 60 Minipuka earned respect for their generosity, but impoverished Minipuka continued to receive the respect: Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, pp. 34–5. 61 The position of Minipuka largely disappeared during the reserve era, when government agents took up their redistributive role: Glenbow Archives, M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal”, 24 August 1938. 62 Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 2003.

112 Among the buffalo hunting First Nations, the adoption of horses reduced women’s role in the hunt. However, women’s occupations contributed enormously to Siksikaitsitapi wellbeing. They were the principal butchers and processors of pemmican, a mixture of dried meat, fat and berries that was the main nutrient of the Plains First Nations and a prized exchange commodity. Moreover, by performing specialised services as tanners, lodge-, clothes- and moccasin makers, beaders, quillers,63 midwives and healers, they enhanced their individual prestige and accumulated wealth, one of the markers of power in Siksikaitsitapi culture.64 A high regard for Siksikaitsitapi women’s contribution to Siksikaitsitapi wellbeing is evident in their sacred stories. Before they lived with women, Siksikaitsitapi men were poorly dressed. They wore “raw hides” because they had no knowledge of how to tan buffalo skins, and they “wore the gamble-joint of the buffalo for moccasins ... [and] did not know how they should make lodges”.65

Women owned the tepees in which they lived and their contents, therefore, when moving camp, women pulled down the tepees and loaded them onto pack animals. When pack animals were not available, women carried the loads themselves, but even when travois pulled by dogs or horses were used, the women themselves carried large loads on their backs. When arriving at a new camp, they erected the tepees, collected wood, started the fires, and prepared meals. The importance of women to the survival of the band was well understood by their male counterparts, as is evident in the reported words of Matonabbee, a Chipewyan chief who was part Cree, and who accompanied white explorer Samuel Hearne on a thousand-mile trek on foot from Prince of Wales Fort to the mouth of the Coppermine River in 1770–72. Matonabbee noted the importance of taking women on such a journey, rather than attempt it with only men:

63 Quilling was deemed to be a sacred occupation that required ceremonial initiation. Failure to undergo this initiation “led the quiller to go blind”: Conaty, “Economic Models”, p. 407. 64 According to Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 216: “Many of the doctors of the highest reputation in the tribe were women.” After a successful raid at enemy camps during the early 1850s, Red Crow sent a horse to a woman who had made the moccasins for his journey. Depending on the journey, ten or fifteen pairs of moccasins might be required on such a trip: Dempsey, Red Crow, p. 42. 65 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, pp. 124–5.

113 [w]hen all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable distance; and in the case that they meet with success in hunting, who is to carry the produce of their labour? Women were made for labour; one of them can carry or haul, as much as two men can do. They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as traveling any considerable distance, or for any length of time ... without their assistance.66

Matonabbee’s affirmation of the value of women’s contribution was elicited by the decision by the Hudson’s Bay Company that a male-only contingent should attempt the journey. However, for present purposes, the contrasting views of women held by white men and their First Nations counterparts are noteworthy. For whites, who often held a patronising view of women, these would have been a point of weakness during such an ordeal, while for Matonabbee, women effectively were stronger than men, since they could accomplish strenuous tasks that men could not. It was perhaps difficult for whites with an etic, racially prejudiced view of Siksikaitsitapi culture to understand how achievement across womanly occupations might be comparable with the more spectacular war deeds of Siksikaitsitapi men. As Wissler noted:

In pre-reservation days a woman was judged by the number and quality of skins she had dressed, the baskets she had woven, or the pottery moulded; and her renown for such accomplishments may travel far. When by chance you met a woman who had distinguished herself, it was proper to address her in a manner to reveal your knowledge of her reputation, as “Grandmother, we are happy to look upon one whose hands were always busy curing fine skins.”67

Through their activities, women honoured their nation, contributed to social reproduction, and gained wealth and prestige. Their achievements, however, do not feature as prominently as those of men in the year counts or winter counts, the pictographic records on which Siksikaitsitapi historians recorded one salient event each year. In common with white history, winter counts highlighted the martial deeds of men. When they mention women, it is mostly to record their being killed, often by

66 Ray, I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, p. 95. 67 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, p. 115, citing Clark Wissler, Indian Cavalcade, New York: Sheridan House, 1938, p. 290.

114 their own husbands.68 One remarkable exception is the Many Guns Winter Count (see Chapter 4), which, in the years following the cessation of warring, recorded the names of women who, having vowed to hold Ookaan, became Holy Women.69

Violence against women appears to have been an accepted norm, acceptable also to the whites who represented Siksikaitsitapi culture to white audiences, as is evident in the following explanation of the Siksikaitsitapi patriarchal social codes by Grinnell:

The man had absolute power over his wife. Her life was in his hands, and if he had made a payment for her [to her father], he could do with her about as he pleased … women who behaved themselves were well treated and received a good deal of consideration. Those who were light-headed, or foolish, or obstinate and stubborn were sometimes badly beaten. Those who were unfaithful to their husbands usually had their noses or ears, or both, cut off for the first offence, and were killed either by the husband or some relation, or by the I-kun-uh’-kah- tsi [the all-comrades societies] for the second.70

Reading Siksikaitsitapi women’s dress as reflecting their power is instructive, because it allows a heterogeneous perspective on their position in Siksikaitsitapi culture that can be contrasted with the derogatory and homogenising representations contained in the overwhelmingly male-authored historiography, and even in Blackfoot year counts. Moreover, Siksikaitsitapi informants themselves added to the repertoire of negative representations during ethnographic interviews. There is a gulf separating the portrayal of men as powerful and fearless warriors and that of women as unattractive drudges held in slave-like conditions by their husbands. Yet Siksikaitsitapi women, and more so elite Siksikaitsitapi women, were not without power. Foucault noted that individuals “are always in a position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising” power, and are neither “its inert or consenting target”,

68 Bull Plume’s Piegan winter count has only one entry between 1770–1923 referring to a woman in 1880: “When ‘Holy Milk’ killed his wife. The rest of the winter count is occupied with history (my emphasis). In similar fashion, Big Brave’s Winter Count only mentions women (three entries) to record their being killed, two by their own husbands. Glenbow Archives, M4364, “Bull Plume’s Winter Count”; and M1100, f. 127. 69 Glenbow Archives, M8078 F300/35, “Many Guns’ Winter Count” (via Paul Fox). 70 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 216. Uhlenbeck-Melchior notes that in 1911 there were three Amsskaapipikani women with cut noses living in the Blackfeet Reservation: Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, p. 78.

115 nor “its points of application.”71 When the circulation of power in Siksikaitsitapi culture is viewed through the prism of their dress practices, the generalised view of women’s abjection begins to crumble.

White writings of early encounters with the Siksikaitsitapi portray women’s status as one of servants of their fathers and husbands at best, and their slaves at worst.72 In 1832 George Catlin described them as “slaves of their husbands”; according to McClintock [c. 1896], “[o]f necessity women took the place of servants in the capacity of wives.” Despite this negative stereotyping of Siksikaitsitapi women, often represented according to the lowest common denominator, there is evidence, not least in the form of internal contradictions within the documentation, that women’s position in Siksikaitsitapi culture was more complex. Attention to these contradictions, and comparisons between different sources, are used here to suggest a more nuanced reading of Siksikaitsitapi women’s power.

The first difficulty encountered when seeking to analyse the relationship between Siksikaitsitapi women and power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is the scant attention paid to individual women, including elite women, in the extant representations of intercultural encounters. One exception is Catlin’s portrait of Eeh-nis-kin (The Crystal Stone), the youngest wife of Kainai chief Stu- mick-o-súks. Catlin was full of praise for Siksikaitsitapi men, but was more circumspect in his comments regarding Siksikaitsitapi women, whom he described as “not handsome”:

The wife (or squaw of this dignitary[)] Eeh-nis-kin (the crystal stone), I have also placed upon my canvass (sic); her countenance is rather pleasing, which is an uncommon thing amongst the Blackfeet—her dress is made of skins, and being the youngest of a bevy of six or eight, and the last one taken under his guardianship, was smiled upon with great satisfaction, whilst he exempted her from the drudgeries of

71 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 98. 72 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 216. A woman could be killed by her father if she refused to marry the man of his choice: “A girl ordered to marry a man whom she did not like would often ... hang herself”; Henry The Younger, Journals, pp. 525–6, 724, and 730; Catlin, Letters, “Letter 8”. For a Blackfoot informant’s view, see Glenbow Archives, M8458, f. 64, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds “Interview with Imiten.a”; and McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 189.

116 the camp; and keeping her continually in the halo of his own person, watched and guarded her as the apple of his eye.73

While Catlin’s impression of Siksikaitsitapi women is generally unflattering and in stark contrast to his admiring account of Siksikaitsitapi men, at least he provides evidence of the heterogeneity of women’s positions. As the chief’s favourite, Eeh-nis-kin had more power than other wives, and shared with elite men the privilege of being portrayed by Catlin. Her power, in this instance, was dependent upon being the favourite wife of a powerful man.

Catlin’s and Matonabee’s accounts represent two radically different perspectives on women. Siksikaitsitapi women, like the women of other buffalo- hunting First Nations, played a key role during the fur trade era. The increase in the number of wives taken by men in the Plains during this era is often related to an increased demand for the product of women’s labour, in particular preparing tanned robes for the fur trade.74 Some Siksikaitsitapi men at the height of this era were reported as having in excess of ten wives, in a hierarchical arrangement where the principal wife occupied a privileged position in relation to the rest. According to Oscar Lewis “[t]he native term for a wife lower than third or fourth means slave wife.”75 Furthermore, in the absence of available white women, traders entered into de facto marriages with First Nations women, who brought not only their talents and labour but also valuable family connections and expert local knowledge into the partnership.

One of the earliest depictions of Siksikaitsitapi women is particularly vilifying, leaving little room to consider that Siksikaitsitapi women enjoyed any power whatsoever. Alexander Henry the Younger described them as “a filthy set.”76 He was repelled by their hair “besmeared with ... red and lead colored earth”, which gave them “a savage countenance”. He claimed the “features of many of them would be agreeable, were they not so incrusted with earth”. Henry’s representation of Siksikaitsitapi women is somewhat contradictory because he also notes that the

73 Catlin, Letters, “Letters 5 and 8”. 74 Ray, I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, p. 169. 75 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 40. 76 Henry The Younger, Journals, pp. 525–6.

117 coverings of some women “are cleaned with white clay, and when trimmed with fringe and quillwork look tolerably well.”77 Henry declared Siksikaitsitapi women to be “mere slaves” of their husbands. Siksikaitsitapi men, he noted, offered their women to strangers “as they would bladders of grease, and often feel offended if their services are not accepted.” Henry’s scathing comments all but ignore an appreciation of the role of women in terms as those articulated by Chief Matonabbee. Although the latter agreed that hard labour was allocated to women, he interpreted that as one of the strengths of women and not as a sign, as indicated by Henry, of their being “held in slavery”. Wissler argued that the “lending of wives [by the Blackfoot] was looked upon as a disgrace, or at least as irregular”; although he suggested that some women may have occupied abject positions, especially captive women.78

As for the claim that women were offered to strangers, this is a familiar claim of the “debasement” of First Nations peoples that has been confirmed by Siksikaitsitapi informants. What is disconcerting is the generalisation of the practice to all Siksikaitsitapi women, which is patently inaccurate. Catlin’s letters contradict Henry’s generalisation regarding Siksikaitsitapi women, for example, where he notes the manner in which Stu-mick-o-súks treated his wife Eeh-nis-kin, “keeping her continually in the halo of his own person”, and how he “watched and guarded her as the apple of his eye.”79 This gives no indication of Eeh-nis-kin being treated as a “slave”.

Wider possibilities for understanding the links between Siksikaitsitapi women and power emerged from the research of professional ethnographers during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the later work of Kehoe, who proposed a radically contrasting reading of the workings of power in Siksikaitsitapi culture, arguing that power was open to all persons.80 What follows is an attempt to engage

77 Ibid.; and Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 350 explains Creator Sun’s use of red paint on his own clothes. 78 Clark Wissler, “Social Life”, p. 11. 79 Catlin, Letters, “Letter 5”. 80 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, 113–25; and Kiera L. Ladner, “Women and Blackfoot Nationalism”, Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 35, no. 2 (2000): pp. 35–60.

118 with the various ways in which power was open to Siksikaitsitapi women, and how these intersected with dress.

3.6 The Power of Women’s Business

Women played an important diplomatic role in intertribal peace treaties. Dempsey documented how Akai’niskimyaki (Many Buffalo Stones Woman), principal wife of Siksika chief Agwmaxkayi, earned respect as a peacemaker by bravely travelling alone to their Cree enemies in 1871 with a gift of tobacco, a sign of peace. Leading the Crees to a peace meeting, she held aloft the Union Jack, now functioning as an intertribal peace symbol. Unfortunately, only her husband’s attire has been described: he wore a military-style uniform (red coat with brass buttons and gold braid), a recent trade gift from the British Hudson’s Bay Company.81 One can only assume that for such an important occasion Akai’niskimyaki must have chosen to dress in her best regalia.

Siksikaitsitapi women’s dress, like that of Siksikaitsitapi men, was also connected to the sacred realm through the Blackfoot Stories, which posit chastity and modesty as the ideal female qualities. A woman reaches the zenith of her prestige by vowing to sponsor Ookaan, by which ritual she becomes the “Holy Woman”, “mother” of the whole tribe (see Chapter 2). The ceremony cannot take place without a woman’s vow, and only a chaste wife can do so, for the assembled are obliged to expose any transgressions. Women’s chastity, like men’s bravery, accrued prestige to the individual and her family. Elite women were perhaps under more scrutiny because the honour of their families was more closely guarded. Moreover, the Holy Woman’s pledge to hold Ookaan was (and continues to be) as vital in securing divine protection for the Siksikaitsitapi as men’s war deeds were in ensuring physical safety. An unchaste woman, like a warrior who betrayed his comrades, risked being killed by her own people or, at the very least, having her ears and nose cut off.82

81 Glenbow Archives, M8458-15, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds [M8458-15, “Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans)”, 1938.], cited in Hugh A. Dempsey, The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories, Saskatoon, SK: Fifth House, 1994, p. 73. 82 Jim Running Wolf’s mother had her nose cut off for infidelity in 1894, and in 1895 “All body mutilation and cruel practices were stamped out”: Glenbow Archives, M8458-18, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Husband and Wife Relations and Horn Society”, 1938; McClintock, Old North Trail,

119 In contrast to the “gaudiness” of Blackfoot male dress, the dress worn by the Holy Woman during Ookaan is modest. During her fast, she appears humble, with “an expression of great sadness and suffering” and her hair “down and red-ochred”83, symbolising the purity of a faithful wife. When she emerges from the sacred tipi where she has fasted and prayed during four days of confinement, she wears “a very plain robe, given by the mythical Elk Woman ... and headdress with moose hooves and crow tail feathers [Natoas].” In a groundbreaking study in 1995 of the role of women in Blackfoot culture, Kehoe attributes the modesty of a woman’s dress to her “intrinsic power: she is so secure in it that she need not flaunt her role.”84

Kehoe highlights that, according to the myth, the hooves and feathers had been given to Elk Woman as tokens by Elk’s comrades, “a moose and a crow”, after the three had pursued her to punish her for adultery. When the power of Elk and his wife was tested, Elk Woman’s power proved to be superior. This power of Elk Woman is embodied in the chaste Holy Woman. As a result of Elk Woman’s significance, elk teeth were the most valued decorations on a Blackfoot woman’s dress.85 The correspondence between the Blackfoot Stories and Blackfoot worldviews indicates the high regard for women’s chastity by the Blackfoot.86 Kehoe further argues that women are “the intermediary or means through which power has been granted to humans”, an assertion she supports by reference to the Blackfoot Story of the “Woman who Married Morning Star”, and by allusion to “human women” who received two of the most sacred bundles (The Beaver Bundle and the Thunder Pipe Bundle) of the Blackfoot.87 How these precedents from the sacred

p. 185; and Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 217, and 220. Grinnell notes that although the husband could justifiably kill a wife, she “was not a chattel that he could trade away ... [and] he could not sell her to another man” and that “Treachery (that is, when a member of the tribe went over to the enemy and gave them any aid whatever)” was punished by “Death at sight”. 83 Glenbow Archives, M8458-1, f. 6, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Chronological Story of Our Arrival and of the Sundance Events”, 28 June–7 July 1938: during the ceremony, the Holy Woman’s “face, hands, and clothing are covered with the sacred red paint”; Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 265–8; and McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 178–85. 84 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, p. 116. 85 Ibid., pp. 116–7; and Wissler and Duval, Mythology of the Blackfoot, pp. 83–85 provide two versions of the sacred story of Elk Woman. 86 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 331, notes the attributes “Creator Sun wanted to find in one girl … honesty and virginity.” 87 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons”, p. 116. Wissler, “Sun Dance,” p. 241, notes the relationship between the Natoas Bundle worn by the Medicine Woman during the Sun Dance and various Blackfoot

120 stories translated into power in the secular realm during the period covered by the present study is unclear.

Siksikaitsitapi social stratification provided advantages for elite women. Daughters of wealthy families entered into politically significant marriage alliances and brought important connections to their husbands. To be worthy of such a woman, a man required wealth and prestige. She would likely become his principal or “Sits-beside-him” wife.88 When receiving visitors a wife was expected not to talk, but merely listen and attend to the fire.89 However, given that wealthy Siksikaitsitapi had four or even more wives at any one time,90 the Sits-beside-him wife, according to Grinnell, was “allowed at informal gatherings to take a whiff at the pipe ... and to participate in the conversation.” She also exercised control over secondary wives and would not take part in lowly tasks.91 She would preside over food preparation and serving only when distinguished guests visited. Some privileged women were nina.ki (chief woman) and were “treated like a man.”92 Within the public arena, these women’s dress and their horse’s finery contributed to enhance the prestige of their husbands. The favoured daughters (Minipuka) of elite families likewise dressed in the best finery and were not expected to participate in menial work.

This summary of the place occupied by women in Siksikaitsitapi society in the late nineteenth century suggests that, at least during that period, women mostly had access to political power through their male relatives. However, it is clear from Grinnell’s summary that women who followed the example of Elk Woman, like men

Stories, including “Elk Woman, the Woman-who-married-a-star, Scar-face, Cuts-wood, Otter-woman, and the Scabby-round-robe”. For the concept of “Bundles”, Crowshoe and Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman, pp. 19–26; and Conaty, “Economic Models”, pp. 403–9. 88 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 217; McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 188; Wissler, “Social Life”, p. 11 uses the term “she who sits beside him”. 89 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 31. 90 Seen From Afar, a Kainai chief reportedly had ten wives c. 1850. Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, 2000, p. 163. 91 Grinnell heard of a man who had sixteen wives: Lodge Tales, p. 218. 92 Glenbow Archives, M8458-3, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal”, 24 August 1938; Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women”, p. 174, and p. 181, n. 7, uses the term ninauake, which alludes to a “demonstratively affectionate” woman. Lewis cites from the Journal of Duncan M’Gillivray 1794–95 that “notwithstanding the boundless authority of the men,—a few of the other sex wear the Breeches.” See also Beverly Hungry Wolf, Daughters of the Buffalo Women, Canadian Caboose Press, 1996, p. 98, to the effect that “Nin-Aki” means “First Woman”, as is the term used for “the wife of the Governor-General of Canada or the wife of the President of the United States.”

121 who followed the example of Scarface, could win status and gain respect. These contrasting views of Siksikaitsitapi women’s experience need to be more fully researched before a clearer picture emerges. Mourning practices, for example, are revealing: men would cut some of their own hair, “going without leggings, and for the loss of a son [not for a wife or daughter, they would] sometimes scarify their legs”. By contrast, women would cut their hair short to mourn all relations, and for their husbands, sons and other males in the family—but not for a daughter—they would sometimes cut a portion of a finger “and always scarify the calves of their legs”.93 The disparity in these practices tells its own story, but one that perhaps eludes “etic” interpretations. Could it be that women did not require special sacrifices to reach their destination after death? Or, could it be that their loss was viewed as less significant?

Despite contrasting and sometimes incomplete accounts, the existence of the noun nina.ki to designate women as chiefs, plus the ready acceptance by the Siksikaitsitapi of the authority of Queen Victoria as the “Great Mother”, suggests that perhaps, as Kehoe has argued, “anyone can aspire to becoming more powerful,” in the light of which we should strive for a better understanding of the ways in which women exercised power, a difficult task given the inbuilt bias and the many erasures of Siksikaitsitapi women from the extant documentation.

3.7 Transgressing Western Gender Stereotypes

Interrogating historical records on the experiences of women is complicated by a dearth of information. Representations of the First Nations peoples of the Plains tend to omit even women’s names, referring to them as someone’s wife, or someone’s daughter.94 Yet, Kehoe claims that Siksikaitsitapi women exercised power in ways that were not understood, and therefore not reported, by the overwhelmingly male chroniclers on whom we rely for early information of the Siksikaitsitapi. The extent to which women’s contribution to their communities became devalued as a result of contact with whites has been the subject of much speculation. Having explored some

93 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 194. 94 Georgia Green Fooks, “The First Women: Southern Alberta Native Women Before 1900 (1)”, Alberta History, Vol. 51, no. 4 (2003): pp. 23-28.

122 of the ways through which Siksikaitsitapi women had access to power in what could be considered typical women’s occupations, this section focuses on women’s acquisition of power in spheres that challenge white feminine stereotypes and perhaps even Siksikaitsitapi stereotypes of women, including participation in war.

There was no law to prevent Siksikaitsitapi women from going on the warpath and many are known to have gone on raids, while others achieved prestige through defensive action under enemy siege.95 However, little is known of the manner in which such women participated in tribal politics (by becoming band chiefs or councillors), and even less on the way that women’s dress and regalia reflected such achievements.96 Pikani Pi’tamakan (Running Eagle) became the only prominent woman war chief during successful horse raids on the Flathead herds west of the Rocky Mountains during the nineteenth century. According to Abenaki author and storyteller Joseph Bruchac, Running Eagle Falls in Glacier Park marks the place where Running Eagle sought “to gain the power of a vision” after her husband was killed by enemies, and from which Running Eagle “returned to lead them as a war chief.”97 Pi’tamakan was named Weasel Woman as a child, and is the only Siksikaitsitapi woman to have received the honour of a male name (Pi’tamakan).98 It was bestowed during Ookaan when she counted coup after “going twice into the enemy’s camp and taking six horses.”99 An account of the dress she wore during raids presents her as somewhat undignified, perhaps due to mistranslation: “men’s leggings, a sort of undershirt doubled over like a diaper (sic), a woman’s dress and a

95 Glenbow Archives, M4376-1, ff. 622-4, David C. Duvall fonds, recount of how four women being abducted by a Cree killed and scalped him. John C. Ewers, Plains Indian History and Culture: Essays on Continuity and Change, Foreword by William T. Hagan, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, p. 203, was told by Kainai Weasel Tail that his wife had been in five fights with him: “She carried a revolver—a six shooter. Once she took a horse with a saddle, a bag of ammunition and a war club on it”; Ewers photographed Annie Bear Shield in 1943, “who, as a young woman, accompanied her husband on war parties”. Uhlenbeck-Melchior recorded in her diary meeting Elk Yells in the Water, Bear Chief’s wife, who used to accompany her husband on horse raids: Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, p. 38. 96 Glenbow Archives, M8458, f. 66, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Imiten.a”: Imiten.a, unfavourably compares the attitude to war of Siksika women (“They are all cowards here”) to that of the Pikani women. 97 Joseph Bruchac, Our Stories Remember: American Indian History, Culture, and Values through Storytelling, Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2003, p. 165. 98 James Willard Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, Helena: Montana Historical Society and Riverbend Publishing, [1916] 2002, pp. 10-18. Beverly Hungry Wolf recounts a slightly different story to that of Schultz in Ways of My Grandmothers, pp. 59-68.

123 blanket coat.”100 This is hardly an outfit befitting a respected warrior. Another account simply notes that she wore “men’s clothing when on a raid” and “woman[’s] clothing” at home.101 No other Siksikaitsitapi woman is known to have led war parties, and no female image emerged to counterbalance that of the iconographic male warrior on horseback. Running Eagle achieved distinction within a field of endeavour in which not many women participated, having counted coup three times by taking “a gun from the man she herself killed.”102 However, even women who did not court raiding were not exempt from engaging in war through defensive action.103 When very young, Calf Old Woman, a Siksika, was captured by her father’s killer:

while they were riding together she stabbed him with his own knife, tossed his body from the horse’s back, scalped him, cut off his right arm, picked up his gun and rode back for her people ... chased most of the way, she returned with the three greatest trophies a warrior can wrest from an enemy.104

For her actions, Calf Old Woman earned the honour to “sit as a warrior in Blackfoot councils”. Unfortunately, no documentation has come to light regarding the inscription of her achievements on her dress; it is not known if, having become a “warrior,” she wore the same dress of her male counterparts.

Viewed against stereotypical roles, women’s participation in war may appear to be transgressive. However, it is easy to understand in practical terms why women would engage in war when survival was at stake. Moreover, Kehoe argues that Blackfoot practices provide for “autonomy” to be exercised by any living being, and

99 Schultz, Blackfeet Tales, p. 14. 100 Ewers, Plains Indian History, citing Weasel Tail’s account which, he notes, differs from that of James Willard Schultz, Running Eagle, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919; see also Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 347ff, citing another Pikani, Lance Woman, who went on the warpath wearing men’s clothing so as to be to be inconspicuous. 101 Schultz, Blackfeet Tales, pp. 14-15. 102 Ibid., p. 18. 103 Glenbow Archives, M4376, David C. Duvall fonds, ff. 622-624, regarding four women being abducted by a Cree, who killed and scalped him. 104 Sarah Carter with Dorothy First Rider. Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997, p. 27, citing Julian Ralph, On Canada’s Frontier: Sketches of History, Sport and Adventure, and of Indians, Missionaries and Fur Traders of Western Canada, New York: Harper, 1892, pp. 24-5.

124 that “[c]ompetence is the outward justification for the exercise of autonomy.”105 This is demonstrated by the existence of a category of women among the Blackfoot known as ninauposkitzipxpe (manly-hearted women), which was documented in 1939 by ethnographers Oscar Lewis and Esther Goldfrank among the Pikani in Montana and the Kainai in Alberta, respectively. This social category having survived colonisation and its attendant cultural transformations.106 According to Lewis, manly-hearted women were mature, married, and wealthy women who possessed traits such as “aggressiveness, independence, ambition, boldness and sexuality”, but who were not masculine. Some of them had been Minipuka (favoured children) and became ninauposkitzipxpe in their later years. Lewis notes that they “excelled in feminine occupations”, as tanners, seamstress and beaders. He also notes that at the time of his study, “the six most important medicine women on the reserve [were] all in the manly-hearted group.” Manly-hearted-women exercised economic power independently from their husbands and possessed an “ability to control social situations.” They were set apart from other women by virtue of the fact that “they wore well-tanned skins, expensive buckskin dresses decorated with elk-teeth, and fine leggings embroidered with porcupine quills”. Lewis argued that manly-hearted women were viewed by the Piegan as “deviants” because of their lack of compliance with the established standards of female behaviour, which “laud meekness and docility and require women to relegate themselves to the background of Piegan social life.”107 Against this view, Kehoe cites Ruth Benedict, who supervised Lewis and Goldfrank, and who argued that the Blackfoot ethos as described by Lewis placed such a strong emphasis on self-assertiveness that expecting “women reared in such an atmosphere to be mild and submissive is too great a demand to make—and so you get ... manly hearted women.”108 In other words, Benedict did not see manly-

105 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons,” pp. 122-4. 106 Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women”; and Goldfrank, Changing Configurations, pp. 48-9. Also termed nínapusi kitsipapi (“woman-with-a-man’s-heart”): Glenbow Archives, M8458-18, f. 57, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Husband and Wife Relations and Horn Society”, 1938; or ninauh-oskitsi- pahpyaki, Hugh A. Dempsey, The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. 107 Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women”, pp. 178 and 187. 108 Kehoe, “Blackfoot Persons,” p. 116.

125 hearted women as being transgressive, but rather she saw Blackfoot practices as encouraging such behaviour.109

Lewis’s own interpretation, in which he demonstrates the exercise of power by manly-hearted women, has the effect of denying the very premise that his evidence establishes—manly-hearted women were not outcasts, and their role was well within the parameters of Siksikaitsitapi practices. Moreover, manly-hearted women achieved across what can be considered western “feminine” and “masculine” spheres. Lewis argued that the important social, economic and religious roles played by Pikani women did not prevent the Pikani from placing “a premium on masculinity”, encouraging “male dominance”. He argued that this dominance was evident in:

The bride price, preferred patrilocal residence, the double standard and wife beating, the formal age grades and institutionalized friendship relationships that exist only for men, the exclusive participation of men in the tribal government and the channelization of prestige to the men.110

Lewis, like his white male predecessors, identified ways in which male power was exercised to the exclusion of women. However, Lewis also found that some women, albeit not all women, had access to forms of power in Siksikaitsitapi culture. These women possessed personal power that transcended gender differences.

Siksikaitsitapi women’s dress, like that of their male counterparts, appears to signify power within an system of values that recognised a wide range of paths to achievement for both men and women, leading to wealth and public recognition. These specific examples of the opportunities open to women in Siksikaitsitapi culture indicate that those depictions that refer to them as mere slaves of men fall far short of presenting a reliable perspective.

109 Dempsey, The Vengeful Wife, p. 62 notes that “women who took a male role commanded much more respect” than males who took on a female role. 110 Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women”, p. 175. Males chose a tak.a or takai (friend) from early childhood. This relationship was formalised through joint participation in societies, warfare, and at times even through the sharing of a woman.

126 3.8 Power Dressing During the Buffalo Days (1750–1880)

Before the arrival of Europeans in the Plains of North America, dress fulfilled an important function as a marker of status and as a significant gift of intertribal diplomacy. The European fur trade introduced radical changes to Siksikaitsitapi dress and regalia, particularly that of Siksikaitsitapi leaders who negotiated trading conditions on behalf of their followers. These leaders were often involved in the subsequent signing of treaties and continued to exert leadership during the early reserve era. Their function thus required them to address two opposed audiences and worldviews: the colonial bureaucracy demanding the replacement of Siksikaitsitapi tradition with white practices, on one side, and their Siksikaitsitapi followers, most of whom were reluctant to embrace white ways, on the other.

The fur trade era had a profound effect on the political landscape of the Plains. For the Siksikaitsitapi, whose territory continued to be off-limits to whites until the 1870s, this was a time of radical transformation, with a vast array of European goods becoming available to First Nations in exchange for animal pelts, provisions and horses. White traders’ survival at far-flung trading posts required the co-operation and acceptance of their presence by the indigenous inhabitants.111 The latter came to depend on European goods so as to avoid becoming the victims of better-armed enemies. Both parties in the trading encounter pursued their own interests while momentarily setting aside cultural differences and mutual distrust.112 These circumstances created the middle ground, the era ushered in by the fur trade, which is generally considered to be a high point in the florescence of Plains cultures. This is particularly evident in the adornment of Siksikaitsitapi dress.

As mentioned earlier (see Chapter 1), Siksikaitsitapi participation in the fur trade took place outside Siksikaitsitapi territory, involving extensive travelling on their part. Trade was conditioned by the competition for Siksikaitsitapi trade, first among British (Hudson’s Bay Company) and Canadian (Northwest Company)

111 Ray, “The Northern Great Plains”, pp. 263-79. 112 A 1805 entry in Henry The Younger, Journals, p. 264, reads: “let no white man be so vain as to believe that an Indian really esteems him or supposes him to be his equal. No—they despise us in their hearts, and all their outward professions of respect and friendship proceed merely from the necessity under which labor of having intercourse with us to procure their necessaries.”

127 traders c. 1794–1821, and from 1830 onwards—when both companies joined forces—between the Canadian and American companies.113 The middle ground of the trading post during the buffalo days was created by the mutual profits of the fur trade, and mutual need. White argues that the middle ground was best documented in official encounters, but it originated from “daily encounters” that required solution to immediate problems revolving “around basic issues of sex, violence, and material exchange.”114 The fur trade posts provided a space for co-operation, negotiation, and at times conflict, not only between Siksikaitsitapi and white traders, but also between enemy First Nations that converged on the posts.115 The advance of traders into territories dominated by First Nations set them at a temporary disadvantage, since they must depend on their First Nations trading partners, not only for profit, but also for supplies of food. First Nations peoples, for their part, required European goods that had become indispensable, such as guns, kettles, blankets, and even glass beads and paints that replaced traditional materials that required more time and effort to produce. This mutual dependency/profit is crucial to our understanding of how the middle ground operated as a catalyst for cultural transformation. This middle ground disappeared with the herds of American bison, which coincided with the arrival of larger numbers of settlers. Henceforth, whites saw the First Nations peoples of the Plains as mere obstacles to their colonising enterprise, rather than trading partners who played an essential role in their livelihood and wellbeing.

Competition maintained the middle ground by forcing traders to offer better products, prices and conditions. Long established trading rituals observing indigenous giveaway practices were a means to attract trade, with gifts of alcohol and tobacco becoming the norm from the earliest encounters with eastern First Nations.116 The grammar of these rituals reflected power hierarchies on both sides of

113 According to a Blood winter count, in 1845 the Kainai “separated in two parties for trading, the one going to [Fort] Benton and the other to Rocky Mountain House.” Glenbow Archives, M4421, R. N. Wilson fonds, “Bad Head’s Blood Winter Count”; Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 28. 114 White, Middle Ground, esp. pp. 50-93; and Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, p. xi. 115 McGregor, Father Lacombe, pp. 199-200, notes an attack on the Blackfoot at Fort Edmonton by Stonies and Creeks. 116 During the first encounter with the Delawares, the Dutch gave them “a round of liquor ... iron and cloth gifts”. James Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, esp. p. 131; and Becker, “Matchcoats”, pp. 771-3. The Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort Edmonton in 1795 on the North Saskatchewan River, and Rocky

128 the encounter. Although profit, rather than politics, was the driving force of the fur trade, competition increased the need for diplomacy. Traders mediated between First Nations to avoid disruptions of trade occasioned by intertribal conflict.117

Trading posts were locations where many of the earliest representations of First Nations peoples of the northwestern Plains and their lifeways took shape. Apart from housing the trade companies’ employees and their common-law indigenous wives, these places were a hub for white visitors from faraway places. Many of them came West eager to become acquainted with a way of life that had already been radically transformed in the East, and was believed to be destined to disappear with the westward advance of colonialism. Apart from the journals that trading companies required their employees to keep, professional travellers, including naturalists, ethnographers, and artists, produced a number of texts, photographs, and paintings that constitute the early white historiography of the region. Siksikaitsitapi oral and pictographic knowledge of the past was often collected by these travellers and incorporated into their writing (see Chapter 4), although often without acknowledging their sources.

This kind of travel literature about the exotic New World is not unlike that of English travellers in Latin America that Mary Louise Pratt addressed in her study, Imperial Eyes, in which she coined the concept of the “contact zone” (see Chapter 2).118 The term “contact zone”, which many scholars find useful is not used in this chapter because, unlike the “middle ground”, which specifically addresses a set of relationships that approximates equal terms, the term “contact zone” does not allow for a distinction to be made between the two stages of colonialism addressed in this chapter. Referring specifically to the “the fur trade” and “the reserve” allows for a distinction to be made between the radically different regulation of social interactions between First Nations peoples and whites corresponding to those eras.

Mountain House in 1799 on the mouth of the Saskatchewan. American traders built a post on the Missouri River in 1831. Dempsey, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks, pp. 82-3. Gift giving was extensively utilised by European traders in order to attract clientele, and it became de rigueur prior to trade transactions. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 67-68, 137. 117 In 1831 Kenneth McKenzie, a “northern” trader who later joined the American Fur Company, brokered a formal peace between the Blackfoot and Assiniboines in order to attract Blackfoot trade to Fort Union, in Assiniboine territory. However in 1833 the Assiniboines attacked some Pikani trading at Fort McKenzie. Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 59-63.

129 Catlin described the “Indians” of the Upper Missouri as being “the most beautifully costumed of any on the Continent” and commented on the “elegance and richness” of Siksikaitsitapi dress. This richness is evident in Catlin’s painting of Kainai chief Stu-mick-o-súks, one of many portraits he painted during this sojourn at Fort Union in 1832.119 Catlin’s admiration for the First Nations peoples of the Plains was also expressed in the letters he wrote at this time. The subjects of his portraits were a privileged elite, and as such, their attire would have been the best that was available. Where others may have used the lowest common denominator to generalise about Siksikaitsitapi dress, Catlin portrayed elite dress. His textual representation of Stu-mick-o-súks’s dress is as follows:

a shirt or tunic, made of two deer [skins] finely dressed ... the seams ... covered with a band of two inches in width, of very beautiful embroidery of porcupine quills, and suspended from the under edge of this ... a fringe of the locks of black hair, which he has taken from the heads of victims slain by his own hand in battle. The leggings ... of the same material ... wrought and fringed with scalp locks ... worn as trophies ... And over all, his robe, made of the skin of a young buffalo bull, with the hair remaining on; and on the inner or flesh side, beautifully garnished with Porcupine quills, and the battles of his life very ingeniously, though rudely, portrayed in pictorial representations.120

Catlin’s claim that Siksikaitsitapi dress was among the best in the Plains is confirmed through his paintings, especially the portrait of Stu-mick-o-súks. The “robe” mentioned by Catlin, which does not appear in the painting, belongs to a well- documented “autobiographical” pictographic genre used by the Siksikaitsitapi to record war achievements (see Chapter 4). This genre, known as “Story Robe” reflects the fact that Siksikaitsitapi history—if by that we understand the recording of past events—did not begin with white arrival.

118 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 4. 119 Catlin, Letters, “Letters 4 and 5”. 120 Ibid., “Letter 5”.

130 3.9 Trade Captains and Fur Trade Wives

Gifts of clothing were bestowed on “trade captains”—as the chiefs of large trading parties were dubbed—to bolster their authority, to secure their custom, to ensure the repayment of credit extended to their followers, and to guarantee peaceful trading. In the event of failure to fulfil expectations, the gifts were held back.121 The “Captains’ Outfit” presented by the Hudson’s Bay Company comprised:

A course cloth coat, either red or blue, lined with baize, with regimental cuffs and collar. The waistcoat and breeches are of baize: the suit is ornamented with broad and narrow orris lace of different colours; a white or checked shirt; a pair of yarn stockings tied below the knee with worsted garters; a pair of English shoes. The hat is laced and ornamented with feathers of different colours. A worsted sash tied around the crown, an end hanging out on each side down to the shoulders. A silk handkerchief is tucked by a corner into a loop behind; with these decorations it is put on the captain’s head and completes his dress. The lieutenant is also presented with an inferior suit.122

The outfit was not quite a military uniform, more like a second-rate copy; the lieutenant’s “inferior suit” even more so. Perhaps the gift of the suit can be read in terms of an ambivalent colonial discourse that, according to Bhabha, “is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”.123 The shoes and stockings, not to mention the silk handkerchief, would have been ridiculously inappropriate, and were probably discarded immediately. The resulting attire helped whites to recognise trading partners, while signalling the privileged position of the wearer as an intermediary in

121 Henry The Younger, Journals, p. 507; Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 137-9, and 162 n. 5, citing Morton, ed., The Journal of Duncan M’Gillivray, Toronto: 1929, p. 74: “if a band failed to obtain a sufficient quantity of furs or provisions to pay off its debts, the band leader was denied these symbols of office.” 122 Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, pp. 139 and 162, n. 4, citing Glyndwr Williams, Andrew Graham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay 1767-1791, London: The Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1969, p. 317. The custom was still observed in 1870, when two Siksika chiefs were persuaded to trade at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Fort Edmonton, rather than at the American Fort Whoop-Up, receiving, among other gifts, “complete uniforms—red coats with brass buttons and gold braid, pants, shirts, and silk top hats decorated with red and blue plumes”, see Hugh A. Dempsey, The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories, Saskatoon, SK: Fifth House, 1994, p. 73; and Glenbow Archives, M8458-15, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans)” 1938, to the effect that the only presents women received were “buttons”. 123 Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 86.

131 trade transactions: the “recognizable Other.” It could also have indicated a friendly disposition to deal with whites, an expectation that so often went unfulfilled. Alexander Henry the Younger described a trading visit by the Pikani in 1810 that commenced with the factor or chief trader124 greeting the arriving bands, who were led by the principal man or band chief, followed by others in order of “rank or precedence, derived from the number of scalps taken in war”125. The leader presented one of his best horses and some buffalo robes to the factor. Factors reciprocated by presenting leaders with flags, military double-breasted jackets, top hats decorated with eagle plumes.126 These gifts—not readily available to non-elites—were henceforth incorporated into Siksikaitsitapi elite clothing.

In practice, gifts of clothing were an incentive to trade and thus attainable by those from whom European traders could profit, regardless of their status. A fur trader from the Northwest Company complained that “after making the father a chief [by giving him presents before trade], you are sometimes obliged to do the same thing with his son in order to secure his hunt, for the former has not the power to secure it for you.”127 Whether or not this impression was created in order to obtain the extra benefits, it resulted in the sartorial trappings of a chief being bestowed according to white convenience, perhaps a portent of things that would follow the imposition of full white hegemony. The fluidity of traditional Siksikaitsitapi dress practices paved the way for the adoption of the trade captain’s uniform. Exchanging gifts, especially buckskin suits, during friendly intertribal meetings and peace treaty parlays was a long established tradition. With increased white contact, gifts of military-style dress followed this established pattern. In 1833, Pikani chief Mehkskeme-Sukahs or Iron Shirt presented trader David Mitchell of the American Fur Company with “a scarlet uniform he had received from the English” as a signal

124 After 1796 trade was regulated in the U. S. through a “factory system”, where “factor” was the name given to the chief of a trading post: Horsman, “United States Indian Policies”, p. 34. 125 Henry The Younger, Journals, p. 728. 126 Flags were highly prized, coveted trophies of war. A Pikani year count records the most salient event of 1801 as follows: “When we took the Stars and Stripes from the River Indians”: Glenbow Archives, M4364, Bull Plume’s Winter Count. Flying a flag was a sign of peaceful intentions, although this was not always observed in practice as noted by Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 60, citing an attack on white traders by a Gros Ventre band flying the American flag. 127 Lewis, Effects of White Contact, pp. 42-3; and Henry The Younger, Journals, p. 654: “Black Bear having given me 10 large beavers, I gave him a chief’s coat and hat.”

132 of “his willingness now to trade with the Americans.”128 In such manner, whites were drawn into the economy of transfer—acculturation flowed in two directions.

White favouritism could also backfire. In 1833 a dispute arose after Bear Chief, a Pikani leader, was presented with “a double-barreled shotgun … a beautiful new uniform and a red felt hat”, arousing the envy and anger of the Kainai at the post, who killed Bear Chief’s nephew in retaliation.129 An oft-quoted instance of the conferring of distinction by traders in excess of the recipient’s actual status involved Siksika chief Isapo-muxica (Crowfoot) during the time when he was a band chief, and still to attain wider recognition. In gratitude for his intervention on behalf of traders in a dispute with members of his own tribe, Crowfoot was presented with “a British flag, a chief’s uniform of scarlet cloth, and other presents”130, a treatment that was customarily reserved for head chiefs.

The adoption of Western items of clothing and decoration so evident in photographs of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries reflects a kaleidoscope of individual tastes and imagination.131 The Siksikaitsitapi adapted European garments and modified them to become “Indian”; vests were beaded with intricate patterns; hats were decorated with feathers; Hudson’s Bay blankets were turned into “capotes”, a long-sleeved coat; beaded bands were sewn on blankets for decoration; silver medals and pocket watches adorned the ensemble. This could be interpreted in two ways: as the displacement of traditional dress by European fashion, or as the appropriation of European clothing and its re-deployment as Blackfoot dress. Yet another interpretation would view European clothes as proof of the much-vaunted “disappearance of the Indian” (see Chapter 1), based on a myth of

128 Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, p. 44, citing Reuben Gold Thwaites, Ed., Early Western Travels: 1748-1846, 32 Vols., Vol. 23, p. 88. 129 Ibid., citing Thwaites, Vol. 23, p. 127, and Schultz, Signposts of Adventure: Glacier National Park as the Indians Knew It, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1926, pp. 39-41; David Smyth, The Niitsitapi Trade: Euroamericans and the Blackfoot-Speaking Peoples, to the mid-1830s, Ph.D. Dissertation, Carleton University, Ottawa, 2001, p. 490, cites fur trader Harriot’s report to the effect that a battle between the Kainai and Pikani took Place at Burnt River, “in which three Peagan Camps were totally routed.” 130 Dempsey, Crowfoot, p. 57. 131 See for example the photographic collection at the Glenbow Archives, with early images of the Blackfoot, available online at: http://ww2.glenbow.org; and William E. Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet 1882-1945: A Photographic History of Cultural Survival, Foreword by James Welch, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984.

133 authenticity that devalued the present in favour of a romanticised past. In his photographic history of the Montana reservation Blackfeet, William E. Farr argues that these attitudes “carried with them the nagging suspicion that if Indians did not look like Indians, they weren’t real.”132

Siksikaitsitapi women are reported to have been more reticent to adopt European dress than their male counterparts. Rather, they incorporated new fabrics such as calico and stroud trade cloth into traditional dress patterns and designs.133 However, interracial marriages between First Nations women and traders opened new roles for the former as intermediaries or cultural brokers between both worlds, as well as creating new living spaces (trading posts) where dress reflected the bicultural environment. The figure of Natuyitsixina (Natawista or Holy Snake Woman), a Kainai from a prominent family of chiefs, looms large as the most influential Siksikaitsitapi woman within the middle ground of the American fur trade. She married chief factor Alexander Culbertson during the early nineteenth century and for the next thirty years acted, now as an advocate for her people and family, now as a diplomat on behalf of whites.134 Her dress, alternating between indigenous and European, reflected her ambivalent position between two cultures.135 Ornithologist John James Audubon reported seeing Natuyitsixina, her Indian maid, her husband and two other Americans “all dressed in Indian garb”, including face painting, riding across the prairie; during the celebrations of a newly located Fort Lewis (to be re-named Fort Benton) in 1850, “Natawista, her fingers sparkling with emeralds and rubies, wore a splendid bright red silk dress purchased in St. Louis”; in 1851 during a ball she wore a gown “fringed and valanced according to European mode.” At other times, she combined European dress with buckskin leggings, a clear reflection of her bicultural reality. In May 1875, having divorced her first husband

132 Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, pp. 139, 151 and 190: “American flags appeared on moccasins and cradleboards, tepees were made out of canvas. Singer sewing machines were used to make cloth dresses, with thimbles used as decoration.” 133 Writing of the Piegan in 1787, trader Thompson reported that “all those who have it in their power buy woolen (sic) clothing”. He also noted that women “took to cotton and woolen (sic) clothing much later than the men”; Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 293; and Lewis, Effects of White Contact, p. 37. 134 Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, p. 95. 135 Ibid., pp. 162 and 210-11.

134 and married another white trader, she was observed at a social gathering in the following attire:

It was the Dolly Varden style, a large figured chintz just short enough to display the gorgeous stripes of balmoral petticoat which in its turn was also just short enough to show two very small feet clade (sic) in moccasins and a pair of leggings beautifully worked in beads. She also had on a heavy black velvet loose-fitting overcoat and over this, a most brilliant striped shawl, the stripes being about three inches broad and alternatively red, blue, green and red, with a narrow line of yellow between each color.

The Dolly Varden character from Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby Rudge is hardly the image one would expect to be applied to a Siksikaitsitapi woman living in the northwest Plains during the second half of the nineteenth century, even one from an elite family. The allusion illustrates the stock of familiar images against which Siksikaitsitapi women were judged.136 The two worlds could not have been further apart, and yet, for most men who found themselves away from their familiar surroundings, First Nations women provided the only choice of partner. Moreover, Natuyitsixina’s outfit, complemented with beaded leggings and moccasins, illustrates the fluidity of dress during the fur trade era. It places high European fashion on a par with Plains dress, as one complementing the other, neither superior nor inferior, perhaps an indication of the operation of the middle ground. Natuyitsixina’s bicultural experiences provide proof of the possibility and capacity of women to achieve power. She pushed the boundaries of both Siksikaitsitapi and white cultures and exerted influence on both sides of the cultural divide. Against the common allegation that First Nations women were thrown into the arms of traders in exchange for goods, her husband underwent as much scrutiny as that endured by Siksikaitsitapi husbands-to-be, and had to fulfil his obligations to her family before he was allowed to marry her according to tribal custom.137 Years later, their marriage was confirmed by a Catholic wedding. Natuyitsixina secured for Culbertson the rich profits of her

136 It appears that the character had some influence in the United States, where a trout of the St. Mary lakes and River was also named “Dolly Varden.” Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, p. 90. 137 Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, pp. 93 and 219, citing Schultz, Signposts, p. 113, noting that Culbertson was required to divorce his then Pikani wife to marry Natuyitsixina, who could not be expected to be a secondary wife.

135 relatives’ trade in buffalo robes. Moreover, she facilitated his success as an appointed special government agent to the Siksikaitsitapi by travelling with him among her own people. Natuyitsixina’s trajectory stands as proof that lineage played a defining role in the achievement of status among the Siksikaitsitapi. For her services to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, she received no gifts of clothing but rather a “silver loving cup lined with gold and engraved ‘To the Second Pocahontas’”138—a dubious honour perhaps, for its allusion to a woman credited with aiding white colonisers, siding with them against her own people, but one that unequivocally pointed up the importance of Natuyitsixina’s ambassadorial role.

3.10 Cultural Renewal at the End of an Era

The dress of Siksikaitsitapi leaders acquired a new layer of meaning with their forced settlement on reserves. This was the most dramatic episode of the imposition of white colonial rule and marked the end of the middle ground phase of the colonial encounter. It did not come about through military intervention, but through the destitution occasioned by the over-exploitation and destruction of the bison herds from the early 1870s.139 The Siksikaitsitapi, who had enjoyed dominion over a vast territory and had been a major source of provisions for the fur traders in the mid- nineteenth century, became reliant on government-issued rations and gifts of used clothing for their survival.140 According to Grinnell, until “1887 it was rather unusual to see a Siksikaitsitapi Indian clad in white men’s clothing; the only men who wore coats and trousers were the [Indian] police and a few of the chiefs.”141 However, between 1887 and 1892 most men changed to citizen’s dress-coat and trousers (as European clothing was described). Power shifted to the State and the authority of chiefs became subject to bureaucratic approval, which was henceforth encoded in the

138 Ibid., p. 224. 139 From 1879 the buffalo did not cross again into Canada, with twenty-one deaths by starvation reported by July. Canadian officials gave urgent relief to the feeble and provided rations and ammunition to encourage those able-bodied to cross the border into Montana in pursuit of the last of the buffalo. They returned destitute two years later. 140 Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, p. 13; and Lewis, Effects of White Contact, 28f. 141 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 293.

136 uniforms and silver medals presented at treaty signing and which became their insignia of office.142

The military-style uniform of Siksikaitsitapi chiefs of the early reserve era was freighted with ambivalence, reflecting their liminal position as brokers between their followers and the white bureaucracy. Within the reserve it distinguished leaders from their followers; within bureaucratic circles, it was interpreted as signalling their acquiescence to a higher power, either that of the British Monarch (The Great Mother) or the U.S. President (The Great Father) portrayed on the silver treaty medals.143 It is difficult to measure how genuine this acquiescence was, because Siksikaitsitapi leaders were consummate diplomats and well aware that survival depended on their ability to negotiate successfully with the colonisers.144 In 1906 the Agent at the Blood Reserve reported that after twenty-five years of reserve life, the “proud and imperious spirit” of the Siksikaitsitapi was not diminished even after twenty-five years of reserve life.145

The authority encoded in chiefly uniforms did not always coincide with internal Siksikaitsitapi hierarchies, because treaties only recognised a finite number of chiefs. Presenting an individual with a “chief’s jacket” and medal validated his nomination in the eyes of those who effectively controlled the flow of material goods to the bands. Similar procedures in the United States invested authority by presenting the military uniform to a reduced number of leaders.146 In Canada, a second

142 Medals were extensively used in diplomacy. During an encounter with eight Pikani in 1806, Meriwether Lewis presented three individuals, who claimed to be chiefs, with a flag, a handkerchief, and a medal with Thomas Jefferson’s likeness on the obverse side and a handshake between an Indian and a White hand, with a peace pipe crossed with a tomahawk, and the engraved words “peace and friendship” on the reverse side: Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 158, and 387-8; Herman J. Viola, Diplomats in Buckskin: A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City, D.C., Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981, p. 104: “With the exception of John Adams, each president from George Washington to Benjamin Harrison issued an Indian peace medal”; medals were also used by the Dominion: Dempsey, “One Hundred Years”, pp. 20-30, esp. p. 21. 143 Viola, Diplomats, pp. 94 and 118, argues that “Great Father was a diplomatic device rather than an expression of subordinance”. He attributes the gifts of white clothes bestowed during diplomatic meetings to the U.S. Government’s desire to turn Indians into whites. 144 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 293; and John C. Ewers The Story of the Blackfeet. Indian Life and Customs, Pamphlet 6. Education Division, United States Indian Service, n.d. p. 51. 145 LAC, DIA, AR, 1906, p. 165. 146 During the Laramy treaty negotiations at Horse Creek in 1851, First Nations were asked to nominate a “Chief of the whole nation” to be recognised by the Great Father, when the Sioux (a white misnomer for the combined Dakota and Lakota nations) failed to do so, a chief was chosen by the

137 leadership tier existed, for those who remained leaders despite the absence of white acknowledgement, and those who rejected white authority and white insignia.147 The epithet “white chief” was coined to describe those whose authority was invested by colonial administrators and not according to Siksikaitsitapi practice.148 However, living in peace was a condition of the treaties, thereby removing war as one of the mechanisms for attaining leadership in the time-honoured fashion. Siksikaitsitapi warring days began to ebb— although sporadic horse raiding continued for more than a decade—and with them, the raison d’être of a hair-fringed suit.149 The recognition reserved for those who killed an enemy was transformed into a punishable crime under white law. The only Siksikaitsitapi who could wear the fringe of human hair were those who gained that honour previously. They became legends in their own lifetime.

During this time, removal of the uniform was sufficient to demote a non- compliant leader. An 1895 amendment to the Canadian Indian Act of 1884 “allowed the Minister [of Indian Affairs] to depose chiefs and councillors” deemed “to be resisting the innovations of the reserve system and the Government’s efforts to discourage the practice of traditional Indian beliefs and values.”150 Chiefs were expected to co-operate with the Indian Agent to advance Siksikaitsitapi assimilation.151 The symbolism of the chief’s uniform as a sign of authority is evident in George Gooderham’s recounting of the removal from office of minor chief Joe

American negotiator and ratified by the chiefs who took treaty. Chiefs received military uniforms and gilt swords. Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats, pp. 201-207, n. 20. 147 After Crowfoot’s death in 1890, Pitoxpikis was offered the chief’s medal, which he refused saying: “I don’t want a dead man’s medal nor to be made chief in the white way. I am an Indian chief and I’m chief enough.” Glenbow Archives, M8458-14, f. 39, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “History of the Skunk Band”, 1938. 148 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 14: “Eagle Ribs, even though he signed the treaty, refused to obligate himself to the whites, by accepting a medal. Little Person, Eagle Robe, Chief Calf, all respected men and chiefs, were excluded or refused to be honoured in this manner. They knew they were chiefs even without a medal and a gold-braided uniform”. 149 The signatories to Treaty Seven agreed to live in peace with Indians, Métis and whites, but horse raiding continued: Glenbow Archives, M8458-17, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Life in Crowfoot’s Camp. ca. 1870-1877”, f. 22; and Commissioners, New West, 1888, p. 48 and 1889, p. 84. 150 Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation”, p. 20. 151 Ibid., noting that in 1902 several chiefs were removed during efforts “to suppress illegal dancing”; and LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-4-1, “Letter 2 June 1917, from J. D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary”.

138 Calfchild by the agent, saying that he had “lost his ‘coat’”.152 As noted in Chapter Two, when Agent Wilson had a dispute with Day Chief in 1905, he had threatened to remove his “medal”, which ipso facto would make Day Chief an “ordinary Indian”153. When disputes arose, the Siksikaitsitapi had no avenues to seek redress. Indian Agents exercised authority with little outside supervision. Regional inspectors could take years to visit a reserve. The Indian Agent’s control of food rations was sufficient to coerce compliance with his directives. The Mounted Police were called to support the agent when difficulties arose. They were also asked at times to forward Siksikaitsitapi complaints against their agent to Ottawa, but the status quo was largely maintained without their intervention.

Both the Canadian and U.S. governments followed a similar strategy of “indirect rule” by recognising tribal leaders and requiring them to deal with the implementation of bureaucratic measures among their followers. Treaty negotiators on behalf of the U.S. Government sought to recognise a single supreme leader for each tribe, and indeed appointed some chiefs themselves, providing them with military uniforms and gilt swords. In Canada the same attitude prevailed. Dealing with the several leaders of each separate band was expensive (chiefs received larger annuities and added benefits) and administratively onerous, although during the crucial early reserve era the reduction in the number of recognised Siksikaitsitapi leaders was accomplished by attrition.154 As before, the political authority attached to the office of chief remained closed to women, although it did not follow that women were subordinate in other respects. In 1938 a woman owned the largest horse herd in the Siksika reserve (200 horses), while two other women were listed as owning fifty horses apiece. This suggests that some women could wield sufficient economic

152 Glenbow Archives, M4738-255, George H. Gooderham fonds, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Biography – Joe Calfchild – Blackfoot [Siksika] 1875-1942”. 153 LAC, RG 18, vol. 302, f. 658-05, “Letter 5 August 1905, Supt. P. C. Primrose, Commanding ‘D’ Division to Commissioner RNWMP, Regina”. This communication followed a request by Day Chief. Supt. Primrose notes in the letter “I do not wish to be an alarmist, but one of these Indians could cause us a whole heap of trouble if he wished, which would be intensified if he happens to have a following.” 154 LAC, DIA, AR, 1891, p. 83.

139 power to earn them respect and influence in tribal affairs.155 However, negotiations between the Siksikaitsitapi and whites remained a male affair.156

Siksika Crowfoot and Kainai Red Crow are two of the best-documented leaders of the early reserve era, thanks to Dempsey’s excellent biographies. Both were photographed in their uniforms with the silver treaty medals that they wore even when dressed in buckskins. They had won prestige on the warpath and through deeds of outstanding courage, and both played significant roles during treaty negotiations.157 Crowfoot’s reputation as a diplomat and mediator between the Siksikaitsitapi and the white worlds earned him an unprecedented position as principal negotiator on behalf of the three nations, leading to the signing of Treaty Seven in 1877 with the Dominion. Thereafter he was treated as supreme chief of the Siksikaitsitapi, a position hitherto non-existent. He was also elected to negotiate on behalf of the Treaty Seven bands when they were requested to allow the railways to cross their territory.158 The distinction created some tensions, and at times the pejorative “white chief” label was attached to him.159 Other leaders likewise parlayed their trade relationships into diplomatic ones during treaty signing. Alliances forged through trade prepared the ground for the later signing of treaties. Crowfoot’s nomination as leading negotiator did not confer any lasting authority, yet, as the first

155 These figures were collated by Lucien Hanks in 1938. Glenbow Archives, M8458-31, “Lucien Hanks’ Blackfoot (Siksika) research - Typed notes and interviews.” 156 In 1921, when agent George Gooderham and NWMP Inspector J. W. Spalding attended the Siksika Reserve to prevent a Sun Dance from taking place, some women tried to join the negotiations, but were unceremoniously dismissed by chief Weasel Calf. Spalding noted: “these old fellows do not sympathise with women’s suffrage.” LAC, RG 18, Vol. 3290, f. HQ-1034-K.1, “RCMP, ‘K’ Division, Lethbridge, Calgary Sub-District, “Inspector J.W. Spalding’ Report 27 July 1921”. As for whites, including Gooderham, they were still using the term “squaw” well into the twentieth century: Glenbow Archives, M4738, ff. 1 and 9, George H. Gooderham fonds. 157 Dempsey, Crowfoot and Red Crow, p. 102: Red Crow “was proud of the fact that he had been in thirty-seven battles and was never wounded”. For the importance of Crowfoot as chief see LAC, DIA, AR, 1883, p. xi. 158 LAC, DIA, AR, 1883, p. 103: “Already the news of negotiations with the Blackfeet had reached the Stonies, and these Indians informed me (as subsequently did the Sarcees, Peigans and Bloods), that they all were of the same mind as Crowfoot, and ‘what he said, they all said.’” 159 Glenbow Archives, M8458-17, f. 7, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Life in Crowfoot’s Camp. ca. 1870-1877”.

140 leader to sign the treaty, he was placed, together with Old Sun, above other Siksika chiefs, thereby formalising a new hierarchy outside Siksikaitsitapi custom.160

3.11 Cultural Transformation and Mimicry

In his essay, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”, Bhabha articulates the view of mimicry as a “discourse constructed around an ambivalence” (italics in the original), and as a “sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes power.” Bhabha’s main concern is the possibility of disrupting the colonial discourse through a “double vision” that turns mimicry into a “menace” to colonial authority.161 The military-style dress that was used by whites to distinguish Siksikaitsitapi elites, may well have embodied the wish of the colonisers to replicate their own image in the colonised, to a degree that, Bhabha argues, was “almost the same, but not quite”.162 Canadian legislation, for example, clearly stipulated the manner in which “Indians” were to imitate whites; Herman J. Viola argues that the U.S. Government’s desire to turn “Indians” into whites accounts for the gifts of military-style clothes bestowed during diplomatic meetings with First Nations’ leaders in Washington.163 The wish for the colonised to be “almost the same, but not quite” could well have been expressed in the military-style dress—a second-rate copy of a “real” military uniform. The question that remains open is, how did the Siksikaitsitapi of the early reserve era respond to this colonial desire for a “recognizable Other”?

It would be simplistic to interpret the adoption of items of European dress as “imitation”164 or “mimicry”, or as expressing a desire by the Siksikaitsitapi to become white or even to look like whites. To do so would be tantamount to affirming that during the early reserve era Siksikaitsitapi lifeways centred on white concerns and white actions, and to deny, or at best to ignore, pre-contact Siksikaitsitapi

160 For attitudes to Crowfoot, see Glenbow Archives, M8078, f. 300/35, “Many Guns’ Winter Count” (via Paul Fox); and Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, pp. 10, 21 and 31. 161 Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 88. Italics in original. 162 Ibid., p. 86. Italics in original. 163 Viola, Diplomats, p. 118. 164 Both the Latin mimicus and the Greek mimikos relate to imitation.

141 history. Given that the Siksikaitsitapi disrupted efforts to turn them into farmers and Christians, the opposite seems to have been the case. Although Bhabha proposes that “mimicry” as “camouflage” encodes a capacity for subversion of the colonised, border-crossing may be a better term in this instance, because wearing military uniforms was a diplomatic way for Siksikaitsitapi leaders to transact business, first within the trading post, and later when dealing with government officials during the reserve era. Moreover, although Bhabha conflates “mimicry” with “camouflage” via his allusion to Lacan, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica “Mimicry differs from camouflage in that camouflage hides the organism, whereas mimicry benefits the organism only if the organism is detected.”165 Despite Bhabha’s assertion that mimicry is double-sided and menacing to colonial discourse, mimicry cannot be separated from its semantic roots, and thus, from connoting imitation. It would be patronising and disrespectful to affirm that the Siksikaitsitapi of the reserve era wished to become “white”. There is no evidence to support either a desire to imitate whites or a belief that by wearing military uniforms they would become like whites. Rather, the opposite is manifest in the admonition of Chief Crowfoot, during his last days:

my children do not act like a white man even if you look like a white man … never try to be a white man you will never be one be proud of being an Indian stay an Indian as the Great Spirit made you an Indian and he was right.166

At the time of this speech, there was little alternative to the Siksikaitsitapi but to wear white dress, but this was not the case when Siksikaitsitapi elites strategically deployed the military-style uniform. The ahistorical application of the concept of mimicry can easily blur these distinctions.

While the Siksikaitsitapi readily adopted Western technologies deemed to improve their lives, such as guns, and later the technology of writing, they often despaired of the (bad) habits of whites, such as whipping their children or refusing to feed them between meals. The Siksikaitsitapi interpreted this white rules as callous;

165 Encyclopedia Britannica, Available online at http://www,answers.com/topic/mimicry [Accessed 20 July 2007]. 166 Glenbow Archives, M4394, f. 22, Joe Little Chief’s Winter Count.

142 their children were fed when hungry. A Siksikaitsitapi woman who failed to feed her children on demand was scornfully called “a white woman.”167 The Principal at the Industrial School at Qu’Appelle explained Blackfoot unwillingness to send children to school on the “old reason ... ‘that they won’t resemble the white people’”168. It is evident that if the colonisers constructed stereotypes of First Nations peoples, the latter also constructed stereotypes of whites. According to McClintock, children shied away from him because “[t]hey had been taught from infancy that white men are dangerous monsters.”169 Adopting Christianity was largely done on Siksikaitsitapi terms. To illustrate this point, multiple wives prevailed despite missionaries’ zeal. In respect of Ookaan, despite efforts to eradicate it by officials and missionaries, the practice continued (see Chapter 2). It was sufficient for the crops to fail or their horses to die for those who had embraced Christianity to seek solace in their indigenous beliefs and rites.170 Even “white” food was at first disagreeable to the Siksikaitsitapi, though starvation forced them to incorporate it in their diet.171

With the passing of many well-respected leaders, deliberate efforts were made to weaken activist chiefs and to bolster those deemed “progressive” or well disposed toward assimilation, efforts that created dissension among the bands.172 In 1903 at the recommendation of Agent J. A. Markle, a minor chief, Chief Yellow Horse, was promoted to head chief of the “North faction” of the Siksika.173 He was chosen because he could be relied upon “to support government policy and assist the agent in carrying it out.” Yellow Horse “was always dressed in the official suit of a chief[:] a blue jacket trimmed with yellow braid and brass buttons and grey trousers”. His pièce de resistánce was a silk hat presented by a British visitor to the reserve.

167 Glenbow Archives, M8458, ff. 64 and 66, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Imiten.a”. According to Jane Richardson-Hanks, the Blackfoot “think that we are dirty and do not eat with us.” However, one of her informants claimed “Main complaint against white people is they refuse to eat Indian food.” For the treatment of Blackfoot children, see Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 188- 91. 168 LAC, DIA, AR, 1887, p. 125. 169 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 389. 170 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 26. 171 McClintock, Old North Trail, was told by Spotted Eagle “that he had never been able to understand how people could live on the food eaten by white men”, p. 23; see also Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, p. 30. 172 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. 22

143 However, Chief Yellow Horse never cut his hair short, or abandoned the use of beaded moccasins.174 Despite his appearance as a quintessential “white chief” and his baptism as an Anglican, Yellow Horse, whose body after death was wrapped in the Union Jack, remained steadfast to his Siksikaitsitapi beliefs to his last moments. He instructed his relatives that his favourite pinto horse was to be shot in order to accompany him in the afterlife according to Siksikaitsitapi custom. Likewise, in the words of the agent, “his wife returned to her pagan faith” and would not let the coffin lid be closed, in order that his spirit could come and go at leisure. Their adoption of Christianity proved to be equivocal.175 The Christian veneer was perhaps more a tool of diplomacy than an indication of conversion.

Concurrent with the adoption of European dress as insignia of chieftainship, buckskin suits gained currency, allied to an increase in transfers of items of Medicine. Ceremonial life was revitalised because of the relative propinquity of the bands compared to the distances that had separated them during their non-sedentary days; while the hardships of reserve life made it imperative to seek divine favour through the acquisition of sacred items.176 As European dress became everyday wear, the value of traditional ceremonial dress was correspondingly enhanced. Physical proximity allowed for more cultural activities than were possible when the separate bands were constantly moving camp. More, and more intricately decorated goods, resulted from having more time available as well as easier access to European materials employed in their production, such as cloth and beads.177 Ceremonial dress

173 The Siksika bands were divided into two main groups, one settled on the north side of the reserve and the other on the south, and each group had its own leaders. 174 John C. Ewers, “Artifacts and Pictures as Documents”, in Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, eds., Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox, Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1976, pp. 101-11, p. 102, notes that in the Kainai Reserve in Alberta, as late as 1968 “one hundred or more Indians still wear moccasins daily, except in winter.” 175 The hat was a present from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1912, later replaced with a present from Lord Burnham, British newspaper magnate in 1920. Glenbow Archives, M4738, f. 1, George H. Gooderham fonds. 176 Glenbow Archives, M8078, f. 10, pp. 301-2, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk”; Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, pp. 24-5: horse ownership played a part on these transfers. In the Pikuni reserve transfers of Medicine Pipes and gift giving decreased after 1929-33 in tandem with a decrease in horse ownership. According to Clayton Charlton Denman, Cultural Change Among the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1968, p. 103, the first time the twenty-four bands of the Montana Pikani camped together was during the famine winter of 1883. 177 Walton et al, After the Buffalo, p. 51.

144 remained a crucial marker of a distinct Siksikaitsitapi identity, a symbol of a Siksikaitsitapi desire to remain different.178

A great deal of accommodation was required in order to ensure not only physical survival, but also cultural survival. Bill Ashcroft refers to transformation “as the consistently effective practice in postcolonial cultural production.” In most cases, he argues, resistance is not “a heroic enterprise, but a pragmatic and mundane array of living strategies to which imperial culture has no answer,” which manifests itself as “a refusal to be absorbed.” 179 This provides a lens to interpret events such as the early twentieth-century transferral of the celebration of Ookaan in Montana to the Fourth of July, and the incorporation of the “Stars and Stripes” in the proceedings.180 As bureaucrats on both sides of the border vied to assimilate the Siksikaitsitapi, a growing interest among the surrounding white population resulted in their sponsorship of Sun Dances, much to the chagrin of Indian Agents bent on discouraging the practice, which in their view prevented their embracing the benefits of “civilization” (see Chapter 2). Ookaan survived long enough for the right to attend this gathering to be legally recognised, and the practice continues to this day.

While European dress was overwhelmingly the everyday norm, buckskins continued to be worn—apart from religious ceremonies—for diplomatic purposes and during public “performances” for the benefit of whites.181 One interpretation attributes the popularity among the Siksikaitsitapi in the 1890s of a Sioux-style feathered bonnet, dubbed “flowing feather bonnet,” to the fact that this bonnet was

178 See Goldfrank, “Changing Configurations”, pp. 21-31 for a view of give-aways, including buckskin suits during the early twentieth-century in the Kainai reservation. 179 Bill Ashcroft, “Resistance and Transformation”, in Bruce Bennet, Susan Cowan, Jacqueline Lo, Satendra Nandan and Jennifer Webb, eds., Resistance and Reconciliation: Writing in the Commonwealth, Canberra: Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS), 2003, pp. 384-85 and 389. 180 Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, p. 90. 181 According to Ben Calf Robe, Siksiká, pp. 85-91, who was a participant in the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, the organisers invited the Blackfoot to camp on the grounds and parade in their regalia, for which they were given rations and money. In 1891 the then Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Regina, Hayter Reed, complained that whites were encouraging Sun Dances “not only by their presence but in other ways”. Glenbow Archives, M1234-7, Archdeacon Tims General Correspondence 1885-1953.

145 not looked upon “as a sacred headdress” and therefore “anyone could wear one.”182 This adopted headdress was worn when the Siksikaitsitapi displayed their dress on tours outside their reserves; received visits from dignitaries; or participated in parades and stampedes.183 After 1910, when the Great Northern Railway opened tourist facilities at Glacier National Park, it employed Siksikaitsitapi “to camp, dance, demonstrate sign language, and ‘be colourful’” for the benefit of tourists.184 Moreover, First Nations peoples, including the Siksikaitsitapi, became a drawcard at the Calgary Stampede from its inception in 1912. These new contexts maintained the demand for buckskin dress, at the same time providing extended use within the sphere of “performance.”

3.12 Conclusion

The diversity and complexity of elite Siksikaitsitapi dress and its dynamic transformations and individuality cannot be contained within a totalising view, but the specific deployments outlined above exemplify the nuanced meanings it conveyed to those with an emic view of Siksikaitsitapi culture. The creative and pragmatic appropriation of European dress codes by Siksikaitsitapi elites was a gradual process because of their relative isolation from major European settlements until the late nineteenth century. The donning of military uniforms obtained as trade gifts should be seen as a continuation of intertribal observances, rather than as a sign of acculturation per se—that is, as an outgrowth of a long-established tradition of exchange that fostered dress hybridity. Siksikaitsitapi leaders of the era under review coveted European dress in the same way that they coveted war trophies, and deployed it strategically to reclaim authority in the eyes of the colonial masters.

182 Blackfoot headdresses were distinct in that eagle feathers were arranged in an upright position similar to that of a crown. These headdresses are practically absent from early twentieth century photographs of the Blackfoot. See Walton et al, After the Buffalo were Gone, pp. 100-103. 183 DIA, 1895, pp. 196-7; and Viola, Diplomats, p. 111. The Canadian Blackfoot travelled to Regina in 1895 to meet with the Governor General and Lady Aberdeen. At this meeting they wore their buckskin regalia. Pikani Chief Little Plume attended Theodore Roosevelt’s Inaugural Parade in 1905. In 1923 a group of Pikani attending a “Shrine convention” in Washington, DC were photographed wearing Sioux-style headdress. A photograph titled “Dedication of oil well, ca. 1928” shows a contingent of Pikani dressed in buckskins. 184 During the 1920s and 1930s, Blackfoot from the reservation “would dance for the tourists or sell trinkets and pose for pictures” at East Glacier Lodge, and were employed as tourist bus drivers. Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, pp. 191, and 197-8.

146 Moreover, European garments that offered practical benefits were readily incorporated and often remodelled to suit local requirements. European technologies that improved on indigenous ones were likewise quickly adopted. On these terms, European dress widened the sartorial repertoire of an elite whose dress had already been hybridised through intertribal exchange. Rather than constituting a rupture, this acceptance can be interpreted as being concordant with the fluidity of pre-established dress practices.

Poverty during the reserve era and the non-availability of traditional materials curtailed the dress options of most Siksikaitsitapi. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, ethnographers Lucien M. Hanks, Jr. and Jane Richardson Hanks found that Siksika “clothing [was] of the poorest quality, frequently tattered, and sometimes soiled”. They reported that despite having the third highest income among First Nations reserves in Canada, the Siksika lacked adequate clothing to keep them warm in winter.185 Concurrent with these stressful circumstances, new demands were created for buckskins. The end of warring removed an important mechanism for acquiring prestige and to earn the right to wear a hair-fringed suit, but it also provided many opportunities to enhance the ceremonial and social life of the Siksikaitsitapi. Wissler argued that, despite opposition by bureaucrats, the social mechanisms of generosity and ceremonial participation continued to provide the means for the Siksikaitsitapi to acquire prestige during the reserve period.186 Buckskins were redeployed in new contexts, thus ensuring their survival as one of the strongest emblems of Siksikaitsitapi identity. This suggests that identity was itself protean, reflective of the creative adaptation innate to the introduction of colonial rule.

During this era, the buckskin suit remained one of the strongest emblems of a separate identity; a symbol of a Siksikaitsitapi determination not to be totally absorbed into white culture at a time when radical transformation was required to ensure physical survival. The buckskin dress functioned as a sign that can be read in the light of Angelika Bammer’s contention regarding the construction of identities: “the historical terrain between necessity and choice [is] the place where oppression

185 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, pp. 112-15.

147 and resistance are simultaneously located”187. In the present case, re-deploying buckskins in new contexts served to ensure their continuity as symbols of Siksikaitsitapi identity.

The military uniform of Siksikaitsitapi chiefs during the early reserve era was a double-edged marker of leadership that sought to appeal to tribal society, while at the same time gaining the acceptance and recognition of the representatives of the colonial hegemony—DIA officials, missionaries, Mounted Police, and the “Long- Knives”, as U.S. soldiers were dubbed. These elites navigated the bands’ transition to sedentary lifeways at a time when their very physical survival was threatened. They were cultural brokers or “framing specialists” who interpreted the culture, ideas and wants of each side to the other.188 Their liminal if central role between the two cultures found expression in their adoption of the clothing and decorations of their European “Other”. In the public sphere during this era, women are a mere footnote to their husbands and fathers,189 and although the new inheritance laws gave them rights to their husbands’ property (previously distributed among his male relatives), treaty payments were paid to men as heads of families. Women continued to be absent from Siksikaitsitapi-white negotiations.

Finally, despite the many bureaucratic efforts aimed at erasing any vestiges of indigenous culture, the Blackfoot practice of presenting beaded buckskin suits to visiting dignitaries has not disappeared and these suits continue to be the foremost gift in Blackfoot diplomacy, considered appropriate for visiting British royalty and to salient Canadian politicians.190 The buckskin suit is a classic example of the workings

186 Wissler, “Social Life”, p. 23. 187 Angelika Bammer, “Introduction”, in her ed., Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. xi-xx. 188 Interpretive frames are formulated by “popular intellectuals” and “framing specialists”, who act as intermediaries to shape collective views in social interaction: Baud and Rutten, “Framing Protest”, pp. 1-4. 189 Glenbow Archives, Photograph NA-350-1, where Chief Yellow Horse is photographed with his “wife”, without actually stating her name. 190 In 1920 newspaper magnate Lord Burnham received a beaded buckskin suit from Chief Yellowhorse. Glenbow Archives, M4738, f. 1, George H. Gooderham fonds. In 1977 Prince Charles was inducted into the “Kainai Chieftainship”

148 of cultural transformation: its significance was re-inscribed and redeployed in order to adapt it to new uses, an indication that the efforts at assimilation of the First Nations peoples of Canada and the United States did not always proceed according to white designs.

, a symbolic office reserved for distinguished whites, during the Centennial Commemoration of the Signing of Treaty Seven. He received a beaded buckskin suit, and several presents including a horse and saddle: see Taylor, Standing Alone, pp. 223-4.

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CHAPTER FOUR

ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS: CULTURAL TRANSACTIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

[Wo]Man tells stories in order to understand [her/]his experience, whatever it may be. The possibilities of storytelling are precisely those of understanding the human experience.1

4.1 Introduction

The previous two chapters focused on continuity within two different processes of cultural transformation in order to argue that, despite the asymmetrical power relations attendant upon colonialism, the Siksikaitsitapi were able to become actors and to shape, albeit in limited ways, their own cultural transformation. This was the case despite strenuous efforts on the part of officials and missionaries to force the Siksikaitsitapi to transform their lifeways in accordance with white dictates. This chapter follows the same strategy of seeking continuity within a changing cultural environment by focusing on a process common to colonised peoples: the collection and transcription for publication of their knowledge heretofore transmitted orally from one generation to the next. This chapter analyses the process of rendering stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition into text through the ethnographic encounter. The term “story”, as used here, corresponds to linguist Robert Brightman’s definition, “to mean a span of literary discourse whose separate narration in isolation from other such spans is regarded as appropriate by performer and audience.”2 The purpose of this chapter is to draw lines of continuity attendant upon this encounter between Siksikaitsitapi and white epistemologies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that Blackfoot knowledge expanded Western knowledge, although little credit was afforded to the Blackfoot as the originators and keepers of that knowledge, that is, with little recognition being given to Blackfoot

1 Gerald Vizenor, Wordarrows: Native American States of Literary Sovereignty, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003, p. xii. 2 Robert Brightman, “Tricksters and Ethnopoetics,” International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 55, no. 2 (1989): pp. 179–203, p. 185.

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intellectual property. In the language of the time, and well into the twentieth century, First Nations peoples were frequently described as “savages” in need of “civilisation”, a colonial discourse that has been amply documented and which was discussed earlier in the dissertation.3 Even missionaries, whose evangelising efforts from the sixteenth century onwards implicitly recognised the humanity of First Nations peoples, were loathe to acknowledge that these nations had coherent ways to record, value, and transmit knowledge. It would appear from early chronicles that the pursuit of knowledge was taken a priori as a European preoccupation, but alien to the non-sedentary First Nations peoples of the Plains, such as the Siksikaitsitapi.

Throughout The Americas, missionaries tried to eradicate First Nations’ cultural practices with one hand, while with the other they assiduously recorded for Western scholarship their accumulated knowledge. This contradictory attitude disdained First Nations knowledge while at the same time finding merit in its study. First Nations peoples continued to be labelled as “savages” while the compilers of their knowledge gained status as authors and scholars.

In keeping with the overall aims of this dissertation, this chapter emphasises the different guises of Blackfoot participation within a critical process of transformation attendant upon colonisation: the encounter between Blackfoot orality and Western writing, which took place during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. It is argued here that Blackfoot historiography owes much to Blackfoot “ways of knowing”4, the Blackfoot oral tradition that transmitted knowledge through ceremonial and everyday genres. It is also argued that, despite the absence of chirography, these practices served as vehicles for expressions not unlike normative Western history and literature. This chapter more specifically argues that Blackfoot collaborations with ethnographers were an extension of their own “ways of knowing” and of transmitting knowledge. It proposes a fresh interpretation of the ethnographic encounter that is attentive to the two-way workings of cultural appropriation, by drawing attention to the manifold ways in which the Blackfoot contributed to the recording of Blackfoot knowledge via the ethnographic encounter.

3 Even a cursory reading of reports by government administrators confirms that this was the case. 4 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. v.

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The chapter first provides an overview of oral stories within the wider traditions of the First Nations peoples of the Plains, and in particular of Blackfoot Stories, a general category that is further parsed into the “Old People Stories” and the “Everyday Stories.” It sketches emic and etic perspectives of oral stories in order to establish reference points from which to view the process of transformation of Blackfoot knowledge from orality into writing. It underscores some of the pitfalls involved in translation and transcription, the Derridean “economy of in- betweenness”5 that is problematised within this chapter. The pitfalls of translation include the shaping of the oral stories into imposed etic genres, and the “adaptation” of the stories to these genres, which involves the editorial re-shaping of the stories. Moreover, the stories are also re-shaped by editors in order to make their meaning clear to the intended non-Siksikaitsitapi readers. This process can also result in attaching etic meanings to the stories.

The chapter then establishes the disciplinary context in which the collaborations between ethnographers and Blackfoot “teachers”6 or informants took place. It analyses their roles as informants, translators, co-compilers, and co-authors within a set of five specific texts listed below. Following this, the chapter demonstrates that the Blackfoot were not without history or literature prior to their acquisition of writing. It does so by way of an overview of the Blackfoot genres utilised to record and transmit knowledge before white arrival. The existence of these genres is evidence of the complexity of Siksikaitsitapi epistemology, and it serves to counter pejorative views held by the colonisers. Notions of the Siksikaitsitapi being “savages”, “neophytes”7 and “children,” were inter alia expressed by those (most notably Grinnell) who plundered their oral “archives.”8 Next the chapter addresses

5 Jacques Derrida, “What is a “Relevant” Translation?”, Trans. and Introduction by Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 27, no. 2 (2001): pp. 174–200, p. 179, pp. 169–173. 6 Uhlenbeck referred to his informants as “teachers”, see Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, p. 68. The Blackfoot term to refer to knowledgeable elders is “Grandfathers” and “Grandmothers”, evident in Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 8, who extends the term to “all the old women of the past.” 7 “Neophyte” was a standard description given to indigenous subjects throughout The Americas, especially in reference to their incomplete or recent evangelisation. It was used both as a noun and adjective (e.g., “neophyte behaviour”), most notably by Spanish missionaries: see e.g., George Harwood Phillips, “Indians and the Breakdown of the Spanish Mission System in California”, Ethnohistory, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1974): pp. 291–302. 8 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxv; and Idem, “Teachers for the Indians,” Forest and Stream, 22 October 1885, cited in Harris III, Preserving a Vision, p. 400. As noted in Chapter Three, the language of diplomacy was steeped in the language of mother-child or father-child relationship between the

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the politics of collaboration and the two-way traffic of cultural appropriation. It focuses on specific instances in which Siksikaitsitapi individuals can be seen as eager to appropriate the technology of writing to ensure Blackfoot cultural continuity.

4.2 Scope of the Chapter

Among the numerous extant amateur and professional Blackfoot ethnographies, this chapter limits its enquiry to five foundational volumes: George Bird Grinnell’s Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People ([1892] 2003); Clark Wissler’s and David C. Duvall’s Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians ([1908] 1995); Walter McClintock’s The Old North Trail or Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians ([1910] 1992); Christianus C. Uhlenbeck’s Original Blackfoot Texts from the Southern Peigans Blackfoot Reservation Teton County Montana (1911); and James Willard Schultz’s Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life Among the Indians ([c. 1878–1915] 1962). These five texts are ideal for analysis of the process whereby knowledge from the Blackfoot oral tradition was transformed into writing for several reasons. First, these collaborations took place during the first half-century of reserve life, a time when the Blackfoot worldview and, more importantly, their oral tradition, still remained securely moored in their lifeways as buffalo hunters. Second, these texts have become canonical works for Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholars.9 This canonical status no doubt stems from the fact that these texts are early documents of this transitional era, but also because they contain Blackfoot knowledge that was transmitted by those who possessed an emic perspective of Blackfoot lifeways—and even by participants in some of the historical events described therein. Third, these texts collectively illustrate the heterogeneous approaches and perspectives of an ethnographic practice that was itself in the process of transformation, from an amateur undertaking (by travellers, priests, traders and colonial administrators) to a professional, university-based discipline. Fourth, the cross-cultural collaborations that produced these texts illustrate the widely fluctuating conditions and power colonisers and the colonised, whereby the British Monarch was “The Great Mother” and the U.S. President was “The Great Father”, although as Viola, Diplomats, pp. 94 and 118 argues, “Great Father was a diplomatic device rather than an expression of subordinance”. 9 Among Blackfoot authors who acknowledge these volumes as sources are Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 41 and 53 (Grinnell, McClintock, and Wissler and Duval); Beverly Hungry Wolf Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 9 (Schultz, Grinnell, and Wissler and Duval); and Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, pp. 9 and 16 (McClintock and Grinnell).

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relations attendant upon what Mary Louise Pratt called the “contact zone” (see Chapter 1), and as such provide multiple perspectives that enrich the possibilities for analysis.

It is pertinent to note that these five texts were not intended to address a Blackfoot audience. Rather, it is evident from the claims made by Schultz, Grinnell, and McClintock that they sought to inform an audience who possessed little knowledge of the Blackfoot. Generally, these implied readers saw all First Nations peoples through the kind of stereotypes that historian Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., distilled collectively as The White Man’s Indian.10 Wissler and Duvall addressed the readers of the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, and Dutch linguist Uhlenbeck, addressed his fellow philologists and linguists. Few Blackfoot could read at the time of the collaborations;11 those who could, however, likely felt they did not need a book to tell them what they already knew. In time, however, these early representations came to be seen by both Blackfoot and non- Blackfoot as repositories of Blackfoot history. Current-day Blackfoot and non- Blackfoot scholars often defer to the authority of these early anthologies which have, for all intents and purposes, become “canonical history”. Blackfoot author and auto- ethnographer Beverly Hungry Wolf notes that the “legends” collected by “half-breed Blackfoot ... David Duvall … are about the same as legends still told today, but in many cases more thorough.”12 These circumstances suggest that fresh scrutiny of the production of such texts is long overdue.

4.3 Overview of Oral Stories: Hybridity vis-à-vis Emic and Etic Distinctions

The stories of the Blackfoot oral tradition that inform the ethnographic texts pervade cultural practices spanning the secular and the sacred. The stories are connected to the ceremonies, which are connected to events narrated in the stories, as well as to everyday actions that the Siksikaitsitapi learn from the stories. A full appreciation of the oral tradition, and its encounter with writing through the ethnographic interview, requires an understanding of the manner in which the Blackfoot Stories or

10 Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian, [1953] 1978. 11 Malcolm McFee, Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1972, p. 50, notes that in the Montana Reservation, those who could speak or read English were a tiny minority. 12 Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 9.

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Mokakssini (Blackfoot knowledge)13 subsume the Blackfoot worldview. Hernandez observes that, to the Blackfoot—who consider spirituality and way of life as one and the same, their “lifeways”—their ancient stories are true in the literal sense: they are a “record of [their] history since the beginning of time”14 (a view also expressed by the Blackfoot Gallery Committee). As such, they represent a unified universe or Nitsitapiisinni (“Our Way of Life”). By staking out the ground thus, Hernandez and the Blackfoot Gallery Committee sketch the emic boundaries of the Blackfoot experience and reclaim a right to explicate the Blackfoot worldview in their own terms.15 Some Blackfoot scholars have expressed the view that the ethnographers could not have understood aspects of Blackfoot culture only available to those inside the culture.16 By taking this stance, Hernandez and the Blackfoot Gallery Committee contest colonial representations by denying non-Blackfoot authors the capacity to know the Blackfoot world, a topic that will be taken up in Chapter 5 of this dissertation.

On a wider canvas, Blackfoot Stories fit into an oral tradition universal among the First Nations peoples of The Americas, for which Gordon Brotherston coined the descriptor, “Literatures of the Fourth World”17 (see Chapter 5). In particular, the Blackfoot Stories have much in common with those of other First Nations peoples of the Great Plains, the “Plains Indians” or, to the Blackfoot, the Sao-kitapiisksi. The Blackfoot oral tradition binds their culture by framing knowledge into genres that provide the means for cultural reproduction, and by maintaining and transmitting Siksikaitsitapi knowledge, including ideology and philosophy. Cultural reproduction is used here to indicate the transmission of a protean culture to succeeding generations.18 The key texts analysed in this chapter reflect an encounter between two radically disparate worldviews, epistemologies,

13 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 8. See also Lawrence W. Gross, “The Comic Vision of the Anishinaabe Culture and Religion”, in American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 26, no. 3 (2002): pp. 436–59, p. 449, noting that among the Anishinaabe (or Saulteaux) “it is commonly thought that religion and life way are one in (sic) the same”. 14 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 10; and Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 259. 15 This is also the position taken by Crowe, “Introduction”, George Bird Grinnell, p. xiii. 16 This is the attitude of an anonymous informant in Hernandez p. 68, and of Crowe, “Introduction,” pp. x–xiii. 17 Gordon Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas Through Their Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 18 See Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, pp. 195–6, on the ideas of cultural “reproduction” by Althusser, and Bourdieu and Passeron; and “reception theory” by Michel De Certeau.

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and technologies. What follows seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the contribution of Siksikaitsitapi “Grandparents” to the writing of Blackfoot literature and history by participating in the process of transformation of Blackfoot knowledge, from orality into text. This contribution is a thread of continuity linking Siksikaitsitapi knowledge to the texts reviewed here.

4.4 The Ethnographic Text and Hybridity

The concept of hybridity, with its roots in biology and zoology connoting inter alia sterilisation, needs explication because it has come to mean different things in different contexts. Terms such as “hybridity”, “mixed-blood”, and “half-breed”, which imply the loss of an essential, pristine quality, can provoke unease among present-day scholars because of their pejorative connotations. “Half-breeds” or “mixed-bloods” were often scorned by both cultures, and, in a classical trope of colonial discourse, were said to possess the worst traits of each culture and none of the good.19 Andeanist David Cahill compiled a list of twenty-one racial or caste categories defined by the Spaniard officials in the Viceroyalty of Peru, not only to define social relations but also fiscal obligations.20 Blood hybridity in this case was viewed as “contamination”, the special privileges attendant upon the elites were thus circumscribed by blood quantum. However, in the words of critic Monika Fludernik, hybridity has crossed from a biological to a metaphorical use.21 Hybridity is often

19 There was an enormous variation in categories of race and caste imposed by colonial powers throughout The Americas. Most of these categories were ‘slippery’, such that individuals might find themselves listed under more than one category depending on context. See for example Jennifer Brown and Theresa Schenck, “Métis, Mestizo, and Mixed-Blood”, in Phillip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury, eds., A Companion to American Indian History, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2004, pp. 321–38; Tony A. Culjak, “Searching for a Place in Between: The Autobiographies of Three Canadian Metis Women”, American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 31, no. 1–2 (2001): pp. 137– 57, discussing the problematic use of terms such as “mixed-blood”, “halfbreed”, and Métis, in Canada and the United States. The subject has been best explored in the case of Spanish American societies: see, especially, Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967; David Cahill, “Colour by Numbers: Racial and Ethnic Categories in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1532–1824”, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 26, no. 2 (1994): pp. 325– 34; Robert H. Jackson, Race, Caste, and Status: Indians in Colonial Spanish America, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999; Magali M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003; and Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race”, American Historical Review, Vol. 106, no. 3 (2001): pp. 866–905. 20 Cahill, “Colour by Numbers”, pp. 325–46. 21 Monika Fludernik, ed. and “Introduction”, Hybridity and Postcolonialism: Twentieth-Century Indian Literature, Freiburg Stauffenburg: Verlag, 1998, pp. 9–18, provides an extended discussion of the lexical and conceptual ways in which hybridity has been deployed, especially as a critical lens

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deployed to describe the product of the encounter between the colonised and the coloniser, although this is another instance where the history before colonisation, in this case the history of “hybridity” through the interactions of First Nations peoples before white arrival, is often ignored. Hybridity has been expressed through myriad terms and associated with encounters22 such as those attendant upon colonialism, where two or more radically different cultures undergo “cultural borrowing.” Chapter Three discussed the myriad terms compiled by Burke in order to refer to the cultural transformations resulting from the proximity and interpenetration of cultures.23 It is possible to view the stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition as having undergone appropriation and adaptation as a result of the cultural vibrancy of Plains lifeways before white contact, and as such already as bricolage. The negotiation of meanings that Burke refers to within this process of transculturation will be evident as the chapter progresses and the links between the old and the new are made evident by the analysis of the transformation of oral stories into text.

Post-colonial critics often deploy the term “hybridity” in preference to pre- existing cognate terms such as “mestizaje” (referring to miscegenation or cultural blending24); “syncretism” (fusion of religious beliefs and practices of the Old and New Worlds where the new practice is more than the sum of its parts25); “creolisation” (used to refer to variations created from language and culture within the context of slavery, and also to denote Americans of European descent, i.e. creoles are the Spanish offspring born in the New World26); and “acculturation” (“the adoption of elements from the dominant culture”, which can denote the two way traffic between cultures transformed by mutual exchange, also labelled “transculturation”). As earlier noted, transculturation contrasts with terms such as “acculturation” and “deculturation,” both of which “describe the transference of

with which to view postcolonial literatures, see also in the same volume her “The Constitution of Hybridity: Postcolonial Interventions”, pp. 19–53. 22 Aimé Césaire disputes that “encounter” or “contact” reflect what are “relations of domination and submission”. Cited in Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 62. 23 Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 208. 24 Nestor García Canclini, Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, Mexico DF: Grijalbo, [1989] 16th reprint 2003, pp. x–xii. 25 Ibid., p. xi. 26 Ibid., pp. xi–xii.

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culture in reductive fashion imagined from within the interests of the metropolis.”27 Each of these terms has specific connotations within the multivariate context of colonialism, and are homogenised when subsumed under “hybridity”. Robert Stam expresses this fluidity theoretically:

Indeed, as a descriptive catch-all term, “hybridity” fails to discriminate between the diverse modalities of hybridity, such as colonial imposition (for example, the Catholic Church constructed on top of a destroyed Inca temple), or other interactions such as obligatory assimilation, political cooptation, cultural mimicry, commercial exploitation, top-down appropriation, bottom-up subversion. Hybridity, in other words, is power-laden and asymmetrical. Hybridity is also cooptable.28

Homi Bhabha points to hybridity as inter alia “an intervening space”, or a “third space of enunciation”, where “the language of critique … overcomes the given grounds of opposition and opens up a space of translation: a place of hybridity, figuratively speaking”.29 Bhabha’s deployment of hybridity as a site for a new object, that is “neither the one nor the other” (Burke’s bricolage) is based on his contention that

The intervention of the third space of enunciation, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code. Such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People. In other words, the disruptive temporality of enunciation displaces the narrative of the Western nation which Benedict Anderson so perceptively describes as being written in homogeneous, serial time.”30

27 “‘Transculturation’ was coined in the 1940s by Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz in a pioneering account of Afro-Cuban culture (Contrapunto Cubano (1947, 1963), Caracas, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1978). Uruguayan critic Angel Rama [La Ciudad Letrada] incorporated the term into literary studies in the 1970s.” Cited in Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 228; and Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, pp. 206– 12. Atwell, Rewriting Modernity, 2005, p. 17, rightly points up that Pratt’s definition of “transculturation as the process whereby ‘subordinated or marginalised groups select or invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture’ ... does not capture the extent of Ortiz’s intervention.” 28 Robert Stam, “Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Garbage: the Case of Brazilian Cinema”, Cultura Visual en América Latina, Vol. 9, no. 1 (1998): pp. 1–29, p. 4. 29 Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 25. 30 Ibid., p. 37.

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Bhabha’s ideas were intended as a tool to critique the literature written by colonised, migrant and diasporic subjects after the coloniser has gone home (such as in postcolonial India and Africa), but do not grapple with the ethnographer’s informant who does not possess writing, but can directly participate in writing, even though his/her contribution is the sine qua non for the “salvage ethnographer”, who is concerned with collecting memories, rather than with recording observations.

Gerald Vizenor’s postmodern brand of Native American31 criticism is exemplary of the capacity of the hybrid text to interpolate colonial discourse, for example through Vizenor’s coinage of neologisms including “transmotion, varionative, penenative, postindian, and interimage”. Postindian, for example, is calculated “to counter indian simulations” in colonial history arising from Columbus’s “naming fiasco”, which are perpetuated in colonial writing that, he argues, imposes colonial views of the world. With this in mind, Vizenor utilises Postindian as the antithesis of “Indian”, which he views as a “simulation and a loan word of dominance.”32 Vizenor also interpolates colonial discourses by re-signifying lexical terms such as “survivance” (an antithesis of “disappearance”, the discourse that negates colonial responsibility for population collapse and genocide), which Vizenor utilises to signify “an active repudiation of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” Vizenor’s critical strategies correspond to those of a postmodern trickster, simultaneously creating and destroying meaning. Paul Radin notes that the Trickster is a figure that appears “among the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese and in the Semitic world.” Trickster, adds Radin, is often “identified with specific animals, such as raven, coyote, hare, spider,” but his proportions do not correspond with concrete shapes. In one version described by Radin, “he possesses intestines wrapped around his body, and an equally long penis, likewise wrapped around his body with his scrotum on top of it. Yet regarding his specific features we are, significantly enough, told nothing.” Radin notes, everything the trickster does is permeated by “Laughter, humour and irony.”33 As a postmodern trickster, Vizenor writes from a constantly shifting position that uses Derridean concepts to claim an (ontological)

31 The term “Native American” is used in this chapter when discussing the work of critics who articulate their ideas using this nomenclature. 32 Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, pp. 14–5. 33 Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, with commentaries by Karl Kerényi and C. G. Jung, New York: Bell Publishing, 1956, pp. ix–x.

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difference for the Native American subject. Vizenor’s strategy is to reverse the colonising effects of representations of the Native American in colonial history. However, to vouchsafe his claims to truth, he relies on a specific claim to be possessed with an emic view and a speaking position exclusive to First Nations peoples. This is more than an intellectual position; rather, it is a political claim that dovetails with the aforementioned cognate claims by Hernandez and the Blackfoot Gallery Committee.

Thus, between the critical liberating, and the cultural relativising, forms of hybridity, deployment of this term always requires additional qualification. A question remains of who is in a position to produce writing from the Third Space of hybridity. Is it the Gramscian “organic intellectual” (see Chapter 1) or the non- Native critic?34 It can be argued that all ethnographic texts are intrinsically hybrid. This logic can be taken one step further: it can be argued that all cultures are intrinsically hybrid, thus leaving hybridity devoid of any heuristic value other than that attaching to its etymological roots—as the sterile fusion of two or more disparate entities. It is patently inaccurate to attach such static meanings to cultures, which are ever transforming and vibrant. Therefore, although hybridity as stasis is unhelpful when applied to cultures, in the specific case of the transcribed and translated Blackfoot Stories, these can be viewed as generically hybrid, as the product of two distinct practices (orature and writing). The written stories provide a snapshot of their oral counterparts during a specific historical conjuncture, which, Clifford Geertz has argued, is the case with ethnographic writing in general:

The ethnographer inscribes social discourse; he[/she] writes it down. In so doing, he[/she] turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted.35

The ethnographic publications based on oral Blackfoot knowledge can be viewed as hybrid because they have become fixed on the pages of the five texts, where they are permanently separated from their cultural moorings and from the social mechanisms

34 For a critique of hybridity, see Antony Easthope, “Bhabha, Hybridity and Identity”, Textual Practice, Vol. 12, no. 2 (1998): pp. 341–8. 35 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, [New York: Basic Books 1973] London: Hutchinson & Co., 1975, p. 19.

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that gave them life and meaning in the first place. Very few explanations are given of the function of the stories and their relationship to ceremony and everyday life: they are treated like discrete stories disconnected from the world.

4.5 Hybridity and the Oral Tradition

If we adopt the view that all cultures are hybrid, then the Blackfoot oral tradition is necessarily hybrid. However, if everything is hybrid, how can the ethnographic text be viewed as radically different from the Blackfoot Stories that inform it? In order to distinguish between the written ethnographic text and the stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition, it is more helpful to understand how both genres serve a completely different function.

First, it is manifest that the oral tradition continues to exist independently from the ethnographic texts. Second, the oral tradition continues to undergo transformation according to its own protean mechanisms. Third, textual crystallisation per se does not prevent the narratives in the five volumes under discussion here from informing the oral tradition at any time. Indeed, one justification for Blackfoot collaboration in the project of orality into text was precisely to inform future generations of their descendants of how their ancestors lived. However, should this be the case, the stories will remain protean and therefore total adherence to the written story could not be expected.

The continued viability of the Blackfoot oral tradition is pointed out by Blackfoot historian Ahkiiwa Iyoumako Mistewaw, Sokapiiwa (Thedis Berthelson Crowe or Good Crooked Stick Woman), who argues: stories “are a major part of our cultural connection, the strong umbilical cord that keeps us tethered to the Blackfeet world and reminds us of our history.”36 Viewed from another angle, the Blackfoot oral tradition is one of the most crucial practices that separates the Blackfoot from the Euro-American colonisers by providing a means to nurture a separate Blackfoot identity. Despite any liberating effects that can flow from embracing hybridity, it is undisputed that First Nations peoples continue to demand to be recognised as distinct, and overwhelmingly reject hybrid imaginaries, despite the realities of their experiences during the early colonial era.

36 Crowe, “Introduction,” p. xiii.

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4.6 Function of the Blackfoot Stories

The Blackfoot Stories are the threads of continuity, the conduit for the data collected during the ethnographic collaborations.37 They are knowledge, or, in Peter Nabokov’s apt phrase, “forms of remembering”. Despite the contradiction implicit in the term “oral literature” (which linguist Walter Ong describes as “monstrous”38), the want of a better term to describe oral practices that share many of the characteristics of literature has resulted in the widespread application of the term to the Blackfoot Stories. The alternative term “orature” has not been taken up by scholars. Anthropologist and linguist Dell Hymes challenges the applicability of Ong’s findings on orality to the oral literatures of the New World; he notes that Ong’s study does not include “a single New World case.” Hymes suggests that the three characteristics that distinguish “literary art” are: “it must be abstract; it must change; it must give pleasure.”39 In the late nineteenth century Grinnell was already describing renderings of the Blackfoot oral tradition as “literature”, and other scholars share his view.40 If we consider that Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey are textual renderings of oral stories, and they are viewed as historical as well as literary representations, it is hardly far-fetched to view the stories from the oral traditions of First Nations peoples of The Americas in that same light.

Against the Blackfoot view of the stories from their oral tradition as a “record of [their] history since the beginning of time,”41 many Western scholars regard Native American genres as “separate repositories for some brand of historicity,”42 but

37 Peter Nabokov, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 57. 38 Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 11. 39 Dell Hymes, Now I Know Only So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003, pp. 15–16. Hymes’s path breaking studies on the oral literatures of the peoples of the North Pacific Coast of the New World illustrate his point. 40 Robert H. Lowie, “The Oral Literature of the Crow Indians”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 72, no. 284 (1959): pp. 97–104. See also Penny Petrone, Native Literature in Canada from the Oral Tradition to the Present, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 3–8, for a discussion on the changing perspectives regarding Canadian oral literatures. See also William M. Clements, “The Jesuit Foundations of Native North American Literary Studies,” American Indian Quarterly Vol. 18, no. 1 (1994): pp. 43–59; Rodney Frey, ed., Stories That Make the World: Oral Literatures of the Indian Peoples of the Inland West, As Told by Lawrence Aripa, Tom Yellowtail, and Other Elders, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995; and Andrew Wiget, Native American Literature, Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985. 41 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 10; and Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 259. 42 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, p. 65.

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not as History. Ancient historian M. I. Finley makes this case in his The Use and Abuse of History;43 referring to the “timelessness” of “myth”—an etic term for oral stories discussed later— he argues that “[d]ates and a coherent dating scheme are as essential to history as exact measurement is to physics.”44 This relativistic view of history is eminently ethnocentric, and inadequate when engaging with non-Western knowledges. Although Blackfoot historic and literary expressions were not articulated in graphemes comparable to alphabetical writing, nor did they contain chronological data as per Western expectations, it would be inaccurate to say that the Blackfoot were without history or literature prior to acquiring the technology of writing. Had that been the case, then the five key texts studied here would be the poorer for it.

4.7 Authorial Considerations

There are thus grounds for wider recognition of the contribution of Blackfoot “historians”—those whose knowledge forms the core of the ethnographic texts—to the writing of Blackfoot history and literature. The authors of these five volumes need to be re-positioned as co-compilers and co-editors. Analysis of the authorial processes in this chapter dictates an enlarging of the role of the Blackfoot informants by drawing links between genres from the Blackfoot oral tradition and the written texts mediated by the ethnologists. Therefore, attention will be drawn to the many ways in which the Blackfoot became involved in the construction of their own history, as informants, as translators, as authors, and, as for example in the case of David Duvall, as co-compilers and co-editors.

Authorship of the Blackfoot Old People Stories must remain undecided because the mechanisms of the oral tradition preclude attaching authorship to stories that are, in fact, a collective cultural inheritance.45 Oral stories are intrinsically protean, and each retelling is unique. Wissler points out that:

43 M. I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History, [Chatto & Windus, 1975] London: Pimlico, 2000. 44 Finley, Use and Abuse of History, pp. 15 and 215 n. 9, citing I. Meyerson. 45 The writings of Foucault and Barthes provide a good point of departure to view the differences between both types. They both point to a prior time when the author did not occupy a central role. Foucault emphasises a key moment in the history of ideas, when recounting the lives of heroes was replaced by the recounting of the lives of authors. He locates the Greek epic in the earlier period, when a desire for immortality makes the hero accept death willingly while still young: Michel

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[m]yths are told by a few individuals, who take pride in their ability and knowledge, and usually impress their own individuality upon the form of the narrative ... to say that any one version ... is correct would be preposterous.46

An unnamed Kainai informant suggested to Wissler, by pulling up a common ragweed, that the various versions of a myth, like the parts of the weed “all branch off from the stem. They go different ways, but all come from the same root.”47 In this regard, authorship is collective and ongoing, rather than individual and fixed for all time. The lack of an authorial figure attaching to the Blackfoot Stories has no doubt contributed to creating a belief that those who created these stories have long-since disappeared, and bear no connection to those Blackfoot who continue to retell the stories, but who could not possibly create anything similar. In this light, the informants who recounted the stories to the ethnographers are viewed as incapable of such creativity. For example, Schultz was, according to Grinnell, the “discoverer of the literature of the Blackfeet.”48 Manifestly, if the Blackfoot narratives Schultz contributed to Forest and Stream49—of which Grinnell was editor and majority shareholder—were a “literature” that Schultz himself had discovered, he could hardly occupy an authorial position in relation to these stories, even if, as claimed by Keith Seele, his editor, Schultz reproduced them in creative fashion.50

When it comes to Everyday Stories (defined later), some are clearly the product of a personal narrative; the authors being the guarantors of the claims to truth of these genres. The autobiographical genres discussed in this chapter fall into the latter category. Unfortunately, no systematic attempts were made to transcribe fully the stories contained therein.

Foucault, “What is an Author?”, trans. by Joseph V. Harari, in David Lodge, ed., Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, London: Longman, [1988] 1994 rpt., pp. 197–210, p. 198; and Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Lodge, ed., Modern Criticism and Theory, pp. 166–172, p. 168. Barthes’ prior time points to ethnographic societies, where “responsibility for a narrative did not reside on a person, but on a mediator or shaman, who ‘performed’ rather than ‘created’ the text”. 46 Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, p. 5. 47 Ibid. 48 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxx. 49 As the name indicates, this New York-based publication was concerned with outdoor activities. It became influential in shaping public opinion on matters of environmental conservation. As a component of the “outdoors”, the lifeways of First Nations also interested readers. 50 In his “Introduction”, p. xi, Schultz’s editor, Keith C. Seele argues that the former “took some liberties with factual history”.

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4.8 Blackfoot Stories and Colonial Appropriation

The Blackfoot Stories contained in the five texts under consideration are the product of linguistic and cultural translations, which entailed the adaptation of Blackfoot knowledge into Western epistemology in order to make them acceptable to “non- Indian literary consumers,” to borrow a category from linguist Robert Brightman.51 This entailed dividing them into genres that attached etic values to these stories. An emic perspective is provided by Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday, who opines that Native stories are:

imaginative and creative in nature … an act by which man strives to realise his capacity for wonder, meaning and delight … also a process in which man invests and preserves himself in the context of ideas.52

If we overlook Momaday’s gender-exclusive language, his elaboration aptly encapsulates the manifold functions and meanings contained within stories such as those of the Blackfoot oral tradition, meanings that include not only the art of creativity and enjoyment of a “literary” practice, but also the preservation of knowledge transmitted through the medium of the oral stories. Linguist Dell Hymes’s groundbreaking approach (i.e., reconfiguring Chinook songs, among others, to restore their structure and beauty lost in earlier translations) demonstrates the crudeness of both “literal” and “literary” translations in early ethnographic collections. No linguistic studies such as Hymes’s have been conducted on the Blackfoot Stories, however, his work demonstrates the possibilities for such an undertaking.53 Indeed, linguistic translation is but one area where the transformation of oral stories into text can be questioned; because transcribing and translating such stories is, of necessity, a reductive exercise—an observation first made by Frantz Boas, a physicist turned professional ethnographer whose ideas were foundational for the professionalisation of anthropology in the early twentieth century.54 Translating the stories is reductive because the compilers emphasised the quantity of

51 Brightman, “Tricksters and Ethnopoetics,” p. 180. 52 Momaday cited in Vizenor, Wordarrows, p. xii. 53 See Dell Hymes, “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004; and his Now I Know Only So Far, 2003. 54 Franz Boas, “Mythology and Folk Tales of the North American Indians’, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 27, no. 106 (1914): pp. 374–410. Franz Boas taught at Columbia University between 1896–1936. For his approach to his discipline see Barnard, History and Theory, 2000.

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stories they could transcribe, an emphasis that accounts for the brief versions that made it into text. Although it cannot be categorically affirmed that the laconic versions of a story known to be longer are always the product of editorial intervention, the evidence would seem to point in that direction.

In effect, the incorporation of alien genres in the preparation of the Blackfoot Stories for publication imposes Western meanings and circumscribes the ways in which non-Blackfoot readers engage with the stories. The two emic categories (for Blackfoot Stories) underscored by Hernandez on the basis of interviews with respected Blackfoot Elders or “Grandparents”—who are recognised as repositories of Blackfoot knowledge in their communities—relate to function and thematic content. They are the “Old People stories” (of which the “Star Stories” of the “Blackfoot Creation Stories Cycle” form a part),55 and “Everyday Stories”. Hernandez argues that applying etic categories to the stories is integral to the colonisation of Blackfoot knowledge. However, these two categories match the two generic distinctions or sets of stories noted by Boas in relation to “Native American” oral traditions. The “Old People Stories” correlate closely with stories that “relate incidents which happened at a time when the world had not yet assumed its present form and when mankind was not yet in possession of all the customs and arts that belong to our period.” The “Everyday Stories” correlate with the second set highlighted by Boas, that is, the stories that “belong to our modern period.” However, characters from one set could cross into the other, making definitive categorisation difficult. While Boas suggested that the first set fits the category of “myth” and the second that of “history,”56 the etic category of myth has been rejected by some Blackfoot scholars such as Hernandez because of its connotations of fictionality, although Blackfoot author and scholar Woody Kipp uses the term without qualification.57 The same resistance may be expected if we apply

55 Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. v and 53. 56 Radin, The Trickster, p. 118, notes that the Winnebago termed these two sets waikan (“a past irretrievably gone”) and worak (“present workaday world”). 57 Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 36–52, and 44–52 for the broader function of the Blackfoot Star Stories; Woody Kipp uses myth to refer to the Blackfoot Stories, see his Foreword, in Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. vi; see also Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, pp. 5–18. For a general perspective on definitions of myth, legend and folktale, including a discussion of Crow narratives that bear similarity to the Blackfoot Stories, see Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore” pp. 4, 9 and 16.

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“mythology” to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which Christians regard as true on the basis of faith.

Hernandez’s concern may seem trivial, but is well justified. As Mircea Eliade observed, the significance of the term “myth” is ambivalent58. As Boas and Hernandez both argued, the societies that maintain these stories/myths regard them “as absolute truth”.59 Yet the most familiar sense of myth as “fiction” or “illusion” coexists with the meaning of myth as “sacred tradition, primordial revelation and exemplary model”: the sense in which it is employed by early twentieth century “ethnologists, sociologists, and historians of religions.”60

On the basis of the foregoing, a consideration of the categories utilised within the texts of reference is necessary in order to appreciate better the politics involved in the contest for representation attendant upon the production of the ethnographic text. The reframing of knowledge of the Other is not a benign matter. It is, rather, one of the mechanisms for imposing the colonisers’ perspective of how the world can be apprehended, which has often resulted in the devaluation of oral stories such as those of the Blackfoot oral tradition.61 For example, the imposed categories secularise Blackfoot knowledge, which, as Hernandez and the members of the Blackfoot Gallery Committee point out, integrates the sacred and the secular. Moreover, even though, as Hernandez argues, the “Blackfoot Stories” are linked to the shared notions of what it means to be Blackfoot, the anthologies of Blackfoot Stories made little effort to link specific stories to their function in terms of the maintenance of the Blackfoot identity (Chapter 5 seeks to redress this lack of attention).

Grinnell’s arbitrary categories reconfigure Blackfoot knowledge to render it easily intelligible and even attractive to his intended audience, the North American general public and perhaps the average reader of Forest and Stream. Grinnell utilised four classifications following thematic rather than chronological criteria: “Stories of

58 Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, New York: Harper Colophon Books, [1963] rpt. 1975, p. 1. 59 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, p. 66. 60 Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 1. 61 Oliver La Farge in his foreword to an anthology of “California Indian Legends”, claims that “The literary value of a great deal of primitive literature, whether myths or tales, is nil.” Cited in Theodora Kroeber, The Inland Whale: Nine Stories Retold from California Indian Legends, with a Foreword by Oliver La Farge [London, UK: Indiana University Press 1959] Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 7. For an articulation of the devaluation of oral stories see Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, p. 4.

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Adventure”, “Stories of Ancient Times”, “Stories of Old Man”, and “The Story of The Three Tribes.”62 Without going too deeply into the individual stories, it is evident that the category of “Adventure” is a misleading way of referring to what are “Everyday Stories,” representing and explaining the Blackfoot world by reference to lived experience. That the city-bred Grinnell with an office in New York and powerful friends in Washington—most notably, he was a personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt—could apprehend these events as “adventures” reflects his own experience of Blackfoot lifeways as an exotic indulgence during his spare time. The title “Story of the Three Tribes” is applied to a number of sub-headings that reflect the contents as being part-history and part-ethnography. The subheadings strongly echo tropes from ethnology, including: “The Past and The Present,” “Daily Life and Customs,” “How the Blackfoot Lived,” “Social Organization,” “Hunting,” “The Blackfoot in War,” and “Religion.” One glaring term omitted in referring to the Blackfoot Stories is that of “knowledge,” which is seldom articulated as applicable to the Blackfoot Stories.

The titles that compilers impose on their volumes also attach specific values to the Blackfoot Stories. Uhlenbeck opts for the generic “texts”, while Schultz (or Seele, the editor of his posthumously published text), in keeping with the narrative style, utilises “memories”. The remaining three titles contain the terms “mythology” (Wissler and Duvall), “legends” (McClintock), and “tales” (Grinnell) which correspond to what Nabokov calls “the generic myth/legend/folktale trinity of etic narrative forms.”63 The implications of the term “myth” have already been discussed. Folktales have no equivalent genre in Native American oral traditions. Folklorist William Bascom provides an etic definition of folklore thus: “secular narratives, commonly occurring outside any specific place or time, involving human and non- human characters, and are regarded as fictional stories with high entertainment (and educational) value.”64 The sacred versus secular demarcation between myth and folktale is evident in the sub-genres listed by Bascom: “human tales, animal tales, trickster tales, tall tales, formulistic tales, and moral tales or fables.”65 However, the

62 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. xix–xx. 63 Nabokov, Forest of Time, p. 65. 64 Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore,” p. 4. 65 Ibid., and Nabokov, A Forest of Time, p. 66;

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division between myths and folktales collapses because the “sacred” is arbitrarily appraised according to Western epistemology, which does not conform to the notion of the sacred and the secular being indivisible in Native American epistemologies. For example, Bascom applies the category of folktale to “trickster tales”, which does not correlate with the exalted position within Blackfoot epistemology of the Blackfoot trickster, Napi or Old Man. Most cultures view their own genesis with reverence and, in this instance, the application of the label “folktale” devalues Blackfoot knowledge by forcing a secular perspective upon stories that, within the Blackfoot tradition, are not seen as purely secular.

When historians interact with First Nations stories, the imposed etic classifications, as R. David Edmunds argues, denote a misunderstanding and devaluation of non-Western knowledge.66 How this applies to the term “legend” is illustrated by folklorist Bascom in his definition of legends as:

prose narratives which, like myths, are regarded as true by the narrator and his audience, but they are set in a period considered less remote, when the world was much as it is today … more often secular than sacred, and their principal characters are human … They tell of migrations, wars and victories, deeds of past heroes, chiefs, and kings, and succession in ruling dynasties. In this they are often the counterpart in verbal tradition to written history, but they also include local tales of buried treasure, ghosts, fairies, and saints.67

Whereas any genre divisions are always understood as provisional, with exceptions often proving the rule, the above comparison of legend versus myth demonstrates the unreliability of both labels. This is one instance in which the terms “Everyday Stories” or “history” as suggested by Hernandez and Boas respectively reflect more accurately the stories that Bascom categorises as “legend”. As Foucault argued, order is “that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another”, but it is also “that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language”68. In creating such grids in order to view First Nations peoples’ knowledge, labels imposed by whites alter those imposed by the practitioners of the cultures described.

66 Edmunds, “Native Americans, New Voices”, p. 721. 67 Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore,” p. 4. 68 Michael Foucault, The Order of Things, London: Routledge, 2003 ed., pp. xxi–xxii.

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Another area of difficulty in translating and transcribing oral stories into text is the impossibility of capturing the many nuances of a live performance into text— including gesture, movement, voice and affect—without disrupting the coherence of a written narrative.69 As anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes,

anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a “native” makes first order ones: it’s his[her] culture.) They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are “something made,” “something fashioned”— the original meaning of fictio—not that they are false, unfactual, or merely “as if” thought experiments.70

If we add to these difficulties the imposition of an alien grammatical structure dictated by translation, we cannot but agree with Vizenor, who argues that the stories transcribed by ethnographers “are ‘fragile’ immersions of themes and characters ‘in a second nature, a second immediacy.’” Vizenor adds that while “[t]he sound of stories in the ear is a sure sense of presence …[t]he translation of native oral stories is an absence.”71 In a more elaborate paragraph, he expands upon these ideas:

The translation of native oral stories is an absence, never the natural haunt of presence. The transmutation of sound, the voice, and the trace of memories into written sentences is, at best, an artful pose; an aesthetic absence at the instance of the creation of native stories. Surely there are traces of native presence in translations, but the cause of author renditions is both a cultural discovery and a literary enterprise, and poses as a union of memories; the creases on the verso are cultural restriction and dominance. The sound of stories in the ear is our presence, and the other traces of that nature are survivance.72

Thus, in a classic trickster pose, Vizenor redeploys Derridean elaborations on presence/absence to the Native American context, denying yet affirming presence within one move. Vizenor claims that Native stories “are the canons of survivance”

69 Hymes, “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”, p. 80, notes that “[i]n contemporary transformational generative grammar the term performance treats overt realization, quite likely imperfect, of an underlying knowledge on the part of a speaker”; pp. 79–141 provide perspectives on performance; see also Adam Kendon, Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 70 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, p. 15. 71 Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, pp. 63–4. 72 Ibid., pp. 64 and 67.

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and “the other traces of that nature”73. He re-signifies “survivance” to claim that “Native survivance ... is more than survival, more than endurance or a mere response; the stories of survivance are an active presence.”74 In such manner, the trickster plays with words, confounds his audience and defers meaning while turning the world upside down, by re-placing the oral above the written, all the while effecting this trickster move within writing. Vizenor’s claims are part of this chapter’s theoretical “toolkit,”75 which has been assembled to assist in apprehending the presence/absence of Blackfoot informants and to draw attention to how their strategies as storytellers inflect the published texts that are central to this chapter. These inflections are threads of continuity between the oral stories and the written texts.

4.9 “Salvage Ethnography” and the Construction of Blackfoot History

The compilation and publication of the five texts studied here fits within the continuum of a radically transforming ethnographic practice. The texts bear the hallmarks of an incipient anthropological discipline in the United States, promoted by the Smithsonian Institution since its foundation in 1846. A paradigm shift towards the universities and the professionalisation of anthropology occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century.76 According to anthropologist Jerry D. Moore, the foundational ideas for this shift came from Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Emile Durkheim, and Frantz Boas.77 As noted earlier, Boasians discarded notions that the indigenous cultures of North America were in “a primitive stage in human evolution”78, but viewed their cultures as having remained static prior to contact with Europeans, and as a result valued the cultural past over the present, which was

73 The Oxford English Dictionary defines “survivance” as: “The succession to an estate, office, etc. of a survivor nominated before the death of the existing occupier or holder; the right of such succession in case of survival”. 74 Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, pp. 15 and 23. 75 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 145, where he explains that the notion of theory as a toolkit means: (i) The theory to be constructed is not a system but an instrument, a logic of the specificity of power relations and the struggles around them; (ii) That this investigation can only be carried out step by step on the basis of reflection (which will necessarily be historical in some of its aspects) on given situations. 76 Helen Carr, Inventing the American Primitive: Politics, Gender, and the Representation of Native American Literary Traditions, 1789–1936, New York: New York University Press, 1996, p. 147. 77 Jerry D. Moore, Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1997, pp. 15–6. 78 Trigger, “Ethnohistory”, pp. 255–56.

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interpreted as contamination. This belief fuelled the practice of “salvage ethnology.”79 Henceforth, as anthropologist James Clifford asserted “[i]ntensive fieldwork pursued by university trained specialists, emerged as a privileged, sanctioned source of data about exotic peoples.”80 This development accords well with Foucault’s claims concerning the constantly contested and changing ways in which institutions (universities) constrain knowledge to produce discourses that are “within the true” (see Chapter 1). Clifford argues, however, that “nothing guaranteed a priori, the [professional] ethnographer’s status as the best interpreter of native life”81 (see Chapter 1).

The cohort of university-based Boasians generally distanced themselves from non-professionals or “horse and buggy ethnographers”, as anthropologist Margot Liberty called them.82 These amateur ethnographers included European and Euro- American travellers, traders and administrators, and even missionaries, who first chronicled the knowledge of First Nations peoples in what are now the United States and Canada. Their claims to the “scientific”83 nature of their work have been debunked, and their work is now viewed by scholars in the light of their specific interests. The compilers/editors of the five texts under consideration here stand on both sides of the divide between professional and non-professional ethnographers. The academic background of Grinnell and McClintock, both Yale-educated, was in fields other than anthropology; Columbia-educated anthropologist Clark Wissler achieved eminent status in his field84, although his research on the Blackfoot depended heavily on the abilities of his co-author David Duvall, who had no professional qualifications but was an excellent amateur ethnographer; Uhlenbeck

79 Jennings, “A Growing Partnership, p. 26, cites Edward Burnett Taylor, the first Professor of Anthropology at Oxford University, to elucidate the distinctions between anthropology, ethnology and ethnohistory. These distinctions were based on the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica: anthropology was “the science which, in its strictest sense, has as its object the study of man in the animal kingdom. It is distinguished from ethnology, which is devoted to the study of man as a racial unit, and from ethnography, which deals with the distribution of the races formed by the aggregation of such units.” 80 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority”, Representations Vol. 1, no. 2 (1983): pp. 118–46, p. 120. 81 Ibid., p. 121. 82 Cited in Sherry L. Smith, Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 47. 83 Clara Sue Kidwell and Alan Velie, Native American Studies, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, p. 42, note that missionaries’ “culturally-based assumptions about Native people strongly colored their judgments.” 84 Jonathan E. Reyman, “Note on Clark Wissler’s Contribution to American Archeology, American Anthropologist, Vol. 87 (1985): pp. 389–390. Commentary.

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was a linguist, and Schultz, without academic qualifications, was totally acculturated into Blackfoot lifeways and was a storyteller in his own right. There is little doubt that he possessed an emic view of Blackfoot culture.

Despite the varying approaches of the compilers/editors, they were united in one purpose: to document cultures believed to be disappearing. Curtis Hinsley noted that this task or “salvage anthropology” aimed at describing “not what the anthropologist actually observed, but a reconstruction from the oldest inhabitants of what had been the habits prior to reservation life.”85 The salvage ethnographer sought to capture a world that had existed prior to sustained contact with Europeans—an uncontaminated past that could provide links to humanity’s primordial era. Uhlenbeck also saw his work as one of salvage, which he describes as follows: “[m]y main objective was to learn the language and to save it from threatened oblivion by recording an accurate description.”86 Grinnell dedicated “nearly half his life-time” to record a world that “slowly and relentlessly evaporated.”87 Moreover, salvage ethnology is a term laden with imperialist and ethnocentric assumptions, which served to justify the colonial enterprise. The project of “salvage” was influenced by the discourse of extinction (see Chapter 2), which was accepted as the cost of “civilisation”. It is apparent that the discourse also gained acceptance among some Siksikaitsitapi. In a rare instance where Grinnell briefly defers to a Siksikaitsitapi voice in his text, that of Double Runner, a similar discourse is expressed by the latter:

The old things are passing away, and the children of my children will be like white people. None of them will know how it used to be in their father’s days unless they read the things which we have told you, and which you are all the time writing down in your books.88

It has already been mentioned that Grinnell thought it “best that the Indians should fade away as we seen (sic) them fading to-day”89, and his views regarding the

85 Hinsley is cited in Carr, Inventing the American Primitive, p. 155. 86 Mary Eggermont-Molenaar, “Mrs. Uhlenbeck: An Informed Diarist?”, in Eggermont-Molenaar, ed. and trans., Montana 1911: A Professor and His Wife Among the Blackfeet, Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2005, p. 21. 87 Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 46. 88 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxiii. 89 Grinnell, “Tenure of Land”, p. 6.

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“inexorable natural law that the weaker must perish while the fitter shall survive”90. These remarks accord well with scientific theories such as Social Darwinism, and Lewis Henry Morgan’s three stages of the human race, which measured “advancement” according to a linear progression from “savagery” to “barbarism” and ultimately to “civilization.”91 These ideas provided a convenient justification for an era of unsurpassed European colonisation (see Chapter 2).

4.10 Motivations of the “Salvage” Ethnographers

McClintock also articulates this discourse of extinction in The Old North Trail, published two decades after Lodge Tales. McClintock, like Grinnell, was wealthy, and had powerful connections. He first encountered the Blackfoot in 1896 when, as part of an expedition by Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service of the United States, he met Sikisikakoan (Blackfoot-Man), whom he describes as a “mixed- blood”, known as William Jackson. Jackson, who had been a scout under both Generals Miles and Custer in 1874–1879, and survived the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, when Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was annihilated by the Sioux (see Chapter 2), had also assisted Grinnell. The Blackfoot were enemies of the Sioux, and therefore Jackson’s allegiances were not as divided as his job for the U. S. Army might suggest. The liminal position of individuals like Jackson is taken up later in this chapter. Suffice to say here that he introduced McClintock to a life that was to absorb the latter ever after, and resulted in the publication of two books, one opera and several articles.92 Between 1906 and 1940 McClintock presented “illustrated lectures about the Blackfeet at venues across the [United States] and in Europe”. His audience included Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie and the Crown Prince of Prussia.”93 McClintock frames his efforts to render Blackfoot knowledge into text as follows:

I realised that there were locked up in the breasts of the old chiefs and medicine men rich treasures of folk-lore, religious beliefs and ceremonials, I saw that the younger generation was indifferent to their

90 Ibid. 91 Carr, Inventing the American Primitive, p. 156. 92 Larson, “Introduction”, pp. v–x, p. vi; and Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 67. 93 Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 68.

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tribal customs, tradition and religion. I also observed that they had no written language, and it seemed inevitable that, with the passing of the old chiefs and medicine men, their ancient religion and folk-lore would fall into oblivion. When I discovered that I could obtain the unbosoming of their secrets and that the door was open to me for study and investigation, I resolved that I would do my best to preserve all the knowledge available.94

McClintock also alludes to the reduction in the number of Blackfeet “fullbloods” in Canada and the United States as the “pathetic spectacle of a dying race.”95 He reserves the right to unlock “secrets” that, to his Blackfoot collaborators, were not “secret” at all. His dramatic tone fails to acknowledge that, ten years earlier, Grinnell had compiled a substantial work on Blackfoot literature and history, of which McClintock must have been aware but makes no mention, although he cites Clark Wissler’s “anthropological papers.”96 Moreover, the knowledge to which he was privy had been transmitted to countless generations without the assistance of writing. However, the incompatibility of Blackfoot discursive practices with those of “civilisation,” and the indifference of the younger generations meant that (according to his own lights) only McClintock’s “study and investigation” could save Blackfoot knowledge from oblivion. In this regard McClintock was in step with the discourse of extinction that informed salvage ethnology. However, even though McClintock’s contribution to the preservation of knowledge of the Blackfoot is not unique, there is no doubt that as to its great value. Moreover, his extensive collection of photographs of the Blackfoot, Smith argues, is “his most important contribution to Blackfeet history and ethnology.”97

A significant achievement of McClintock, noted in the introduction of The Old North Trail by Pikani-Gros Ventre author Sidner J. Larson, is that despite the idiosyncrasies of ‘as told to’ autobiography that pervade The Old North Trail, McClintock provides “much more personal detail about Blackfoot daily life than … other sources from that period”.

94 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. xi. 95 Ibid., p. 5. 96 Smith argues that McClintock must have been aware of Grinnell’s work: Reimagining Indians, p. 68. For the citation of Wissler see McClintock, Old North Trail, p. xii. 97 Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 81.

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Thus, although McClintock places himself at the centre of the events he describes— he is the “I” of the narrative voice—he narrates detailed conversations, ceremonies and happenings, often including gestures and dialogue, thereby embodying the presence of the Blackfoot who guided him through Blackfoot territory and through Blackfoot knowledge. As will be seen in Chapter Five, this intimate portrayal of the Siksikaitsitapi was useful to Pikani author James Welch to recreate Siksikaitsitapi subjectivity in his historical novel, Fools Crow 98.

Grinnell was a naturalist turned ethnologist whose compilation of Blackfoot knowledge typifies the attitude of the salvage ethnologist. His biographer Edward Harris III, who argues that Grinnell “fashioned himself a chronicler” rather than a scholar, views this transition as a logical step from a preoccupation with the preservation of nature to the preservation of knowledge of “Indians.”99 The publication of Lodge Tales, now highly regarded for its historical value, benefited from the work of Schultz, who had earlier published Blackfoot Stories in Forest and Stream, a journal dedicated to the outdoor life in which Grinnell delighted. Schultz, who was a paid assistant to Grinnell, gave the latter permission to incorporate his previously published materials into Lodge Tales because at the time he was not interested in working on a book-length publication of his own.100 Grinnell gave much credit to Schultz, one of three research assistants in Grinnell’s payroll. The other two are not mentioned at all in Lodge Tales—they were George Hyde and George Bent (who was bicultural).101 Although by Grinnell’s own admission “[a] portion of the material contained in Lodge Tales was originally made public by Mr. Schultz”102, Grinnell’s text is consistently valued over Blackfeet and Buffalo, which is described as “folksy.”103

In 1870 Grinnell travelled West with an expedition organised by Yale University palaeontologist Otheniel C. Marsh. Henceforth, until the mid-1920s, Grinnell dedicated his summers “to hunt, explore, climb mountains and glaciers, and

98 James Welch, Fools Crow, New York: Viking, 1986. 99 Harris, III, Preserving a Vision, pp. 380–1 and 408. 100 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxx. 101 Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 55. 102 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxx. 103 Larson, “Introduction”, p. x; and Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, p. 6.

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eventually, interview Indians.”104 He witnessed the process of colonisation of the First Nations peoples of the Plains, the famine that followed the demise of the buffalo herds, and white neglect of those living on the reserves. He began writing hunting stories for Forest and Stream, and in 1876 became its Natural History editor, progressing to joint ownership with his father by 1880.105 By the mid-1880s, Grinnell began compiling “Indian tales, history and ethnography,” using sign language to communicate with some of his informants, but relying mostly on paid assistants as translators. As an assiduous visitor to Blackfoot camps, he had both time and opportunity to establish his informants’ bona fides and to build his connections with them.

Lodge Tales, which followed a volume on the Pawnees, combines Grinnell’s personal experiences during his travels among Western First Nations generally, and among the Blackfoot in particular. In both texts, his stated intention was “to show how Indians think and feel by letting some of them tell their own stories in their own fashion.”106 Such claims to represent the voice of the subaltern have been discounted by scholars, both within and outside the discipline of anthropology. In their edited volume, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography,107 James Clifford and George E. Marcus deal at length with the manifold difficulties involved in ethnographic writing. At the time of Grinnell’s collaboration with the Blackfoot, however, such claims had not yet been debunked.

The debate on whether the voice of colonised, subaltern, indigenous Other can be represented at all has been extensive. It has run the gauntlet since the celebrated essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,108 and the riposte by Edward Said countering that “the subaltern can speak, as the history of liberation movements in the twentieth century eloquently attests.”109 It has involved fierce debates such as those popularly dubbed the “culture wars” in United States academe in the 1990s, which resulted from curricula changes in the first instance.

104 Smith, Reimagining Indians, pp. 46 and 53. 105 Ibid., p. 48. 106 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxvii. 107 James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 108 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, pp. 120–30. 109 Said, Orientalism, p. 335.

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These innovations, partly the work of the “Rainbow Coalition”, met strong resistance by conservative forces, as exemplified by Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education: The Politics of Sex and Race on Campus.110 Despite the opposition, acceptance of testimonial texts such as that of Rigoberta Menchú111 began to be “taught in literature as well as anthropology, sociology, and political science courses.”112 The extensive bibliography on the reliability of testimonio113 includes studies by Linda Alcoff, John Beverley, Soshana Felman and Dori Laub, Dominick LaCapra, and an anthology by Georg M. Gugelberger, to name but a few.114

Grinnell’s claim to let “Indians … tell their stories in their own fashion” is easily exposed as empty rhetoric by his own writing strategies. His intention to give voice to the voiceless accords with the oft-stated aims of the genre of “testimonio”, a recounting of events by an often illiterate participant in the events described, to an

110 The changes involved the “Western Civilization requirement of first-year students at Stanford University”. The Rainbow Coalition included “black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian groups”, and were opposed by Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, New York: Free Press, 1991, p. 63. 111 Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, I, Rigoberta Menchú: an Indian Woman in Guatemala, trans. Ann Wright, London: Verso, [1984] 1994 reprint, [translated from Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú Y Así Me Nació la Conciencia, Editions Gallimard and Elisabeth Burgos, 1983]. 112George Yúdice, “Testimonio and Postmodernism”, in Georg M. Gugelberger. ed., The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America, [Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 18, no. 3 (1991): pp. 15–31] Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 42–57, p. 47. I, Rigoberta was included in one track (out of eight) of the Stanford University civilization requirement, see John Beverley, “The Margin at the Centre: On Testimonio”, in Georg M. Gugelberger, ed., The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, p. 39 [Against Literature, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1993]; see also John Willinski, “Rigoberta Menchú’s Secret: Culture and Education” in Allen Carey Webb and Stephen Benz, eds., Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchú and the North American Classroom, Albany: State University New York Press, 1996, pp. 331–51, esp. 336. 113 A definition of the genre is provided by John Beverly, who has theorised extensively about the genre of testimonio: “By testimonio I mean...a narrative...told in the first person by a narrator who is also the real protagonist or witness of the events he or she recounts….The word testimonio translates literally as testimony, as in the act of testifying or bearing witness in a legal or religious sense.…The situation of narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival and so on, implicated in the act of narration itself. The position of the reader of testimonio is akin to a jury member in a courtroom. Unlike the novel, testimonio promises by definition to be primarily concerned with sincerity rather than literariness. Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory, Durham: Duke University Press, 1999, p. 65; and for a broader discussion of the genre, Beverley, Against Literature, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 69–99. 114 Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others”, Cultural Critique (1991–1992): pp. 5–32; Beverley, Against Literature, 1993; Soshana Felman and Dori Laub, M.D., Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York: Routledge, 1992; Gugelberger, ed., The Real Thing; and Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

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intermediary, often an ethnologist, who transcribes and publishes the testimonio.115 Testimonios, however, are narrated in the first person to construct a sense of immediacy between the informant and the reader, a strategy that can obscure the ethnographer’s intervention as editor of the text. Moreover, using a first person narrator buttresses the testimonialist’s claims to truth, based on his/her “being there” when the action took place. Grinnell’s avowed wish to give voice to the Blackfoot does not extend to using the first person “I” in his narrative. In fact, the “I” of his informants only makes a fleeting appearance in two paragraphs of a brief conversation between Grinnell and Double Runner, one of his informants, which he included in Lodge Tales under the title “note”, prior to his introduction (discussed later in this chapter).

If Grinnell expected his readers to “get a true notion of the man who is speaking ... the real Indian as he is in his daily life among his own people,” we are entitled to question why he did not name them or flesh out their presence alongside the stories they told. By adopting the authorial position, Grinnell appropriates Blackfoot knowledge where his own contribution might better have been described as “compiler” or “editor”. This would have been more akin to current ethnographic and ethnohistorical practices, where the identity of informants has come to be regarded as crucial to claims to truth.116

Schultz’s Blackfeet and Buffalo credits each story to a specific narrator. Part I contains Schultz’s own reminiscences, and Part II contains stories told to him by his friends, including several non-Blackfoot: Bird Chief, Hugh Monroe (Indian by adoption), White Quiver, Kai Otokan (Bear Head), Raven Quiver (Joseph Kipp, a white trader), Three Suns, Big Brave, Many-Tail-Feathers, Ahko Pitsu (Chewing Black Bone),117 and Charles Rivois (born in St. Louis). These men related stories of events that they had witnessed or in which they had participated, such that their stories generally belong to the testimonial or autobiographical genre. One notable

115 For definitions on testimonio, see Beverley, Against Literature, pp. 70–1, and his Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory, Durham: Duke University Press, 1999, p. 65; see also George Yúdice, “Testimonio and Postmodernism”, p. 44. 116 One example of the approach is: Treaty 7 Elders et. al. The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7, 1996. 117 Seele, “Introduction”, p. xii.

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exception is an anecdote recounted by Ahko Pitsu, in which a Blackfoot sacred story embedded: the “Story of Paii” (Scarface). which is the subject of Chapter Four.

Schultz succeeds in deferring to Blackfoot voices in ways that Grinnell’s editorial hand and scientific tone would not allow. This is illustrated in the testimony of the Baker massacre narrated by Kai Otokan (whose childhood name at the time of the massacre was First Rider) “for the whites to read; for the whites of this time to learn what their fathers did to us.”118 This is by no means an isolated instance where Schultz articulates the experiences of colonisation from the perspective of his Blackfoot friends, which marks out Blackfeet and Buffalo from the remaining four texts studied here.

Wissler’s approach to compiling Blackfoot knowledge was that of a professionally trained Boasian ethnologist. His interpretation of the ethnographic data incorporates historical documentation on the Blackfoot and other Plains First Nations in accord with a Boasian diffusionist methodology. Wissler became Boas’s assistant in 1902, when the latter was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, and eventually succeeded Boas, directing the combined Departments of Anthropology and Ethnology between 1907 and 1942.119 Wissler’s reputation was established through publications of his fieldwork among the Blackfoot and various Siouan First Nations of Montana and the Dakotas between 1902 and 1905.120 After 1905 he gave up fieldwork himself and employed as a research assistant and translator David Charles Duval, the son of Amsskaapipikani Yellow Bird (Louise Big Plume), and Charles Duvall, a French Canadian employed at Fort Benton, a trading post on the Missouri River established in 1850.

David Duvall became the first published Blackfoot ethnographer. sharing authorial credits with Wissler.121 Duvall’s record of interviews is among the most valuable resources for scholars of the Blackfoot. Alice Kehoe argues that between 1910 and 1912, apart from Mythology of the Blackfoot, Wissler published as sole

118 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, p. 282. 119 Kehoe, “Introduction”, p. vi; and George Peter Murdock, “Clark Wissler, 1870–1947,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 50 (1948): pp. 292–304. 120 Murdock, “Clark Wissler,” pp. 292–304. 121 In 1850, George Copway’s The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation became one of the earliest writings of “Indian history written by an Indian”: Petrone, Native Literature in Canada, 1990; and Petrone, First People, First Voices, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991, p. 77.

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author four papers that bore the hallmarks of Duvall’s work.122 Duvall was a “cultural broker”, eliciting, collecting, reframing and translating Blackfoot knowledge for a white audience. He performed the tasks of an “organic intellectual” (see Chapter 1), a Gramscian term used to distinguish those who grow organically within a social group, as opposed to intellectuals in the traditional Western sense. Organic intellectuals are variously described by the terms “cultural broker”, “cultural intermediary”, and “framing specialist”. Although Duvall held no academic credentials, his bilingualism and access to knowledgeable Blackfoot “Grandparents” made him an invaluable asset to Wissler, who trained him and directed his work.

However, although Duvall considered the Pikani his people, his bicultural ancestry attached to him the pejorative label “half-breed”. In the eyes of his contemporaries he occupied racially and socially a liminal position not being fully accepted either as Blackfoot or as white. Grinnell, who was sympathetic to the plight of individuals of mixed ancestry, noted “[i]f they live off the reservation, they are called Indians, and are told to go and live with their own people, while if they live on the reservation the Indians say that they are white people and should go and live with the whites.”123 In her introduction to Mythology of the Blackfoot, Kehoe fleshes out the figure of Duvall. She notes that after his father’s death (when Duvall was six years old), Yellow Bird remained three years at Fort Benton, moving then to the Blackfeet Reservation. Duvall spent some years at the Fort Hall Indian School in Idaho and, until 1910, ran a blacksmith shop in the reservation town of Browning, Montana.124 He first married an Amsskaapipikani named Gretchen, but later separated from her and, in January 1911 he married Cecile Trombley. Duvall committed suicide that same year, a tragedy Wissler linked to Duvall’s liminality: “What galled him most was that no one trusted him...What else could he do?”125 – Uhlenbeck-Melchior writes in her diary entry for July 10 of that year that Duvall had shot himself at Joe Kipp’s inn in Browning—where the Uhlenbecks were staying at the time—the same day that, at Trombley’s initiative, “the case for the dissolution of

122 Kehoe, “Introduction”, pp. xii, and xxvi–xxvii. 123 Harris III, Preserving a Vision, p. 428, citing a letter written to S. M. Brosius in 1901 by Grinnell. 124 Kehoe, “Introduction”, pp. vi–vii. 125 Ibid., p. xi.

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his marriage [to Trombley] would have been heard in court”.126 Serendipity was at work the day Duvall took his own life, for Grinnell and his wife were also in town on that day, which coincided with the celebration of Ookaan. This ironic coincidence serves as a reminder that the work of the salvage ethnographers was part of a collective approach that, especially during the early twentieth century, focused attention on First Nations cultures in ways that had practical effects. In particular, opportunities of employment were created not only for guides and translators, but also for providers of services such as meals, laundry and transport. Blackfoot knowledge became the commodity of this new trade. Contributions by First Nations ethnographers to the wider field of anthropology include those of George Hunt (Kwakiutl), James Carpenter (Crow), Francis LaFlesche (Omaha), Arthur Parker (Seneca), John N. B. Hewitt (Tuscarora), Ella Deloria (Lakota), and the Lakota elder Black Elk.127

Like Duvall, other bicultural individuals played a significant part in the writing of Blackfoot history.128 Jackson, as previously noted, collaborated with both Grinnell and McClintock as well as guiding McClintock through Blackfoot territory and introducing him to Blackfoot informants.129 William Russell had worked as interpreter for Grinnell, who described him as a “half-breed” previously employed as interpreter at the [Blackfeet] Agency. Russell was the son of a white man, John T. Russell, and Pikani Glittering in Front.130 Uhlenbeck relied on the bilingual abilities of Kainai-Pikani Joseph Tatsey, who lived among his mother’s people on the

126 Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, pp. 95–6, and 405 n. 39, to the effect that the Grinnells launched their first ‘Glacier’ experience on 4 July 1911. 127 Frederick E. Hoxie, ed. and “Introduction”, Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era, The Bedford Series in History and Culture, Natalie Zemon Davis, Ernest R. May, and David W. Blight, advisory eds., Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2001, pp. 16–20; and Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 2. 128 Robert Bringhurst, “That Also Is You: Some Classics of Native Canadian Literature”, in William H. New, ed., Native Writers and Canadian Writing, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992 rpt., pp. 32–47, p. 43, notes that Kwakiutl Scot George Hunt was invaluable to Boas, who trained him in ethnological field techniques and linguistic transcription. 129 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxx; and McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 6–7. 130 Eggermont-Molenaar, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, Notes, p. 405, n. 40, citing De Marce, 1980, p. 224.

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Blackfeet Reservation.131 Without Tatsey, who verified all his notes, Uhlenbeck admits that

it would have been impossible … to profit by [Nínokyàio’s] Bear Chief’s life-experience, ancient lore, and imaginative power, as this gentleman speaks only the language of his warlike ancestry.132

Tatsey’s contribution is recognised in the title of the two publications resulting from his collaboration with Uhlenbeck. Uhlenbeck-Melchior’s diary records the long working sessions held by Tatsey and Uhlenbeck, but also the many Blackfoot visitors who came to listen to Uhlenbeck recite stories in the Blackfoot language, which Uhlenbeck had done hoping “for corrections from his audience.”133 She notes: “[a]ll the Indians love the Napi stories and they are impressed and don’t understand how a White man can recount their stories in their language, right in their own words.”134 She cites a constant stream of Blackfoot visitors who came to hear old stories, eat the treats of candy and “kisses” she dispensed, and smoke her tobacco.

Walter Mountain Chief was another close collaborator of Uhlenbeck. His relationship with the Uhlenbecks was such that he borrowed significant sums of money from them. Uhlenbeck’s data was collected “from the mouth of many people, mostly boys and young fellows, who were kind enough to allow me in their leisure- hours to interrogate them about intricate matters.”135 In fact, according to Uhlenbeck- Melchior, her husband’s informants during his second sojourn in Montana were mostly Amsskaapipikani elders, who were paid fees to “teach” him their stories, apart from receiving the already mentioned gifts of candy and tobacco. Even Mrs. Tatsey shared in the bounty, charging the Uhlenbecks for meals and also for washing their clothes.136 Uhlenbeck’s focus on linguistics, unlike that of the salvage ethnographers, necessarily narrowed his approach to the compilation of Blackfoot Stories. It appears that his interest centred on collecting as many stories as possible,

131 According to Uhlenbeck, Original Blackfoot Texts, p. iv, his 1911 publication was the result of spending three months among the Blackfoot in 1910. He returned in 1911 and collected more material, see Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary. 132 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 133 Eggermont-Molenaar, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, Notes, p. 406, n. 45. 134 Ibid., pp. 126–9. Italics added by editor to indicate that the words are untranslated from the Dutch manuscript. 135 Ibid., p. 406, n. 45. 136 Ibid., pp. 71 and 109: Mrs. Uhlenbeck complains of Mrs. Tatsey’s high charges to do their laundry.

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and to have them retold by several informants in order to ensure their accuracy. Uhlenbeck’s compilation provides the only bilingual rendering, and literal translation, of Blackfoot Stories among the five texts, as well as capturing a sense of the stories rhythm in the original language.

Bicultural individuals such as Duvall, Jackson, Russell and Tatsey mediated the relationship between the Blackfoot who contributed the Blackfoot Stories for publication, and the white compilers/authors, who were reliant on both informants and translators to obtain knowledge of Blackfoot culture and language, the notable exception being Schultz. At a wider remove, bicultural individuals figure prominently among the early First Nations peoples who utilised writing to become authors within Western historical and literary genres. However, as noted earlier, individuals of mixed ancestry occupied a liminal position during the period of this study, being regarded as neither “Indians” nor “whites”.

As with any term involving blood quantum, the application of these pejorative labels was by no means clear-cut. Ewers notes that by 1930 two-thirds of the Blackfeet Reservation were bicultural and by mid-century bicultural individuals “dominated the Tribal Council on the Blackfeet Reservation.”137 Moreover, McFee, who argues that it is wrong to assume that acculturation necessarily denotes a replacement of one culture by another, suggests replacing the “half-blood” label with “150% man [/woman]”. This affirming descriptor applies to individuals who are competent in “White-oriented … and … Indian-oriented activities”.138 Indeed, their bilingual capacity placed them in an ideal position to act as brokers between the two cultures, especially when they possessed literacy skills. Their salient role in bridging the gap between the two cultures emerges clearly from their substantial presence in early First Nations historical and literary writing.139

137 Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 326–7. 138 Malcolm McFee, “The 150% Man, a Product of Blackfeet Acculturation,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 70, no. 6 (1968): pp. 1096–1107, pp. 1098–1101. 139 See for example, the contributors to Bernd C. Peyer, ed., The Singing Spirit: Early Short Stories by North American Indians, in Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series, Vol. 18, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989, including authors Tekahionwake (Double Wampum or Pauline Johnson), of Mohawk-English descent; and according to Alanna Kathleen Brown, “Mourning Dove’s Canadian Recovery Years, 1917–1919,” in New, ed., Native Writers and Canadian Writing, pp. 113– 22, p. 113, Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket), whose descent Brown claims to have included “Okanogan, Colville (Schwelpi) and/or Lake, and Irish”; and more recently Métis Maria Campbell.

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One instance of transculturation going in the opposite direction is that of Schultz, whose own acculturation into Blackfoot lifeways mirrors the experience of his contemporary First Nations peoples, except that he travelled in the opposite direction. He learnt the Blackfoot language at the age of eighteen, and married Mutsi-Awotan-Ahki (Fine Shield Woman), an Amsskaapipikani into whose people he was ritually adopted—Grinnell and McClintock were likewise adopted by the Blackfoot—receiving the name Apikuni (Far-Off White Robe).140 The editor of his posthumously published Blackfeet and Buffalo, Keith C. Seele—another Blackfoot by adoption—describes Schultz as a “the greatest interpreter of a noble Indian people” because, despite being a white man, “he was also truly an indian.”141

The foregoing demonstrates the contribution by bicultural individuals to the writing of Siksikaitsitapi history and literature through the ethnographic encounter. Duvall co-authored one volume, but his contribution to other texts went unacknowledged. Tatsey’s contribution, including his editing function, was highly praised by Uhlenbeck, but not to the extent of recognising co-authorship. There were many other informants without whose collective participation the project of salvage could not have gone ahead. In view of the foregoing, it would appear that the authorial function vested in the compilers and editors of these texts is disproportionate to their contribution. Their authorial presence has greatly obscured Blackfoot agency in the project of transforming orality into text.

4.11 Power/Knowledge Perspectives on Blackfoot-White Collaborations

Blackfoot epistemology, like its Western counterpart, contains mechanisms for the control of discourses that are “within the true”. Blackfoot storytellers would preface their renditions by providing a genealogy of the stories recounted. Although the stories, as collective memories, had no author to guarantee their claims to truth, those who recounted them adhered to emic rules regarding the “truth” of the stories.142

140 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, p. 95. 141 Seele, “Introduction”, p. vii. 142 For the value of truth, see Glenbow Archives, M8458-8, Lucien and Jane Hanks fonds, “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk (interpreter)”, 12 September 1938: “supernatural ill” would befall those who did not tell “the gospel truth”; Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249. The value of truth is generally evident in the promise made at the beginning of an oral story to tell only the truth. See for example McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 418.

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Peter Nabokov argues that “any account of Indian-white relations deserves multiple representations,” because stories “reflect contrasting or overlapping vested interests, differing modalities of accounting and interpreting, and culturally divergent senses of what it all meant.”143 These considerations illustrate an ongoing scholarly debate, not only about interpretation and representation, but also about who is allowed to speak for whom. Full articulation of this debate, beyond the already stated perspectives, lies outside the bounds of this chapter.

This chapter acknowledges the constructedness of narrative, which can never capture the fullness of a given event and thus accords well with Nabokov’s call for “multiple representations.” However, this approach does not imply that all representations have equivalent claims to truth. Foucauldian notions of power/knowledge cannot but be invoked wherever power and truth are discussed, as they do when Blackfoot oral knowledge becomes written text through the mediation of the white ethnographer. Nor can Foucault’s elaboration on the production and control of discourses and the “will to truth’ be omitted from a context where claims to truth are pervasive (see Chapter 1). As Foucault noted, truth is intrinsically related to power:

truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power...truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its régime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.144

These ideas help to better view the truth claims of the five texts of reference, which rest, to a large extent, on the authority of the Blackfoot informants to articulate discourses that counted as true. To document Blackfoot knowledge, the ethnologists relied on Blackfoot “Grandparents”, especially those who were recognised as possessors of knowledge within their own communities. While the ethnographers (except for Duvall) belonged to the dominant coloniser elite, their informants also

143 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, pp. 5–6. 144 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 131.

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belonged to an identifiable Blackfoot elite, and were recognised by their community as repositories of knowledge. As such, these informants are akin to “organic intellectuals”. Their authority rests on their knowledge acquired according to accepted Siksikaitsitapi practices including, but not limited to, initiation in graded societies, the acquisition of sacred objects, and the sponsoring of sacred ceremonies.

Blackfoot epistemology, like its Western counterpart, is subject to the workings of knowledge and power, with “power” being often translated as “Medicine”, an inadequate term coined to refer to the manifold manifestations of natoyi or sacred power (see Chapter 1). At a practical level, all humans are deemed to possess a certain degree of sacred power, relative to the goodwill and protection of beings both from the animate and the inanimate realms, which can be acquired in many ways, including through dreams, especially during vision quests.145 The possession of strong power is evinced by the number of sacred societies into which a person has been inducted and the acquisition of Sacred Bundles, Medicine Pipes, and other sacred objects, which come to a new “owner” accompanied by songs and prayers (knowledge). As noted in Chapter Three, “[m]edicine ownership is a property distinction because a man [or a woman] must possess much before he [or she] can own medicine.”146

Apart from these meanings, Blackfoot “Medicine” or sacred power is also concerned with healing. However, of particular interest here is the notion of “Medicine” as knowledge, and the status that possession of certain knowledge can confer. In the same manner that a warrior’s status is commensurate with his deeds of courage on the warpath, the status of a person of knowledge is commensurate with the sacred items that have come into his/her possession during his/her lifetime. Apart from the respect attached to the owner of sacred objects, each time they are acquired the knowledge concomitant to their keeping and transferral is obtained by the new owner. As such, knowledge attached to these acquisitions was highly valued, and it gave the owner the means to become the intermediary for other Siksikaitsitapi to request divine intervention. During the era on which this study focuses, these

145 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 337. A young man would climb a mountain and fast and pray for four days and night in the hope of receiving a vision from a protective spirit through which power can be received. 146 Glenbow Archives, M4376-1, ff. 644 and 649, David C. Duvall fonds, for the economic aspects of “medicine” ownership; and Idem f. 619.

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services as intermediaries were generously rewarded with valuable gifts (horses, blankets and other goods). Ethnographers were drawn into these Blackfoot practices and were required to show their respect for the knowledge received from “Grandparents” by making suitable payments, a sign of transculturation.

Professional and amateur ethnographers sought to vouchsafe the authority of the constructions of “truth” in their salvage texts by ensuring the “authenticity” of their informants. This attitude presupposes a disregard for those who became “contaminated”, racially or otherwise, by contact with white culture. Thus, while bicultural individuals were perfectly positioned to act as mediators and translators, informants were preferably sought among “fullbloods”, thus equating truth-value with blood quantum. Grinnell attributes the stories he compiled “mostly” to “Blackfeet, Bloods and Piegans of pure race”, including “Red Eagle; Almost-a- Dog147 … Four Bears … Wolf Calf, Big Nose, Heavy Runner, Young Bear Chief, Wolf Tail, Rabid Wolf, Running Rabbit, White Calf, All-are-his-Children, Double Runner, and Lone Medicine Person, and many others.”148

None of Grinnell’s informants, with two exceptions, are identified with the particular stories they contributed. Miss Cora M. Ross, one of the teachers at the Blackfoot agency, whose ethnic provenance is not mentioned, is credited with providing a version of the story of the “Medicine Lodge” (Ookaan).149 The other exception is Mrs. Thomas Dawson, who is credited with the story of the “Lost Children.” Moreover, Grinnell cites the assistance of Pikani by adoption and “veteran prairie man, Mr. Hugh Monroe and his son John Monroe.” Hugh Monroe, Ma-kwi’-i-po-wak-sin (Rising Wolf) was the grandfather of Grinnell’s assistant, William Jackson. Monroe Sr. had lived among the Pikani since 1815 and came to reside on the reservation of his Pikani wife in 1886.150 It would appear that Grinnell reserved titles (Miss, Mrs, Mr) for “whites”; quite pointedly, while Hugh Monroe

147 According to Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 294, during the starvation that followed the destruction of the buffalo, Pikani Almost-a-Dog was “said to have kept a record of each death as it occurred by cutting a notch in a willow stick”, reaching a number of 555. 148 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. xxx–xxxi. 149 Ibid., p. 256. European names are hardly used by Blackfoot of this era, unless they are of mixed ancestry. 150 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 70, 91 and 290; and his Blackfeet Tales, pp. 1–6. Monroe was sent by the Hudson’s Bay Company to winter with the Pikani in 1815 and 1816 to learn their language; he served Father Lacombe, a pioneer Jesuit, as guide.

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was a Mr., his son, who was bicultural, was not. These distinctions between whites and non-whites illustrate the importance of appellations as markers of position.

It is significant that those who went by non-anglicised names were not given specific acknowledgement for the stories they contributed to Grinnell’s text. This appears to relate to Grinnell’s ambivalent attitude towards First Nations peoples. On the one hand he extols the human qualities of the “Indians” with whom he has shared many experiences; he declares, for example, that the stories in Lodge Tales are “pictures of Indian life drawn by Indian artists”. On the other hand, however, he claims that “[s]ome of the sentiments which [the “Indian”] expresses may horrify your civilized mind, but they are not unlike those your own small boy may utter”; and “[t]he Indian has the mind and feelings of a child”151. This is another of the classic discourses of colonialism: the native as neophyte. These ambivalent attitudes strengthen negative stereotypes, even through Grinnell coevally lauded the positive qualities of “Indians”.

McClintock’s claims to truth, like those of Grinnell, rest on the credentials of his Blackfoot collaborators who provide a sense of “authenticity” to his narrative. Chief among them is Pikani chief and ceremonialist Natosi Nepe-e. Historian Sherry Smith argues that McClintock purposefully masked the presence of bicultural individuals in his writing by using their “Indian” names, which she attributes to a desire to romanticise the images he portrayed. Moreover, Smith observes that, in his extensive collection of photographs, McClintock never included modern structures, although his photographs were taken “only yards away from Browning, Montana.”152 Her point is well taken, although using Blackfoot names has positive aspects that she forbears to mention. It can be seen as a sign of respect and, on more prosaic grounds, McClintock would have heard these names in his daily intercourse with the Siksikaitsitapi, who did not refer to each other by their translated names. As discussed earlier (Chapter 1), the Blackfoot obliged whites by utilising their translated names in their dealings with them, while their Blackfoot names were used in their dealings with other Blackfoot. Evidently, using a person’s name, rather than a translation, implies respect and recognition, and, for the sake of the historical

151 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. viii, xxvii, and xxxi. 152 Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 68.

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record, the inclusion of the Blackfoot names in The Old North Trail is a valuable asset.

How this authority of the Siksikaitsitapi informants buttressed the texts’ claims to truth is exemplified by Grinnell’s claim that most of the stories in Lodge Tales were published “in the words of the original narrators as nearly as it is possible to render those words into the simplest every-day English language”.153 Although such claims of transparency have long been discounted within the field of ethnology,154 it is indisputable that Blackfoot knowledge reinforced these texts’ claims to truth. To acknowledge that Grinnell was a compiler and editor, while his informants possessed the knowledge that fills the pages of Lodge Tales, can only magnify the presence or “survivance” of the Blackfoot collaborators. It is this presence within the process of transformation of Blackfoot oral stories into text that binds the Blackfoot ways of knowing to written Blackfoot history and literature. Paradoxically, once the knowledge of First Nations peoples is expressed in Western terms (writing), it becomes highly valued, as is the case of the published ethnographic texts based on Blackfoot knowledge, which continue to inform contemporary scholarship.

The intentions of the informants, although not always made explicit, are important in order to understand that they exercised some power through their collaboration with the ethnographers. Despite belonging to an oral tradition, these collaborators saw fit to disseminate their knowledge through writing, which does not imply a capitulation of their ways of knowing. Rather, it demonstrates their preparedness to expand their cultural capital.

4.12 Blackfoot Ways of Knowing and History

In order to dispel the view that, prior to white arrival, the Blackfoot were without history, this section provides an overview of some Blackfoot genres or “ways of knowing”. The Blackfoot oral tradition encompassed many genres, many of which were deployed in specific contexts, among which ceremonial transfer has already been canvassed. Blackfoot interest in the preservation and transmission of

153 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. xxvii. 154 See Clifford and Marcus, eds., Writing Culture, 1986.

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knowledge of the past is evident in their use of mnemonic devices to recount “Everyday Stories”, that is, the stories of the modern period that Boas had called “history”. Those who kept these records were called “Ai Sinakinax, Writers of History.”155 No in-depth analysis of each genre is possible here, as it would spring the bounds of this chapter.

Mnemonic tools assisted Blackfoot storytellers to maintain records of their past. Several of these genres have been documented to date, including “year counts” or “winter counts”; painted robes; tepee cover and tepee liner designs; and rock painting. The five anthologies on which this chapter centres dedicated little space to these pictographic genres that were kept on tanned buffalo or elk hides (“robes, cowskins and other hides”156) and were duplicated and replaced when worn; and rupestrian inscriptions. The topographical features of their ancestral lands were the Blackfoot’s earliest mnemonic tools. They have a sacred and textual dimension, as rivers and rock formations provide the setting for stories of the creation of the Blackfoot universe and historical events, including supernatural occurrences.157 They include sacred sites such as Nin-ais-tukku (“where the Thunder lives” or Chief Mountain), and the Oldman River in Alberta, which bears the name of Napiwa (Old Man), a Blackfoot creator whose home is in the mountains at the head of this river.158 Likewise, Katoyisiks (the Sweetgrass Hills) and the Porcupine Hills are populated by the spirits and feats of Blackfoot ancestors; these toponomies, through the Blackfoot Stories, are connected with the maintenance and reproduction of Blackfoot cultural practices and Blackfoot identity. They are places to which the Blackfoot go to “seek visions.”159

Collectively, these Siksikaitsitapi genres demonstrate the importance of knowledge of their past for the Blackfoot before contact with whites. The existence of this mnemonic system of representation ipso facto refutes the view of the Blackfoot as being without history. Although this chapter cannot provide a holistic

155 Raczka, Winter Count, p. 13. 156 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249. 157 When a Kootenay chief, White Horse, was killed by a Blood chief called Many Spotted Horses in 1862, the Bloods marked the spot where he fell with an effigy made of stones. Dempsey, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks, p. 64. 158 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 137–44, “The Blackfoot Genesis,” and Ewers, The Blackfeet, p. 4. 159 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 8.

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view of how these genres functioned within an integrated cultural system, it can show, by examining their more overt formal attributes, how they functioned to preserve Blackfoot history.

Year counts or “winter counts” provide the salient events of each year for a given band, but there were no rules to limit the winter counts kept within one band. Nabokov notes that a winter count is a translation of the Blackfoot snaksin (“picture- writing”), and should not be confused with a census.160 The characteristics of this genre, which was used extensively by the buffalo-hunting First Nations, are that they adhere to a chronological order; they consist of a pictograph which denotes the name given to a specific year, and which depicts the most salient or “epitomizing event”161 of that year; they are not autobiographical, rather, the events recorded are of collective interest to their keepers’ bands or tribes; lastly, the pictographs are arranged in a spiral, rather than a linear fashion.

Like the professional historian, the keeper of the winter count exercises control over its content, not only through deciding which event deserves to be entered each year, but also when recounting the event in full detail for an audience. Interest in winter counts and a wider recognition of their historical significance is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historian Linea Sundstrom, for example, used winter counts in her study of epidemic disease in the Northern Plains between the early eighteenth and the early twentieth centuries.162 Among the extant Blackfoot winter counts is that recorded by Kainai Parkapotokan (Bad Head), the “Bad Head’s Winter Count”. It covers the period between 1810–1883 and was transcribed by Robert N. Wilson, who served the North-West Mounted Police (1881–1884) and eventually became Indian agent (see Chapter 2). The contents were the subject of an article in

160 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, p. 160. 161 Raymond D. Fogelson coined the term “epitomizing event”, see “On the Varieties of Indian History: Sequoyah and Traveller Bird,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vol. 2 no. 1 (1974): pp. 106– 107. 162 Linea Sundstrom, “Smallpox Used Them up: References to Epidemic Disease in Northern Plains Winter Counts, 1714–1920,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 44, no. 2 (1997): pp. 305–343, pp. 305–8. Also see ten Lakota winter counts which collectively cover two centuries (1701–1902) in Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, “Lakota Winter Counts”, available online at http://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html [Accessed 11 April 2007].

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the Lethbridge Herald 1951, and were re-published by Dempsey in 1965.163 Bad Head was a Kainai chief and, at the time of publication, his winter count was the earliest known. However, in 1979 historian Paul Raczka published Bull Plume’s Winter Count,164 which covers the years 1764 to 1924, and which had been kept successively throughout their respective lives by four Pikani and a white missionary.

The longevity of the Bull Plume’s Winter Count is unsurpassed among the extant Blackfoot winter counts. Of the three consecutive Siksikaitsitapi keepers of this winter count, the first has not been identified; the second was Mehkskéhme- Sukáhs (Iron Shirt), who was also known as A-pe-so-muckka (Running Wolf) for most of his life.165 He was the subject of a painting by Karl Bodmer during the latter’s sojourn at Fort McKenzie in late 1833. Mehkskéhme-Sukáhs was a chief of the Ich-poch-semo (Grease Melters) Band.166 When he died in 1850, his son (later also known as Running Wolf), travelled north to live with the Apatohsipikani in Southern Alberta, who named him Natosi Nepe-e (Brings-Down-The-Sun). He was, notes Raczka, leader of the Lone Fighters Band and a “holy man,” and became the third keeper of the winter count. McClintock sought Natosi Nepe-e to question him about Blackfoot knowledge in 1911, but does not mention the winter count, even though he also met with the fourth keeper, Apatohsipikani chief and ceremonialist Bull Plume.167 McClintock reports that Bull Plume offered to show him “tribal records … handed down by Wolf Child, my grandfather, and are very old.”168 The

163 The Bad Head’s Winter Count is contained in Glenbow Archives, M4421, R. N. Wilson Papers. See also Hugh A. Dempsey, A Blackfoot Winter Count, Occasional Paper No. 1, Calgary: Glenbow Museum, [1965] rpt. 1988. 164 Glenbow Archives, M8188, Bull Plume’s Winter Count; and Raczka, Winter Count. 165 Raczka, Winter Count, pp. 13–6; McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 418–22. Robert J. Moore, Native Americans, A Portrait: The Art and Travels of Charles Bird King, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer, New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1997, pp. 218–9, p. 251. Mehkskéhme-Sukáhs greeted the 60-foot keelboat Flora on its arrival at Fort McKenzie, the westernmost outpost of the Missouri Fur Trade, nearly 3,000 river miles from St. Louis, carrying Prince Maximilian and Karl Bodmer. 166 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 57. Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 225 cites a Pikani band called “Fat Roasters”, which may be another translation for the same band. See Uhlenbeck, Original Blackfoot Texts, p. 1, for an explanation of the name. 167 McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 387, photographed Bull Plume while he was leading a Medicine Pipe ceremony. Raczka, Winter Count, pp. 13–6. Bull Plume is referred to as a minor chief, a category imposed at the signing of Treaty Seven when the Dominion demanded the reduction of chiefs and the nomination of a chief as Head Chief (see Chapter 3). 168 McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 414–5.

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Bull Plume’s Winter Count had been previously kept by Natosi Nepe-e, but in the event McClintock was not shown the winter count.

Natosi Nepee-e and Bull Plume contested the right to instruct McClintock in Blackfoot legends, customs, and the “worship of the Sun”.169 Both men were ceremonialists and chiefs, Natosi Nepe-e occupying a higher position than Bull Plume in terms of the respect he commanded, at least according to McClintock. Bull Plume, although evidently a sought-after ceremonialist (he led in the opening of a Medicine Pipe when Natosi Nepe-e was not far away), was young to have accumulated the knowledge of his elder. The rift resulted in Natosi Nepe-e agreeing to instruct McClintock when he had earlier refused as a sign of protest against mistreatment by the white agent who wished him to refrain from holding Ookaan (see Chapter 2).170 He relented when Bull Plume invited McClintock to camp with him and promised to show him old tribal records handed down to him by his grandfather Wolf Child, and to allow him to copy them.171 McClintock cites Natosi Nepe-e as responding to this suggestion thus:

For several years I have endured many things from this Bull Plume. I will no longer be silent, but will now speak plainly. If you desire to go to the camp of this man, I will not hinder you ... I would prefer to have you stay with me, inasmuch as you came first to my camp and I have been preparing myself to relate to you many things that have happened to my people in former days.172

McClintock notes that Natosi Nepe-e contradicted the provenance of Bull Plume’s tribal records. The knowledge Bull Plume offered McClintock, Natosi Nepe-e claimed, had been given to Bull Plume by Natosi Nepe-e, who in turned received it from his own father Running Wolf.173 As we now know, Bull Plume transferred his winter count to the Anglican missionary, Reverend Canon William Haynes. The historical value of the Bull Plume’s Winter Count is unsurpassed in its longevity. Natosi Nepe-e had been the keeper of the winter count before it was transferred to Bull Plume. The rivalry between the two “Grandfathers”, according to Raczka, was

169 Ibid., pp. 384–5. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid., p. 415. 172 Ibid., p. 416. 173 Ibid., p. 417.

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of no consequence; however, it is likely that Natosi Nepe-e deliberately prevented McClintock from viewing the winter count.

Bull Plume’s interest in the writing of Blackfoot history led him circa 1912 to recount the stories of the winter count, then still painted on a hide, to Haynes. The missionary faithfully reproduced the pictographs and recorded Bull Plume’s interpretations.174 Haynes, who at his death in 1937 had spent fifty-six years among the Blackfoot, himself continued the winter count, recording the last entry for the year 1924. Clearly, Bull Plume saw the technology of writing as beneficial for the upkeep of Blackfoot knowledge of the past, and sought to appropriate it to safeguard the winter count for future generations.

It is significant that Natosi Nepe-e and Bull Plume maintained the winter count amidst the dramatic changes they experienced. Here, then, are two of McClintock’s collaborators practising history in the time-honoured fashion during the so-called historical era.175 Moreover, it is notable that Bull Plume had been eager to collaborate with McClintock in order to see Blackfoot Stories transformed into text, and continued to work towards that goal by ensuring the transcription and long- term survival of the contents of his winter count. Blackfoot such as Bull Plume, Natosi Nepe-e, Joseph Tatsey, David Duvall, and many others whose names appear all too briefly in the compilations analysed here, provided the threads of continuity that this chapter seeks to bring to the fore. Their stories were transformed into “history” and constitute the traces of “survivance” that can unsettle the notion of the Blackfoot as a people without history.

4.13 Personal Narratives in Painted Robes

While winter counts depict the collective history of a band (rather than a whole tribe) as viewed by their Ai Sinakinax (historians), other pictographic genres served to record individual achievements, such as success in war and encounters with the supernatural. White scholars have described these autobiographical records, usually

174 Raczka, Winter Count, pp. 4–5. 175 There is an extant letter of 1915 written to the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa by Bull Plume, outlining Blackfoot opposition to the ban on gift-giving (see Chapter 2). The letter does not necessarily indicate that Bull Plume was able to write, because it was customary to get those who could to write letters on behalf of those who could not.

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named after the artist, as “painted robes” or, pejoratively, as “brag robes.”176 Nabokov asserts that this genre was an exclusively male art form in the Plains, and delineates the origins of this genre as follows:

[w]ith horses and intensified intergroup feuding, it became customary for Plains Indian warriors to portray battle exploits with pictographic figures on shirts, robes, and even tipi covers. An early example of these self-promotional “partisan histories” came to light after Lewis and Clark collected a Mandan painted buffalo robe depicting a fight between horsemen believed to have taken place about 1797. It is not clear if these early individual “brag robes” of Plains warriors preceded the community records, or winter counts, painted by Plains Indian chroniclers that were collected by travellers and ethnographers afterward.177

The subject matter of painted robes was not a whole-of-life story. Rather, the robe’s owner recorded feats of valour known as coups that were critical to sustain his reputation, or other salient occurrences such as supernatural experiences. As noted in Chapter Two, each coup attained by an individual was to be recounted to that person’s last days, regardless of the number of coups accumulated. Being highly perishable, the robes were replaced from time to time. However, only a relatively small number of these painted robes survived the scarcity of materials after the obliteration of the buffalo, which similarly caused for other game to become scarce, making it almost impossible to maintain the painted robe genre as a viable practice after the 1880s. However, the genre migrated to canvas and continues to be in use by contemporary Siksikaitsitapi artists (see anon).

It was the beauty of painted robes, commonplace during the “buffalo days”, more than their subject matter, which seems to have attracted white interest. With few exceptions, early ethnographers paid little attention to the details of painted robes, the majority of which have gone unrecorded. Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, who travelled up the Missouri River in 1833–1834 in the company of amateur ethnographer Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (see Chapter 3) painted an

176 Referring to the Mandans, with whom the Blackfoot maintained trade before the arrival of whites, Moore, Jr., Native Americans, A Portrait, p. 223, observes that “the production of Indian art was divided among gender lines; women produced geometric patterns in porcupine quills and beadwork to decorate clothing ... while men represented their exploits in pictographs made in paints derived from clay, minerals and charcoal, as well as pigments obtained through trade with Euro-Americans.” 177 Nabokov, A Forest of Time, p. 160.

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unidentified Pikani wearing a full-length painted robe, but did not report on the meanings it depicted.178 However, although markings on the robe have not been explained, “horse’s hooves, bows, rifles, and bleeding adversaries tell tales of personal bravery for all to see.”179 Among the few extant examples fully transcribed is the “Wolf Collar’s Robe” circa nineteenth century, now exhibited at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. It depicts Wolf Collar’s supernatural visions, encounters with enemies, and horse raids, all of which took place before the Blackfoot signed Treaty Seven in 1877.

Another transcribed painted robe is the “Three Suns’ Robe”. Schultz notes that it was presented to U.S. Captain L. W. Cooke (later Brigadier General), acting Indian agent in 1893–4. It was painted on an elk skin by its owner, Three Suns or Big Nose, the last war chief of the Pikani. Some of the feats described demonstrate the range of subject matter of the genre, and the detailed character of this genre. The Three Sun’s Robe contained twenty-two pictographs relating events in the life of Three Suns between 1845 and 1870, some of which were dated and all of which were transcribed by Cooke from Three Suns’ verbal renditions. Scene 13 (1875) relates an encounter with four Sioux discovered in a thicket, including location, number of lodges camped, and the parlay between them and Three Suns which led to a peaceful resolution, with the Sioux being taken away unharmed by six soldiers sent from Fort Walsh, Northwest Territory. Scene 20 (undated) is starker: “Scalps taken by Big Nose. Some, however, were killed by others—the first to take has the honor.”180 The starkness of descriptions such as Scene 20 markedly contrasts the oral performance of the feat related, which would have provided many details and would have been “performed” during large gatherings by the owner. Grinnell was presented with “an illuminated cowskin” containing “the most striking events in the life of Red Crane, a Blackfoot warrior, painted by himself.” In Grinnell’s opinion the pictographs were “very rude”, “but sufficiently lifelike to call up to the mind of the artist each detail of the stirring events they record.”181 This autobiographical genre was subject to

178 Piegan Blackfeet Man, Karl Bodmer, Watercolour and pencil on paper, Joslyn Art Museum, reproduced in Ruud, ed., Karl Bodmer’s North American Prints, pp. 48 and 53. 179 Moore, Jr., Native Americans, A Portait, p. 249. 180 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 264–70. This relates to being honoured for taking an enemy’s scalp, even if the enemy was killed by someone else. 181 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249.

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constraints of truth, the most dire being the retributive effects from the sacred realm for those who misrepresented the truth or their immediate family (see next sub- section).

4.14 Historical Dimensions and the “Counting Coup” Genre

An intersection between oral and pictographic genres is evident in the practice throughout the Plains of a public performance dedicated to recounting acts of bravery recognised as coups, dubbed “counting coup”. This term describes both the act of achieving honour through a significant deed and the subsequent oratorical performance whereby the deed is recounted during certain ceremonies, including Ookaan. Counting coup, referring as it does to subject matter sometimes recorded in “painted robes,” is closely connected to the latter. Josephy claims that in the ritualised warfare developed by the Plains First Nations, “the mere touching of an enemy, known as ‘counting coup’, brought higher honour than killing”.182 The specific dimensions of counting coup varied among the First Nations peoples of the Plains. The Blackfoot counted coup for the capture from an enemy of a “shield, bow, gun, war bonnet, war shirt, or medicine pipe”183. With the influx of European technology and methods of warfare, however, these feats were replaced with new ones. In his autobiographical My People The Bloods, Kainai chief Mike Mountain Horse (1888–1964) claims that scalps and rifles were the Kainai’s most highly prized trophies of war.184 Larson argues that while counting coup as a genre was not self- centred and included “witnesses who were encouraged to interject, to authenticate, or to correct if they felt that was necessary”, what prevails of this genre in the written record is a “Western conception of autobiography”. Another variant of counting coup includes a “sham fight” or “pantomimic display of skirmishes.”185 Indeed, counting coup is thus a clear instance of a polyglossic genre in the sense of this term noted by

182 Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians, New York: Gramercy Books, rpt. 2002, p. 363. 183 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249. 184 Ibid., p. 248. The acquisition of knives, axes and tipi-flags is also cited by Imiten.a. as a coup: Glenbow Archives, M8458-15; M8458, f. 88, and M8458-3, f. 51, Hanks Papers; see also Mountain Horse, My People The Bloods, who attributes this information to his father—also named Mountain Horse—and his uncle, Bull Shield, a minor Kainai chief. See “Introduction” by Dempsey, p. v. 185 Mountain Horse, My People The Bloods, pp. 59–65.

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Bahktin, and of the inadequacy of most written representations186 to capture or convey fully its meaning.

The oral performance or counting coup established the bona fides of the coup achiever/recounter. During Ookaan, Mike Mountain Horse notes, counting coup takes place at several key moments, such as before the ritual cutting of the centre- pole, when members of the Horn Society loudly recount the heroic achievements of their youth (see Chapter 2). This autobiographical genre perhaps held most attraction for whites, whose imaginings of the Blackfoot stereotyped them first and foremost as fierce warriors, ignoring qualities such as generosity, yet another avenue for the Blackfoot to acquire prestige. Nevertheless, as Mountain Horse points out, becoming a warrior was “the highest calling in the eyes of the Indian male … [t]o ‘run’ a herd of stolen horses across the border in early days was considered by the Bloods as not only a profitable occupation, but a feat of gallantry and daring as well.”187 The need to provide evidence of the truth of a coup has been intrinsic to the genre. Confirmation may be provided by a witness or by producing material proof, e.g., the goods acquired through the deed. Misrepresenting the facts, as noted in earlier chapters, would incur social disgrace and even tragedy.188 It was de rigueur during truces with enemy First Nations to exchange information of previous battles; any inconsistencies that disproved the accounts given by protagonists could seriously damage their reputation. This is one illustration that Blackfoot epistemology, like its Western counterpart, also possessed what Foucault called “rules of exclusion” in order to control discourse that was “within the true.”

Counting coup publicly recognises those Blackfoot who achieve honour. During the buffalo days, war feats and sacred knowledge were worthy of coup counting. Presiding ceremonialists counted coup at the beginning of sacred rituals, the liminal moment just prior to opening Medicine Bundles and Medicine Pipes. To enact, and to witness coup counting would have contributed to making the Blackfoot adept at remembering and recounting the past; it served to place a prime value on representing “truth.” As a genre, counting coup was to a great extent nurtured by

186 A clear example of a text which does so successfully is Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, which is analysed in Chapter Five. 187 Ibid., p. 106. 188 Glenbow Archives, M8458-8, Hanks Papers: “supernatural ill” would befall those who do not tell “the gospel truth”; and Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 249.

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war. However, at the signing of Treaty Seven the Blackfoot undertook to live in peace with their traditional enemies, and new attainments replaced war feats. According to Kainai Pete Standing Alone, suitable modern situations for counting coup include:

promotions in the armed forces, strikes at a real enemy in an international conflict, travel to far-off places and doing something special, or rendering some important public service. Possession of a number of bundles, in itself an indication that a person is of some consequence, is a traditional coup counting situation that has not changed at all.189

The foregoing discussion of the use of mnemonics to assist in the recollection of knowledge of the past demonstrates that “history” and the representation of truth occupied a privileged position within Blackfoot epistemology, and was not a prerogative exclusive to whites. Whereas Blackfoot winter counts and painted robes have not yet been systematically studied, as is the case with their Lakota counterparts, appreciation of their value has certainly increased as the Blackfoot seek to construct their own imaginaries based on “their” history, and seek to question their etic portrayals in colonial history.

4.15 Blackfoot Agency or Cultural Appropriation?

Within the context of colonialism, the ethnographer’s First Nations informant is often portrayed as exploited, misrepresented and ill-used by the ethnographer, with current notions of “collaborative ethnography” developing well after the time period that concerns us.190 However, it is argued here that those Blackfoot who participated in the process of writing the Blackfoot knowledge contained in the reference texts were not naive. Rather, they were capable of making considered decisions to appropriate the practice of writing for their own ends, in this case to ensure that their stories would prevail for future generations. This is amply substantiated in the

189 Taylor, Standing Alone, p. 168. 190 Luke Eric Lassiter, “Authoritative Texts, Collaborative Ethnography and Native American Studies,” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24, no. 4 (2000): pp. 601–14.

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actions of Bull Plume, although he was not the only Blackfoot who sought to translate mnemonic records into writing.191

Documenting the knowledge of what Ong describes as “primary oral cultures”192 has been a concomitant of colonisation. The letters written by Columbus describing the inhabitants of the New World marked the beginning of ethnological endeavours in The Americas.193 The misrepresentations and misunderstandings, prevalent in early chronicles, served to construct First Nations’ subjectivity through a process that was exposed by Edward Said in relation to constructions of the Oriental Other (see Chapter 1). The early renaming by Europeans of the New World they had stumbled upon continued for centuries after Columbus’s naming fiasco had homogenised myriad peoples with separate cultures under the misnomer “Indians”.194

Blackfoot territory was renamed, not to mention artificially divided by the United States-Canada border. The Elk River became the Yellowstone River, the Bear River was renamed the Marias, the Big River, the Missouri, the Sweet Pine Hills became the Sweet Grass Hills195 and, in like fashion, other mountains and important features were renamed. Grinnell negotiated on behalf of the Government for the Amsskaapipikani to sell a portion of their land in 1895, to have it set aside as Glacier

191 Glenbow Archives, M8458-5, “Jane Richardson's Blackfoot (Siksika) research - Interview with Many Guns”, August 1938, for the motivations of the keepers of what later became known as the Many Guns Winter Count, discussed later in this chapter. 192 Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 6. 193 On early ethnological endeavours in The Americas, see Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 1982. 194 On renaming or (mis)naming: James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992: taming the land meant renaming the land: “Although the Indians had already endowed many prominent geographical features with names, the first Europeans signalled their imperial intentions by naming or renaming everything in sight”. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 131, is more explicit on the relationship between naming/renaming and power: “ … it’s only by making territories and societies legible—by which he means measurable and hence manipulable— that governments can impose and maintain their authority.” (emphasis in original). See also the postcolonial approach of Walter D. Mignolo, “The Movable Center: Geographical Discourses and Territoriality during the Expansion of the Spanish Empire”, in Francisco Javier Cevallos, Jeffrey A. Cole, Nina M. Scott, and Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz, eds., Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994, pp. 15–45. See also Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, London: Faber and Faber, 1987. 195 According to Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 335, Sweet Grass Hills—a small mountain range that runs West to East in north-central Montana—is a mistranslation for the Piegan name for “Sweet Pine Mountains,” which Independent scholar Mary Scriver notes is “katoyísix” (plural for sweet pines) or “balsam fir.” Scriver points out that the sweetness is from coumadin, known to be a blood thinner. She notes that McClintock’s translation was “katoya” or “abies lasiocarpa.” Available online at http://prairiemary.blogspot.com/2005/06/sam-worm-man-in-sweet-grass-hills.html [Accessed 12 April 2007].

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National Park, an achievement jointly credited to Grinnell and Schultz. Both men travelled extensively throughout this part of the Rocky Mountains “naming” glaciers.

Early chroniclers colonised First Nations peoples’ knowledge by re-framing it to fit European worldviews, and re-deploying it towards European ends, most notably evangelisation, trade, and colonisation. The concomitant devaluation of First Nations peoples by this appropriation is evident in the way that intellectual property was translated without sufficient recognition, concurrent with the disparaging of First Nations’ epistemologies and their oral traditions, viewed by most whites as inferior to writing. Thus, Ong claims:

Human beings in primary oral cultures ... learn a great deal and possess and practice great wisdom, but they do not ‘study’. They learn by apprenticeship—hunting with experienced hunters, for example— by discipleship, which is a kind of apprenticeship, by listening, by repeating what they hear, by mastering proverbs and ways of combining and recombining them, by assimilating other formulary materials, by participation in a kind of corporate retrospection—not by study in a strict sense.196

Ong’s argument relies upon a Eurocentric definition of “study”, and thus is self- fulfilling; its corollary is that knowledge can be assimilated but not created within an oral tradition. Such a proposition is manifestly untenable because it implies that unless knowledge is written down it cannot be imparted or reflected upon. This perspective fails to account for the knowledge base of First Nations peoples such as the Siksikaitsitapi, a portion of which is contained in the texts studied in this chapter. Moreover, if primary oral cultures do not “study”, then how, for example, is one to account for the “study” that resulted in a calendrical system such as that of the Aztecs—which exceeded in accuracy the Gregorian calendar—and its transmission to ensure its continuity over centuries? Manifestly, if Western epistemology is to be normative, a devaluation of non-Western epistemologies will ensue.

This ethnocentric contrast continues to have adherents among anthropologists, most notably Jack Goody, who argues that writing constitutes the

196 Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 9.

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key difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, for all that he renounces cultural relativism (“sentimental egalitarianism”):197

Relativism, in its extreme form, is saying that the people in Africa are the same as the Chinese, the Japanese and so on. Well, if they are the same, why are their achievements not the same? So the notion that arose in recent years that all human societies are the same goes against cultural history, I think, because it’s not possible to equate the achievements of people without writing to those of peoples with writing. We have to take into account the fact that societies that do not have what I call the technology of the intellect are not able to build up knowledge in the same way as the ones that have. Of course, they have knowledge systems about nature but they cannot achieve the same as the societies that have books, encyclopaedias, dictionaries and all that sort of thing.

In order to recognise the two-way workings of appropriation and to recognise the contribution of Blackfoot “historians” to the writing of Blackfoot history it is first necessary to recognise that knowledge of the Blackfoot past shared with the ethnographers was not anecdotal or accidental. Rather, it was the product of systematic record keeping that served well the requirements of Blackfoot epistemology. Having said that, it is evident that, in a time of changing circumstances, sufficient numbers of Blackfoot saw in the technology of writing a useful tool to preserve their knowledge. Patently, while the ethnographer retained editorial prerogatives—for example by excluding from publication what Wissler and Duvall describe as “humorous texts (of which there are a great number, chiefly obscene)”198—the Blackfoot collaborators control the flow of information, as well as its content.

By framing traditional knowledge through their storytelling the Blackfoot informants, albeit indirectly, acquired access to representation. Potentially, they were in a position to counter negative stereotypes and popular misconceptions already discussed in this chapter, and to demonstrate the complexity of the Blackfoot worldview. Their presence, although mediated by the translators and ethnographers, is the sine qua non that animates the texts—the survivance posited by Vizenor.

197 María Lucía G. Pallares-Burke, The New History, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002, interview with Jack Goody at pp. 1–29, p. 23. 198 Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, p. 6.

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Blackfoot agency needs to be explored in light of the wishes expressed by Blackfoot participants in the process of transcription and translation of Blackfoot knowledge. Those who collaborated on both sides of the cultural divide belonged to two different worlds, had different motivations and interests, but were nevertheless able to cooperate in this mutually beneficial undertaking. A clear example is the determination of historian and Apatohsipikani chief and ceremonialist Bull Plume to have Blackfoot history transcribed. Whereas for the most part, the initiative for the project to transform oral stories into text came from the ethnographers, who travelled long distances to seek out the Blackfoot informants, Bull Plume reversed the trend by approaching McClintock and then Canon Haynes. Clearly, Bull Plume saw the technology of writing as beneficial for the upkeep of Blackfoot knowledge of the past, and sought to appropriate it to safeguard the winter count for future generations. Furthermore, it cannot be discounted that Blackfoot participants in the ethnographic encounter felt privileged to have their perspective of Blackfoot history inform the written text. It has already been discussed how Bull Plume and Natosi Nepe-e competed for McClintock’s attention. The process no doubt added to their prestige as “Grandfathers” who held knowledge that was now valued in two cultures.

Another benefit to Blackfoot informants took the shape, in some cases, of a cash reward. Siksika Raw Eater, for example, was a highly respected “Grandfather” who kept a painted robe with his war exploits. According to John Gooderham, Raw Eater “had a great fund of folklore”, and was sought out by Edward S. Curtis in 1924 when compiling his massive study of First Nations. Gooderham claims that Raw Eater charged Curtis “one dollar an hour, and he didn’t hurry!”199 The rate seems high when compared with the one dollar and fifty cents paid by Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks in 1938.200 Such payments accord with the custom of reciprocation observed by the Blackfoot when knowledge was ritually transferred or, more generally, when the knowledge of a ceremonialist or healer was engaged—an indication of the workings of knowledge and power in Blackfoot epistemology, and an indication of the value placed on the keeping of knowledge by the Siksikaitsitapi. Bt entering into that economy of reciprocation, the ethnographers were being absorbed into Blackfoot practice.

199 Glenbow Archives, M4738, George H. Gooderham fonds, excerpt. 200 Hanks, Jr., and Richardson Hanks, Tribe Under Trust, p. xv.

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From the Blackfoot narrators’ perspective, the deployment of writing was not unlike their previous appropriation of European technologies, namely the horse, metal tools and firearms, which took place in the mid-eighteenth century. The benefits of such appropriations were evident in the transformation of the Blackfoot into a powerful equestrian nation by the mid-nineteenth century. Blackfoot deployment of the written word follows this pattern of appropriation, evident in their demand—enshrined in Treaty Seven—for the provision of teachers to educate Blackfoot children in white ways of knowing.201

4.16 Blackfoot Appropriation: The Many Guns’ Winter Count

Revitalisation of Blackfoot genres and their redeployment in ways that are sensitive to changing cultural imperatives is ongoing. For example, Pikani artist George Bull Child revitalised the painted robe genre c. 1930 in order to commemorate the 1870 massacre by the U.S. Army of Chief Heavy Runner’s band (see Chapter 2).202 A different instance of revitalisation of painted robes resulted in the creation of a new genre: a Blackfoot calendar titled the “Many Guns’ Winter Count”. This hybrid genre fused the subject matter of the winter count with syllabic writing. According to Many Guns, during the first decade of the twentieth century (1908) two “old Bassano men”, Makúya.to’si (Wolf Sun) and Apináko’tamiso (Tomorrow Coming Over The Hill), resolved to start a calendar because the younger generations were not “learning and remembering things.”203 They compiled Everyday Stories from 1831 that were in the public domain, although the sources are not cited. New material was added each subsequent year.

The differences between the calendar and winter counts are blurred. Winter counts are similar to early medieval monastic annals, which according to historian James Westfall Thompson grew out of a practice of jotting events on calendars

201 Morris, Treaties of Canada, p. 269. 202 This is reproduced in Colin G. Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West was Lost, Boston: Bedford Books, 1996, pp. 105–110, including a summary of the testimony of survivor Kai Otokan. 203 Glenbow Archives, M8078 F300/35, “Many Guns Winter Count” (via Paul Fox).

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originally designed to mark the date for religious and ritual events.204 Unlike winter counts, the calendar, which included more than one event per year utilised “a word in syllabics”205 to recall the significant events instead of a pictograph. The calendar’s incorporation into Blackfoot practices extended to the sacred domain. It was transferred as a sacred object to Many Guns, together with “the learning” required to maintain it, whence it acquired its name: Many Guns’ Winter Count. It is evident that the aim of the calendar’s initiators was to deploy the new genre to record what otherwise was the subject matter of winter counts. They instructed Many Guns to keep a track of “persons and their war parties”. In 1938, when Many Guns was interviewed by Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks he continued to maintain the calendar.206 Given that war was by then a thing of the past, the calendar had shifted focus, recording inter alia information on the annual Ookaan, including the name of the Holy Woman who presided over the annual ceremony.

4.17 Incorporating the Other: Adopting Europeans into the Blackfoot Fold

Adopting influential whites into First Nations seems to have been a deliberate Blackfoot strategy to obtain powerful allies that could provide know-how in negotiating with the dominant culture. It has already been noted that Grinnell, McClintock and Schultz were Blackfoot by adoption. Grinnell’s friendship was valuable to the Blackfoot in their hour of need. He was adopted after he lobbied in Washington for food relief to be sent to the Amsskaapipikani during the 1883–1884 famine. Grinnell’s efforts are omitted in Ewers’ account of the famine.207 Ewers alludes to “earlier writers” who blamed agent John Young for the disaster. He specifically mentions Schultz (but not Grinnell). Moreover, Ewers does not mention Grinnell’s lobbying on behalf of the Montana First Nations, of which Schultz made a

204 James Westfall Thompson and Bernard J. Holm, A History of Historical Writing: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Seventeenth Century, [1942 Macmillan] Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967, p. 158. 205 Missionaries used syllabics extensively throughout Canada. Rachel Ermineskin and Darin Howe, “On Blackfoot Syllabics and the Law o Finals”, Paper presented at the 37th. Algonquian Conference, Ottawa, 22 October, 2005, note that the Blackfoot Syllabary was designed “ca. 1890 by Anglican missionaries John William Tims and Harry W. Gibbon Stocken, and unknown Blackfoot ... Tim’s main interpreter/teacher was a certain Paul Bird”.available online at: http://www.ucalgary.ca/dflynn/files/dflynn/ErmineskinHowe2005.pdf [Accessed 12 April 2007]. 206 Glenbow Archives, M8458-5, “Jane Richardson's Blackfoot (Siksika) research - Interview with Many Guns”, August 1938. 207 Ewers, The Blackfeet, pp. 290–6.

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great deal.208 Schultz links Grinnell’s adoption by the Blackfoot to this lobbying, recording that in the year following the famine, when Grinnell came to Montana, he was given the name Pi-nut-ú-ye is-tsím-okan (Fisher Hat) by Little Dog and Little Plume, becoming an honorary chief. However, although Grinnell witnessed the effects of forced acculturation and assimilation, he was nevertheless a believer in progress and, as discussed earlier, at times he accepted extinction as inevitable and even desirable. However, his biographer Harris notes that he wrote letters on their behalf and used not only Forest and Stream as a forum to draw public attention to irregularities in the conduct of agents, notably agent Baldwin, and also published letters in the New York press to rally support for the Pikani.209 Even though Smith views Grinnell’s activism on behalf of the Pikani as limited to complaining about “individual agents or calls for increases in a particular reservation’s annuities”,210 at a time when the Pikani had no means to publicise their plight, Grinnell nevertheless served as a conduit for some of their grievances to be aired.

According to McClintock, the decision for his own adoption by Siyeh (Mad Wolf), a respected Blackfoot chief, obeyed Siyeh’s desire for “an alliance … a representative, who had lived sufficiently long among his people, to become familiar with their customs, religion, and manner of life, and would tell the truth about them to the white race.”211 It is possible that McClintock’s adoption had been conceived as a strategy by leading Amsskaapipikani, who may have seen in the young man another ally in the Grinnell mould. Siyeh and Double Runner, who had close ties to Grinnell, were key players in McClintock’s naming ceremony, whereby he became A-pe-ech-eken (White Weasel Moccasin) and Siyeh became his adopted father.212

For those who became honorary Siksikaitsitapi, the benefits of being regarded as Siksikaitsitapi by adoption included access to knowledge that otherwise may not have been available to outsiders. Smith argues that Mad Wolf’s expectations of McClintock ended in disappointment, so much so that the Blackfoot eventually

208 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 84–5; and Smith, Reimagining Indians, p. 59 and 229, n. 53, citing William T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, pp. 140–1. 209 Harris III, Preserving a Vision, pp. 420–22, citing Grinnell, “He Ought to be Removed”, New York Times, 4 March 1889, 2, col. 3; and 426–7 about being made an honorary chief. 210 Smith, Reimagining Indians, pp. 45 and 59–60. 211 Ibid., pp. 51, and 70–71. 212 McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 26–7.

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decided “not to adopt more white people into the tribe.”213 However, the Kainai, for example, continue to induct distinguished whites into a symbolic office, the Kainai Chieftainship, which entails the bestowal of Blackfoot names. In 1977, during the commemoration of the signing of Treaty Seven, Prince Charles was made a Kainai Chief, and was given the name Me’-kay-sto (Red Crow), the name of the principal Kainai chief who signed the original treaty, and which had previously been given, in 1919, to the first inductee into the chieftainship, his uncle Prince Edward.214

4.18 Conclusion

This chapter has presented evidence of the ways in which a number of Blackfoot, some of them with bicultural ancestry, were instrumental in creating a written version of their own knowledge/history that would inform subsequent histories of their nation by Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholars and, ergo, of the Plains First Nations more generally. This would thereby preserve an autochthonous Blackfoot history—“from the enormous condescension of posterity”215—for future Blackfoot generations while simultaneously inscribing it within Western historiography. The aim here has been to demonstrate this process of transmission by profiling the intellectual position of the Blackfoot informants; their capacity for agency in the construction of their own history for white consumption; and their relative power to produce discourses “within the true” (in the Foucauldian sense) vis-à-vis that of the ethnographers who compiled and edited the five key texts reviewed. Above all, the chapter sought to establish the Blackfoot informants’ capacity to underwrite the claims to truth of the compilers/editors of these texts.

The ethnographer’s report is not only concerned with the altruistic salvage project, or with enhancing white understanding of the Other, although it carries with it the potential to dispel existing negative stereotypes. Blackfoot who collaborated with the ethnographers saw in the technology of writing a useful tool rather than a threat to their cultural practices; a means to record Blackfoot testimony as to the richness of the Blackfoot worldview and the complexity of Blackfoot lifeways. The

213 Smith, Reimagining Indians, pp. 72. The adoption of elite whites by the Blackfoot, including the induction of Prince Charles into the Kainai Chieftainship is discussed in Chapter 3 of this dissertation. 214 Taylor, Standing Alone, pp. 223–4. 215 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London: Penguin Books, 1965, pp. 12–13.

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written stories were also viewed by some Blackfoot as a medium to render testimony of the colonisers’ transgressions. When Uhlenbeck returned to the Blackfeet Reservation in 1911 with texts he had collected during his 1910 visit, he read his texts to Blackfoot friends and collaborators in the expectations that they may correct any errors, much to the delight of the Blackfoot.

The Blackfoot oral stories compiled by early ethnographers attest to the existence of orderly and complex patterns in the conduct of social and religious rituals, even when this link was not articulated in the anthologies. A clear example is provided by the Story of Paii, which is the subject of Chapter 5, wherein I discuss the interconnectedness between the story, the ceremonies, and the practices. The maintenance of such an orderly system ensured Siksikaitsitapi social cohesiveness and cultural reproduction, as well as contributing to their physical and cultural survival as a distinct nation.

Even though the ethnographers’ foremost goal was to inform white audiences (both the general public and professionals), the collaborations that transformed Blackfoot knowledge into texts should not be understood merely as a process whereby Blackfoot culture is appropriated, misunderstood, mistranslated, and misused for the benefit of Western scholarship or to enhance the prestige of the putative authors. The stories compiled owe much to Blackfoot brokerage. The stories recorded in these texts, although hybrid/syncretic, remain a vehicle of cultural revitalisation. Most importantly, the written text is insurance that future Blackfoot generations, even those removed by circumstances from traditional practices, will know how their ancestors had lived—the expressed desire of Grinnell’s collaborator, Double Runner. In effect, as noted by Crowe in her introduction to Lodge Tales, Grinnell’s text “influenced not only the world’s views about Blackfeet people but [their] own views about [themselves] as well”.

History, we are told, is written by the victors, not the vanquished.216 However, the central aim of a self-conscious ethnohistory is to write history from the vantage point of the vanquished. Blackfoot self-representation through the publication of Blackfoot-authored texts began at a time when those who left their mark on the foundational texts reviewed here had already passed away. A generation later, books

216 See Carr, What is History?, esp. “Introduction” by Evans, 2001.

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with an emic perspective, such as Mike Mountain Horse’s My People The Bloods, began to appear.217 These self-representations drew from both the oral tradition and the pioneering ethnologies, built securely on Blackfoot testimonies now become foundational, and hence canonical sources of Blackfoot history, literature, and culture.

217 Petrone, Native Literature in Canada, p. 109, notes that although completed by 1936, this volume was not published until 1979.

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CHAPTER FIVE

CULTURAL CONTINUITY AND REVITALISATION: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS, HERO QUESTS AND THE SUN DANCE

As I have given you these clothes and other things, when you … wish to give me something … you must make a sweat house first … make your sacrifices or offerings to me at this place and I will hear your prayers.1

5.1 Introduction

This chapter extends the foregoing analysis of the process of transcription and translation of the stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition, by way of a critical dissection of one of the Blackfoot Stories vis-à-vis contemporary writing. It analyses the role of Siksikaitsitapi ethics or ways of “being in the world” in literary representations of Blackfoot subjectivity by First Nations authors. It analyses four narratives spanning four literary genres to argue that, within an aesthetic of representation in prose writing by First Nations authors, a concern with ethics marks the difference between the indigenous worldview and its white counterpart. The texts under review here privilege a Blackfoot perspective, overturning stereotypical white representations of First Nations peoples. First Nations authors utilise First Nations ethical perspectives as a metalanguage to reproduce the speech of the “Native” in order to represent a subjectivity, in this case a Blackfoot subjectivity, that is distinct from that of the coloniser.2

The articulation of ethics as a crucial site for representing difference in the fictional writing of First Nations authors has not received much scholarly attention. It

1 With these words Natosi instructed Paii on the manner he wished to be honoured: Glenbow Archives, M-4376, ff. 162–75, David C. Duvall fonds, “Scarface as narrated by Three Bears,” 17 December 1910. 2 The term metalanguage is used here following Michael Moriarty’s elaboration in Roland Barthes, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, pp. 12–4. Noting that Grammar is a metalanguage that serves to analyse language, he proposes that narratorial languages can function as metalanguages when they are used to reproduce specific patterns, e.g., “working-class or Black, or Jewish speech”.

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is hardly mentioned, for example, by Kidwell and Velie, who suggest that a pan- Indian aesthetic is manifest in First Nations’ relationships to particular lands and to nature in general, and in traditions, languages, and “assumptions about concepts of time.”3 It is a truism that a literature maintains a dialogue with the system of values of the community from which it emanates,4 and that the representation of ethics is intrinsic to all literatures. This is not contested here. However, the purpose of this chapter is to point out the authorial choices that construct Siksikaitsitapi subjectivity in accordance with the Siksikaitsitapi ethical imperatives—the specific values that cumulatively represent a “Native” worldview. While Blackfoot ethics, like all cultural practices, continuously adjust to changing socio-historical contexts, their representation in fictional texts remains a point of contrast between Blackfoot and white worldviews. As such, the representation of ethical ideals plays a significant role in emic representations of Blackfoot subjectivity.

The chapter begins by providing the context for the study of “Native literatures”, and demonstrating how the texts analysed here fit into the broader field of Literatures of the Americas. It also discusses the contested nature of the term ‘America’, as it is conflated with the United States in contemporary use and how this impacts on the term “Native American literature”. The chapter raises questions that are as yet unresolved in regards to Native literatures, not in order to propose answers, but to alert readers to the many definitional difficulties inherent in the study of Native literatures.

Authorial ethical positioning is an extra-textual dimension that also requires consideration. I discussed earlier the intersection between research and First Nations peoples (see Chapter 1). In particular, I noted the expectation that First Nations scholars would approach research from an emic perspective that is respectful of First Nations worldviews and epistemologies. These considerations also extend to First Nations authors of fiction, who are expected to articulate decolonising imaginaries, either by critiquing or “turning the world upside down”, as Thomas King does in

3 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 103. 4 Barthes, Elements of Semiology, p. 14.

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Green Grass, Running Water (GGRW)5, or by representing alternative perspectives to those of colonial history and literature.

The texts analysed here are set in three different eras (mythic time or time immemorial; the 1870s; and the late twentieth-century), yet they all share a perspective of Blackfoot ethics whereby community takes precedence over the individual and community is extended to encompass all creation as articulated by the Blackfoot Gallery Committee: Earth Beings or Ksahkomi-tapiksi (humans, four- legged animals, plants, rocks and the earth itself); Above People or Spomi-tapi-ksi (among which are the Star People,6 Ksisstsi’ko’m (Thunder), the sky and many birds); and Water Beings or Soyii-tapiksi.7 As Bastien notes, the Blackfoot received sacred bundles from some of these beings, including the Thunder Medicine Pipe Bundle and the Beaver Bundle, which, for the Siksikaitsitapi, “are a major source of protection through their balancing power.”8 She further points up that balance is the natural law of Siksikaitsitapi “understandings of reality as emanating from Ihtsipaitapiiyopa, The Source of Life”, sometimes referred to as the “Great Mystery”:

Balance is the mission of the Siksikaitsitapi culture, and through the organization of societies, balance is manifested in the values, norms, and roles of the people. Striving for balance becomes the motivation of life and the impetus for all relationships. Thus we see that relationships are connections with cosmic beings creating alliances.9

The analysis of the ethical dimensions in one sacred story from the Blackfoot oral tradition (Blackfoot Story) serves as a model with which to analyse three contemporary fictional representations of Blackfoot subjectivity by First Nations authors (one short story and two novels). The sacred story is the Story of Paii, the son of Ipiso-waahsa or Morning Star and his Blackfoot wife, So-at-sa-ki (Feather Woman). Star Boy went to live among the Blackfoot and was known as Paii

5 King, Green Grass, Running Water, 1994. 6 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. v, uses Spumatapiiwa or “Sky People”. 7 BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 9; and Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 11. 8 Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 11. 9 Ibid.

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(Scarface).10 This is a story from the Star Stories cycle of the Old People Stories (see Chapter 4), which are set in “time immemorial.” The ethical behaviour that elevates Paii to the social status of akáinauasiu (full grown in age) is here linked to three contemporary fictional texts: the short story “Compatriots”,11 by Pikani author Emma Lee Warrior, and the novels Fools Crow12 by the prolific prize-winning Blackfeet/GrosVentre13 author and poet James Welch (1940–2003), and Green Grass, Running Water, by prize-winning author, poet, critic and storyteller Thomas King, of Cherokee, Greek and German descent. Positing ethics as a link between the Blackfoot Stories and these three fictional texts addresses the lack of critical attention on the continuity between oral literature and the contemporary literature by First Nations authors. This lack of attention, as King argues, suggests “by omission that the two have little in common.”14 King advocates an approach that “recognizes both the Native and non-Native lines of influence in literature.”15

This gap in the scholarship provides an opportunity to extend the overall aims of this dissertation to the field of First Nations fictional writing. This focus advances the dissertation’s aim of establishing threads of continuity within processes of cultural transformation attendant upon colonisation, in this case the continuity between a genre (Blackfoot Stories) from the oral tradition and three genres from contemporary writing (short story, novel and historical novel). Restricting the scope of this analysis to one Blackfoot Story and prose representations of Blackfoot

10 Paii is also Star Boy or Jupiter. There are many variations of the name, including Poia, Poakskii, Aksskii and Payoa, Boh-yi-yi or Welt on Face. See McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 491; Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 8; and Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 344. 11 Emma Lee Warrior, “Compatriots”, in Thomas King, ed. and Intro., All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990, pp. 48– 59. This short story has also been anthologised in Paula Gunn Allen, ed., Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1974–1994, New York : Ballentine Books, 1996; Rosemary Sullivan, ed., Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women in English, Oxford University Press, 1999; and Daniel David Moses and Terry Goldie, eds., An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 160–7. 12 James Welch, Fools Crow, New York: Viking, 1986. 13 Welsh was born in the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. One grandmother was Pikani and the other was Gros Ventre (also At-séna, Atsina, or Entrails People). The Gros Ventre were minor allies of the Blackfoot, but became their enemies c. 1862: Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 244. 14 King, “Introduction”, The Native in Literature, p. 13. 15 Ibid.

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subjectivity seeks to test the hypothesis via concrete examples. Even though the oral literatures of First Nations peoples share commonalities, the views offered do not claim to be representative of all “Native literatures”. Rather, this analysis is offered as a specific illustration of the ways in which First Nations oral traditions can be read as influencing contemporary representations of Blackfoot subjectivity and ethics. No doubt similar arguments can be constructed on the basis of other Native literatures, especially those of the First Nations peoples of the Plains, who shared many cultural practices as nomadic buffalo hunters, but such claims would be beyond the scope of this study. For similar reasons, the chapter does not extend its analysis to non-Native influences, including the technology of writing, the use of the English language, and western literary genres, to mention but the most obvious. Neither does it include poetry, even though Warrior, King and Welch are prolific poets as well as prose writers.

Ethics is discussed here from a Blackfoot perspective of ideals of behaviour that characterise those who strive to live exemplary lives. It refers, to borrow the phrase from anthropologist Gerald Conaty, to “cultural norms and not exceptional behaviour”16. The working definition of social relations utilised in this chapter is contained in the term “All [are] my relations.”17 This phrase has a specific meaning for the First Nations peoples in North America, which King explains as follows:

‘All my relations’ is … a reminder of who we are and of our relationship with both our family and our relatives. It also reminds us of the extended relationship we share with all human beings … But the relationships that Native people see go further, the web of kinship extending to the animals, to the birds, to the fish, to the plants, to all the animate and inanimate forms that can be seen or imagined. More than that, “all my relations” is an encouragement for us to accept the

16 Conaty, “Economic Models”, p. 403. 17 King, ”Introduction”, All My Relations, p. ix. See also storyteller and author of Abenaki, English and Slovak ancestry, Joseph Bruchac, “All Are My Relations: Native People and Animals,” in Native American Animal Stories Told by Joseph Bruchac, from Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac, [from Keepers of the Animals], Foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr., Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1992, pp. xiii–xvi.

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responsibilities we have within this universal family by living our lives in a harmonious and moral manner.18

The commonplace expression “mind your relations” points to a core ethical Siksikaitsitapi ideal, both in the sense of taking into account, and of looking after, all those who are viewed by the Siksikaitsitapi as niksokowa (our relations). These ethics pervade the Blackfoot Stories, as noted by Pikani author and scholar Woody Kipp:

Our relationships—with people, with animal nations, with the forces of the world—are established through our Native tongues, through the stories we tell our children.19

The stories contain the teachings required in order to lead an ethical life—they offer “guidelines for behavior”20. From these stories, Hernandez identifies a non- exhaustive list of “themes,” which reflect the Blackfoot worldview: inter alia Bravery, Generosity, Group Effort/Community Harmony, Honesty, Knowledge as Power, Perseverance and Strength, Reciprocity, Respect, Responsibility, and Sacrifice. The entire Blackfoot community, argues Hernandez, takes notice of individual adherence to these ideals.21 Notably absent from Hernandez’s list are Pity and Compassion, which are ubiquitous in the Blackfoot Stories. Kipp explains how Pity and Compassion fit within the Blackfoot worldview:

In the Native languages we talked with the animals, who were not animals but nations of very different beings, beings who could, and often did, help the poor pitiful human. There is, at the very core of the language, the mandate of compassion.22

18 King, “Introduction”, All My Relations, p. ix. 19 Woody Kipp, “Foreword”, p. ix. 20 Weasel Traveller, A Shining Trail, pp. 31–33 and 35–37, refers to the sacred stories of First Nations peoples more generally. 21 Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 94–115. 22 Kipp, “Foreword,” p. viii. Compassion in The Oxford English Dictionary is “[t]he feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it; pity that inclines one to spare or to succour. Thus ‘to have’ or ‘to take’ pity is ‘to feel or show pity; to be merciful or compassionate.’” The Oxford English Dictionary. Lakota ceremonialist Black Elk, through Joseph Epes Brown, “Hanblecheyapi: Crying for a Vision,” in Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock, Eds., Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy, New York: Liveright, 1975, pp. 20–41, pp. 20–21, utilises “lamenter” to describe a vision seeker. He notes that

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Generosity occupies a central place among the ethical ideals represented in the texts discussed here. Chapter Three deals at length with how, until the nineteenth century, this quality was the sine qua non for becoming a Blackfoot leader. Generosity continues to be a crucial attribute for those who wish to occupy leadership positions in Blackfoot culture. In some cases, it is not easy to disentangle generosity from reciprocity within Blackfoot social relations. Blackfoot scholar Betty Bastien notes that

the natural law of reciprocity … is founded upon the science of our people which is grounded on the observation of nature … Nature always tries to be in balance and it is in this balance that life is strengthened and renewed.23

Cultural insiders understand that to show due respect for their relations they must, in due course, demonstrate reciprocity for benefits received.

Regulations forbidding acceptable, and indeed indispensable, practices of generosity attest to the contrast between what the Blackfoot and government officials considered ethical behaviour. Colonial regulations forbade the giving away of personal possessions (see Chapter 2), effectively making the practice of generosity and reciprocity illegal. To justify regulations that forbade the giving away of property according to Blackfoot norms of generosity and reciprocation, colonial officials cited the general lack of provisioning for their future needs by “Indians” (see Chapter 2). It was acceptable for the colonisers to exchange gifts at Christmas or exercise charity in other ways—a double standard that was noticed by the Blackfoot. The ability of the colonised to discern for themselves between what was appropriate or not appropriate to give away was taken away from them by blanket prohibitions, which made no concession to the Blackfoot ethical imperatives of generosity and reciprocity. Moreover, by forbidding acts of self-torture during Ookaan, the colonisers removed one of the means to reciprocate to Natosi for answering a plea for help.

“lamenting” is a very important way of praying and is “at the center of [Lakota] religion, for from it [the Lakota] have received many good things”. 23 Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 1.

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This chapter’s overriding aim, then, in placing the above narratives under a critical lens, is twofold. First, taking into account the protean nature of stories, and Theodora Kroeber’s contention that oral literature contains “a germinal prefiguring of a written and sophisticated literature,”24 it seeks to articulate ways in which the story of Paii links the Blackfoot oral tradition with the wider field of contemporary fiction by First Nations authors. Second, it emphasises how, within these texts, ethics provides the means to represent difference between Blackfoot and white subjectivity and worldviews.

The texts chosen for analysis are considered the most pertinent because, apart from providing emic representations of Blackfoot subjectivity, their thematic concerns serve to create a bridge between Blackfoot history and literature. The story of Paii is relevant to the whole dissertation. It relates how the knowledge to conduct Ookaan was given to a Blackfoot ancestor by Natosi. As such, the story justifies the centrality of Ookaan, and explains Blackfoot resistance to attempts to eradicate the ceremony during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (see Chapter 2). The sartorial practices analysed in Chapter Three also stem from the teachings received from Natosi by Paii. Moreover, the six versions of the story of Paii which are analysed here were translated and transcribed in the five anthologies examined in the previous chapter, which provides the context of their publication and discusses issues relevant to translation and genre. This chapter thus closes the circle by returning to the story of Paii to analyse its connections to contemporary emic representations of Blackfoot subjectivity. This analysis relies on the understanding of the Blackfoot world discussed in the foregoing chapters and, consequently, it encompasses literature and history.

Ookaan is one of the strands of continuity that links Paii to the three fictional narratives of Warrior, Welch, and King. This connection is neither serendipitous nor surprising. As discussed in Chapter Two, Ookaan, the biggest gathering of the year during the nomadic days, presented unique opportunities for the reproduction of Blackfoot culture. During these gatherings ethical social relations are showcased.

24 Kroeber, The Inland Whale, p. 157.

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The propinquity attendant upon reservation life no doubt presented everyday opportunities for the display of ethical behaviour. However, several decades after settling on the reserves, Ookaan continued to be the best forum to display generosity and reciprocity. As such, Ookaan is a central point of contact between the Blackfoot Stories and the fictional representations of Warrior, Welch, and King.

5.2 Contextualising “Native Literatures”

The terminology for the study of the literatures of First Nations peoples presents many challenges, which need to be clarified before proceeding further. The breadth and depth of Native literatures of The Americas entails creating divisions that cannot be justified other than in practical terms. Native American literature in its broadest sense encompasses the literatures of First Nations peoples throughout The Americas, which Gordon Brotherston calls “literatures of the Fourth World.”25 He divides this vast field into five groups: 1) Circum-Caribbean, 2) Mesoamerica, 3) Greater Mexico and Turtle Island, 4) Tahuantinsuyu (the Inca Empire), and 5) beyond Tahuantinsuyu. In contemporary Native writing, Turtle Island is used as a “metaphor for the earth’s surface as home for human beings.”26 This view derives from Iroquois tradition whereby a woman fell through a hole in the world above, and was caught by birds as she fell into this world, which was then covered with water. A turtle emerged from the water and the birds deposited the woman on the turtle’s back, which

25 Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, p. 1, notes that according to the Babylonian mappamundi, the First World is Asia, the Second Europe, and the Third is Africa, with The Americas becoming the Fourth. It does not refer to the category “tiers monde” first used by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, to refer to “underdeveloped” countries. See Carl E. Pletsch, “The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, Circa 1950–1975,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 23, no. 4 (1981): pp. 565–90, p. 567. 26 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 25, note that, in Native geography, Turtle Island is “that greater theater of the Mississippi and, beyond the Appalachians, the Atlantic Coast, which resisted onslaught from the east for three hundred years.” According to Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World, pp. 24–27, the focal point of Turtle Island at the time of the first European arrivals was Cahokia, “the metropolis that dominated the Missouri-Mississippi confluence.” The Removal Act of 1830 provided for the removal of Native Americans between the Appalachians and the Mississippi to what was defined as Indian Territory. See Prucha, “United States Indian Policies”, p. 45.

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became the earth.27 However, if Turtle Island is a symbolic referent for the stories from the Iroquois First Nation, Blackfoot literature is connected to its own story of creation. The Blackfoot Stories reflect a world created by Napi or Old Man, a creator and trickster (see Chapter 4) who taught them everything they needed to know. These stories of creation are a sample of the diversity of First Nations literatures.

A distinction needs to be made between “Native American literature” and the “Native literatures of the Americas.” Native American is a contested term, no longer used inclusively for the latter. It is often used exclusively to designate Native literatures of the United States. As a consequence of this conflation between ‘American’ and the United States, Canadian academics reject terms such as Native American to refer to what they prefer to call “Native Canadian literature.”28 This distinction is problematic in regard to Blackfoot literature. The three Blackfoot divisions in Canada (Apatohsipikani, Kainai and Siksika), and the division in the United States (Amsskaapipikani) speak the Blackfoot language, and share a common culture and literature.

Attempting to distinguish “American” from “Canadian” texts in the case of Blackfoot literature presents an additional problem. Blackfoot literature, like the Great Plains, transcends national boundaries. As the dominant force in the northwestern Plains between the Saskatchewan and the Yellowstone Rivers before European arrival, Blackfoot influence extends to both sides of the international boundary created in 1846 (see Chapter 2), a border that Thomas King calls “a figment of someone else’s imagination.”29 When it comes to the Blackfoot Stories,

27 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 25. Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Toronto: Anansi Press, 2003, begins each of five short stories with a reference to this myth. 28 Thomas King, who was raised in Northern California but is a Canadian citizen, is proudly labelled “Native Canadian.” King himself refers to “North Americans” as separate from “Canadians”, even though Canada is part of the North American continent. See for example Peter Gzowski, “Peter Gzowski Interviews Thomas King on Green Grass, Running Water”, Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne, Number 161/162 (1999): pp. 65–76, pp. 70–71. Canadian feelings are evident in Margery Fee, “Romantic Nationalism and the Image of Native People in Contemporary English-Canadian Literature,” in King et al, Eds., The Native in Literature, pp. 15–33, p. 30, explaining why Canadians cannot afford to be cynical about nationalism: “we are afraid that if we don’t believe in Indians, we will have to become American” (my italics). 29 King, “Introduction,” The Native in Literature, p. 10.

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they antedate Canada and the United States and thus, strictly speaking, are neither a Canadian nor a United States literature. At least in regard to contemporary Blackfoot literature, until such time as such a distinction can be justified on an aesthetic criteria, it would be short-sighted to compartmentalise the oeuvre of James Welch (a Pikani from Montana) from that of Emma Lee Warrior (a Pikani from Alberta). To avoid having to make an ill-defined distinction between ”Native American” and “Native Canadian” respectively, the chapter refers to their writing as “Native literature.”

5.3 Native Writing As a Separate Field of Study

Native literature as a separate field of study is of recent creation. The study of contemporary writing in English by Native authors falls under the rubric of, in Canada, Native Studies or First Nations Studies, and in the United States, Native American Studies or American Indian Studies.30 Within this context “American” often means “Anglo-American.” In the United States, these broad-ranging Native American Studies programs were established from c. 1970,31 when the activism associated with the American Indian Movement drew attention to emerging Native intellectuals and writers such as Vine Deloria, Jr., and N. Scott Momaday.32 In Canada the controversy created by the “White Paper” in 1969 (Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy), which “recommended the abolition of

30 Lethbridge University (Alberta) offers a course of Native American Literature, which includes “Native and non-Native writers.” Available online at: http://www.uleth.ca/fas/nas/listClasses [Accessed 21 May 2007]; Humboldt State University, for example, offers the following courses in the Language and Literature option of their Native American Studies majors: Native American Literature; Oral Literature & Oral Tradition; Language & Communication in Native American Communities; Native Languages of North America; International Indigenous Issues (literature and language); and Special Topics in Native American Languages and Literature: available Online at: http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~nasp/ [Accessed 29 April 2007]. 31 Kidwell and Velie summarise the development of these programs in several United States universities, and the concurrent establishment of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian in 1972, Native American Studies, pp. 3–7. 32 Deloria’s Custer Died for Your Sins and Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize novel, House Made of Dawn, as well as Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, all appeared in 1969, cited in Krupat, The Voice in the Margin, p. 122; and Shanley, “The Indians America Loves to Love and Read”, p. 28.

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special rights for native peoples”33 had fuelled similar protests. In 1971 Cree Harold Cardinal published The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians. Rather than fiction, as Petrone notes, the majority of books published by Native Canadians during this decade belong to historical, autobiographical and biographical genres.34 Indeed, there are significant examples of English biographical writing by Native authors from the nineteenth century, although the genre became popular during the first decades of the twentieth century.35 Works of poetry and short story were also numerous. However, no fictional text in Canada rivalled the attention received by Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968), which received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize.36

Although Native authors began writing in English two centuries earlier, it was not until the last three decades of the twentieth century that a literary movement variously called “Indian Renaissance” and “Native American Renaissance” gets underway, and a separate canon of Native literature began to take shape.37 In the wake of Momaday’s success, Native American writers have published over 200

33 Petrone, Native Literature in Canada, p. 112. See also Adrian Tanner, “Introduction: Canadian Indians and the Politics of Dependency”, in Idem, Ed., The Politics of Indianness: Case Studies of Ethnopolitics in Canada, esp. pp. 22–4, for a view of “Indian Politics in the 1970s.” 34 Petrone, Native Literature in Canada, pp. 112–37 cites Métis Maria Campbell, who in 1973 published her acclaimed autobiography Halfbreed; and in 1979 Kainai Mike Mountain Horse published My People The Bloods, edited by Hugh Dempsey. 35 See Wiget, Native American Literature, p. 53, for early nineteenth century autobiographies by Native Americans, including those by Sauk leader Black Hawk in 1833, and Ojibwa George Copway in 1847; and for the early twentieth century the writing of authors such as Ohiyesa (The Winner) or Charles Eastman, a Santee Sioux physician who became a “celebrity”, and who also published popular fiction. Ohiyesa published eleven books between 1902 and 1918, including Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1918] 1997, containing sketches of fifteen leaders. Among them are American Horse, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph. See also Patricia Riley, ed., Growing Up Native American: An Anthology, Foreword by Inés Hernandez, New York: William Morrow, 1993, which contains perspectives from Native American authors on the topic. 36 For an overview of modern fiction by Native writers in Canada, see Petrone, Native Literature in Canada; and New, ed., Native Writers and Canadian Writing,1992; and for the United States, see Wiget, Native American Literature, 1985, pp. 70–82 for early nineteenth century and pp. 82–97 for contemporary fiction. 37 Nancy J. Peterson, “Introduction: Native American Literature—From the Margins to the Mainstream,” Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 45, no. 1 (1999): pp. 1–9, p. 1, uses the term “Native American Renaissance” and attributes the term to Kenneth Lincoln, Native American Renaissance, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 6 utilise “American Indian Renaissance”.

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novels, some of which have become canonical.38 Literature courses within Native American programs focus principally on these canonical texts, which include Kiowa N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, 1968, Laguna Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Chipewa Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, Gerald Vizenor’s Darkness in St Louis Bearheart, and Blackfoot/Gros Ventre James Welch’s Winter in the Blood. Canadian canonical writing includes Cree playwright Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters; Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water; Ojibway Ruby Slipperjack’s Honour the Sun, and short stories by Ojibway Basil Johnston, Pikani Emma Lee Warrior, Lee Maracle (Salish), Jeanette C. Armstrong (Okanagan), Peter Blue Cloud/Aroniawenrate (Mohawk), Beth Brant (Mohawk), poet Maurice Kenny (Mohawk), and storyteller Harry Robinson (Okanagan).

The beginnings of the study of Native oral literatures from the nineteenth century, as noted in the previous chapter, took place through the practice of salvage ethnology. The five ethnographic texts studied in that chapter contain Blackfoot literature in translation, labelled as myths, folktales and legends. The Blackfoot Stories are part of a Blackfoot literature that includes other genres. These narratives, told in the Blackfoot language to a Blackfoot audience, survive the test of time, being held in high esteem for the pleasure they continue to provide to their audiences. Blackfoot literature, irrespective of any shared elements with the literatures of other First Nations, represents a Blackfoot-centred world: events that occurred to Blackfoot ancestors. The relationship between Native literatures such as this and contemporary writing by Native authors has been recognised. Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water is a classic exemplar of this relationship. King links his narrative to the oral stories by sharing the narrative space with humans, animals (Coyote) and mythological characters. Moreover, the general laws that apply to King’s writing (trickster’s hermeneutics) follow the traits of the trickster (see Chapter 4) whose every act is permeated by laughter, humour and irony. 39

38 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 6, note that prior to the appearance of House Made of Dawn in 1968, only nine novels by Indians had been published in the United States. 39 Radin, The Trickster, pp. ix–x.

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Establishing boundaries for the study of Native literatures is potentially hazardous. In the previous chapter, I discussed some of the consequences attendant upon the imposition of etic genres on Blackfoot oral narratives. However, when referring to contemporary literature written in English by Blackfoot authors, it would be reductive to insist on the term “Blackfoot literature,” and to separate these texts from those of other Native authors on the basis of tribal allegiance. The practicality of such divisions would be questionable, especially given that many Native authors have allegiance to more than one First Nation, as is the case of Blackfeet/Gros Ventre Welch.

5.4 Native Writing in Canada and the United States

The sine qua non for works of Native literature is that their authors should be “Native,” that is, have Native ancestry or be recognised as members of a First Nation. The generic distinction between Native literature and literature about Natives written by non-Native authors in the contemporary context must remain outside the scope of this chapter. I dealt in the previous chapter with the role of white authors in the publications of oral literatures. However, in the contemporary writing context, distinctions between Native and non-Native authorship generally follow political, rather than aesthetic criteria.40 Excluding non-Native authors from claiming to write Native literature seeks to prevent a recurrence of the past appropriation of the Native voice by non-Natives. Notable among those who have usurped the voice of First Nations peoples is Archibald Belaney, who authored several volumes under the assumed name Grey Owl.41 Another case is that of Sylvester Long, born into slavery in the United States. Long wrote for newspapers and published his autobiography under the pseudonym “Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance.”42 He claimed to be a “Blood [Kainai]” chief when in fact he had been made an honorary member of the

40 See for example, King et al, eds., The Native in Literature. 41 Lovat Dickson, Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl, [London: Macmillan, 1974] London: ABACUS, 1976. 42 Long was the son of part-Indian parents born into slavery. His autobiography was published in 1928, see Donald B. Smith, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Impostor, Red Deer, AB: Red Deer Press, 2000, p. 385.

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Kainai. In 2005 a similar controversy involved author, activist and academic Ward Churchill, whose claim to being a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians was questioned.43 It is clear from these controversies that authorial status as “Indian” is critical within the field of Native writing, and no other aspects of Native writing (such as thematic content or authorial point of view) are contested with the same vigour. This is no doubt related to what is viewed as an unwelcome appropriation of First Nations peoples’ culture on the part of “Indian” pretenders or “wannabees”44. Cherokee scholar Richard Allen goes one step further, by noting the difference between those who are “Indian” by virtue of their blood quantum, and those who “grow in the culture.”45 However, as King notes, there is no consensus regarding this matter, least of all among Native scholars.

Similar definitional difficulties attach to the genre of Native literature. While Gerald Vizenor and Diane Glancy adhere in their edited series to “stories that express a Native American fictional consciousness”46 (their way to define the boundaries of the scope of the series), Kidwell and Velie define what they prefer to call “Indian literature” (a term that elides the difference between Canadian and American literature) as “literature by Indians about Indians,” a definition they offer as “provisional” and not a “hard and fast rule.”47 King goes further, noting the absence of a definition of “Native literature” as well as of a process to determine who is a “Native writer” and who is not.48 A matrix to distinguish Native literature,

43 Amy Herdy, The Denver Post, May 19, 2005, A-01, “Tribe Says Prof’s Membership Rescinded In ‘94 But The Cherokee Band Doesn’t Know If Churchill Was Notified, And It Said As Recently As February That He Was A Member.” The article claims that all associate memberships were rescinded in 1994, including that of Churchill, who had been given an “honorary ‘associate membership’ in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry.” Churchill disputed that his associate membership had been rescinded in July 1994, but not the charge that it was an “honorary” membership. Ward was later dismissed from his academic post for academic misconduct. 44 A. Robert Lee uses this term to refer to “self-affiliating or faux ‘Indians’”, “Introduction”, Gerald Vizenor and A. Robert Lee, Postindian Conversations, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999, p. 5. 45 Personal communication, San Antonio, Texas, April 2004. 46 Mary Jane Lupton, James Welch: A Critical Companion, Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2004, p. 8. 47 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 101. 48 See King, “Introduction”, All My Relations, p. x, for a discussion on the difficulty of defining “Indian literature” and “Indian”; also Krupat, Voice in the Margin, pp. 205–10.

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he posits, will emerge when the collection of “works of individual authors who are Native by ancestry” … reaches some sort of critical mass.49 However, in a modern context, as noted by Vine Deloria, Jr., there is “an ‘Indianness’ which is intimately shared by all American Indian people—the response made to white society.”50

Kidwell and Velie propose than a pan-Indian aesthetic is manifested in tribal relationships to particular lands and to nature in general, traditions, languages, and “assumptions about concepts of time.”51 Another definition of “Native literature”, by Agnes Grant suggests that it means:

Native people telling their own stories, in their own ways, unfettered by criteria from another time and place … native literature reveals the depth and status of the culture, expresses Native wisdom and points of view familiar to other Natives, reveals the beauty of the Native world, beauty rarely recognized by non-Native writers. Native literature records oral narratives, values, beliefs, traditions, humour and figures of speech. It emphasizes communal living and portrays a mingling and sharing; elders wait to teach Indian ways to the young who may be floundering in an alien culture or questioning traditional ways. 52

Grant’s definition would better apply to oral literatures than to contemporary Native writing because it restricts Native literature to a communal setting. It does not recognise the diversity of contemporary Native experiences or the Native author who is comfortable living within two worlds, and who is not “floundering,” but thriving.

Given the above difficulties and the impossibility of categorically defining the literatures of the First Nations peoples of The Americas in ways that take account of their heterogeneity, “Native literature” is used here to refer to both the literature of First Nations peoples of Canada and the United States, and “Native American literature” to refer more specifically to the latter, even though these categories are “provisional”.

49 King, “Introduction”, All My Relations, p. x. 50 Vine Deloria Jr., God is Red, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1973. 51 Kidwell and Velie, Native American Studies, p. 103. 52 Agnes Grant, “Contemporary Native Women’s Voices in Literature,” in W. H. New, ed., Native Writers and Canadian Writing, Canadian Literature Special Issue, Vancouver: UBC Press 1992, pp. 124–32, p. 125.

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5.5 Ethical Dimensions of the Story of Paii or Scarface

Like other Blackfoot Stories in the Star Stories cycle, the story of Paii promotes “model behavior that is worthy of being retold.”53 The teachings derived from the story reflect the ethical ideals of the Blackfoot world where the story derives from, but also served as model for the following generations of Blackfoot. In Grinnell’s and McClintock’s version the story is set during the “dog days,”54 an early era when First Nations lived in peace.55 Paii is a poor Blackfoot ancestor who travelled far to ask Natosi to remove the scar from his face, a condition set by a chief’s daughter whom he wishes to marry. Although the chief’s daughter has rejected many “rich, handsome and brave” suitors,56 she agrees to marry Paii if and when his scar is gone. Paii reaches the place where the Above Beings reside and lives for a time with Natosi, his wife Kokomi-kisomm (Moon), and their young son, Ipiso-waahsa (Morning Star).57 Natosi agrees to remove the scar after Paii proves his worth by killing several birds that were attacking Ipiso-waahsa. Natosi also instructs Paii on the manner in which he wishes to be honoured by the Siksikaitsitapi through Ookaan. Paii’s conduct during his epic journey illustrates the qualities that were most appreciated by the Siksikaitsitapi who looked to the story as a repository of their knowledge and as a guide to lead a moral life. Paii’s quest exemplifies the value, among other ideals, of honesty, bravery, perseverance, respect for all creation, generosity and reciprocity. The story integrates all the elements within the Siksikaitsitapi circle of life and illustrates the manner in which the stories teach the Blackfoot worldview.

53 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 2; and BGC, Nitsitapiisini, p. 8. 54 According to Natosi Nepe-e, who narrated the “Legend of Poïa, The Christ Story of the Blackfeet” to McClintock, the story, and hence the origins of the Sun Dance, dates back to “when the Blackfeet used dogs for beasts of burden instead of horses”: Old North Trail, pp. 491–2. The “dog days” came to an end when horses replaced dogs as beasts of burden during “the very first years” of the eighteenth century: Ginnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 177 and p. 186 (see Chapter 3). 55 Ibid., p. 93. 56 Ibid. 57 Morning Star is the name given to Venus. See versions of this sacred story in: McClintock, Old North Trail, p. 524 (he translates Scarface as Poïa); Glenbow Archives, M-4422, R. N. Wilson fonds, “The Blackfoot Legend of Scarface”, translates Scarface as Uk-ske (“a scar on the face”); Uhlenbeck, Original Blackfoot Texts, 1911, pp. 50–7; Glenbow Archives, M-4376, David C. Duvall fonds.

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The story contains lessons illustrating the importance of the relationship between humans and all their relations, animate (humans, four-legged and two- legged beings) and inanimate (the Star People). As Hernandez argues “the earth-to- cosmos connection confirmed through the stories … teaches respect of the interdependence of humans, all earth life, and the larger circle of the universe because they are inseparable.”58 This interdependence is resumed in the phrase “all my relations”, which, in King’s experience, has the same meaning for First Nations peoples, even though different First Nations may express it differently in their own language.59 King adds that the importance of caring for one’s relations is evident in “a common admonishment … to say of someone that they act as if they have no relations.”60

The analysis of the story of Paii undertaken here brings into dialogue six renderings of the story, collected in the five ethnographic texts reviewed in Chapter Four. The first version is extracted from “The Faith of Ahko Pitsu (Told by Ahko Pitsu)”. This version is narrated by Sikochkeka (Chewing Black Bone), a Pikuni grandson of Only Chief (Lame Bull) and Sits-in-the-Middle, first and tenth signatories to the Lamb Bull treaty of 1855, named after the former. This version was transcribed by Schultz.61 The second, “Scarface: Origin of the Medicine Lodge” is probably a composite, one of the versions being furnished to Grinnell by Miss Cora Ross, “one of the school teachers at the Blackfoot agency.”62 The third version “Legend of Star Boy (Later, Poïa, Scarface)” appears in McClintock’s Old North Trail, and is related by Natosi Nepe-e (Brings-Down-the-Sun), a respected “Grandfather”63 (see Chapter 4). This version begins by relating how Paii’s mother, So-at-sa-ki (Feather Woman) married the Morning Star (Paii’s father). The fourth

58 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 6. 59 The Lakota, for example “emerge from ceremonies singing out ‘Mitakuye Oyasin’ or ‘All my relatives’ … the word ‘totem’ itself derives from the Ojibwa for ‘my fellow clansman.’ Lincoln, Native American Renaissance, p. 2. 60 King, “Introduction”, All My Relations, p. ix. 61 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 338–47, including “The Story of Scarface” (pp. 338–44), and “The Tobacco Food Planters” (pp. 344–47). 62 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 93–103. In his “Introduction” Grinnell thanks Miss Ross (p. xxx). 63 McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 491–505 and 523–524. The story was narrated in July 1905.

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and fifth versions appear in Wissler’s and Duvall’s Mythology of the Blackfoot, one is attributed to a “Piegan Man,” and the other, which is significantly shorter, is attributed to a “Piegan Woman.”64 Uhlenbeck provides the only bilingual rendition, but only the English translation is utilised here.65 Two other extant versions are also cited here: one narrated to Hernandez by Blackfoot Mike Swims Under c. 1999; the other published by Pikani author and ceremonialist Percy Bullchild.66 These additional versions have been consulted but many others are extant. The aim is not to search for a “true” version of the story, but rather to canvass a number of representations to form a composite which can be then used to link the story to contemporary fictional representations by First Nations authors. What follows is a sequential interpretation of different units of meaning (ætiological passages)67 into which the composite story is divided that pay specific attention to ethical ideals.

Despite the protean nature of oral stories, which makes each retelling of it unique, there are a number of actions that occur in the same sequence across the different versions of the story. The story begins by establishing Paii’s social standing and what he must do to become worthy. He is poor, and in all but one version he is an orphan.68 He wishes to marry a chief’s daughter who has refused better-off suitors, but agrees to marry Paii, if and when his scar disappears. In Grinnell’s version, the chief’s daughter is virtuous and kindly, and because of these qualities, Natosi has reserved her to become his own wife.69 In Bullchild’s version she encourages Paii by telling him: “I have a lot of pity for you … Creator Sun has a lot of pity for the two

64 Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, pp. 58–61 and 61–65. 65 Uhlenbeck, Blackfoot Texts, 1911. According to Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s Diary, 2005, Uhlenbeck’s methodology consisted of obtaining the same story from different informants in the Blackfoot language, which his principal Blackfoot collaborator or “teacher”, Joe Tatsey, then reviewed with him. As such this version is a composite. 66 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, pp. 328–86. 67 The Oxford English Dictionary defines ætiological as follows: “Of or pertaining to ætiology; assigning or tending to assign a cause or reason. 68 In Schultz’s version he has parents. According to Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 331, he was raised by “an old lady,” who was his grandmother. 69 Bullchild’s version agrees with Grinnell’s in that the young woman has been taken as a wife by Creator Sun. Bullchild adds that there were rumours that her refusal to marry was caused by a deformity because she was being “both a man and a woman … a hermaphrodite”. Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, pp. 329–31.

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of us.”70 In the story, pity is represented as a desirable attribute. To ask one’s relations for pity is a form of address that implies respect for the person being addressed. In versions where the chief’s daughter is not compassionate, she is punished with an early death towards the end of the story.

The gender dimensions portrayed in the story reflect a male-centred worldview that places the highest value on women’s virtue. According to Grinnell’s version “The sun pities good women.” They shall live a long time. So shall their husbands and children. When the chief’s daughter refuses her suitors, her mother despairs at the thought that a child could be born while she is unmarried, which would bring shame to the parents.71 However, although in contrast with Paii’s heroic deeds the chief’s daughter plays a passive role,72 she is not without power, for she has rejected many suitors.

According to the Story of Paii, the hero—like the Blackfoot in earlier eras, who travelled far to raid enemy camps in search of wealth and prestige (see Chapter 3)—must travel to the end of the known world to ask Natosi to remove his scar (and in Grinnell’s version to ask for the release of the chief’s daughter from her bond to Natosi so Paii can marry her). Paii’s preparation to undertake his quest is akin to the preparation of a warrior who is about to go on the warpath. Being poor, Paii must rely on helpers who pity him, that is, who are moved to help him. In Grinnell’s version of the story, Paii secures seven pairs of moccasins and food for his journey from an old woman.73 In Uhlenbeck’s version an old woman gives him her own moccasins and instructs him, when he arrives at his destination, to take them off and the moccasins will return to her on their own. Paii seeks prayers from “grandparents”, helpers who are knowledgeable in Blackfoot sacred ways (see Ch. 1), for his quest to be successful. Human and four-legged beings guide him towards Natosi. In Grinnell’s version, apart from the old woman, he receives assistance from

70 Bullchild, The Sun Came Down, p. 333. 71 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 93. 72 This passive role cannot be extrapolated to all the Blackfoot Stories. Elk Woman, a role model for Siksikaitsitapi women, proved her strength to be superior to that of her husband (see Chapter 3). 73 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 95–6.

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“wolf ... bear ... badger” and “Wolverine”74. In Schultz’s version the helpers are “Wolverine ... Chief Lynx, Chief Elk, Chief Buffalo,” until “at last he met Chief Badger,” who is able to provide him with the knowledge he requires.

In requesting assistance from sacred helpers, Paii follows the teachings of Napi, the Blackfoot Creator and Trickster. When he created the world, Napi taught the Blackfoot everything they needed to live, including how to hunt animals. Most importantly, he taught them the manner in which they could seek assistance when in need:

Now, if you are overcome, you may go and sleep and get power. Something will come to you in your dream that will help you. Whatever these animals tell you to do, you must obey them, as they appear to you in your sleep. Be guided by them. If anybody wants help, if you are alone and travelling, and cry aloud for help, your prayer will be answered. It may be by the eagles, perhaps by the buffalo, or by the bears. Whatever animal answers your prayer, you must listen to him.75

The indispensable role of women in Blackfoot ritual (see Chapters 2 & 3) is evident in the story of Paii, where their role is to intercede between Paii and Natosi. In McClintock’s version Paii is aided by “an old medicine woman”; and in Uhlenbeck’s by four women, each of whom he meets consecutively. Paii travels east “where the sun rises” and meets the first woman who directs him to go beyond what “looks blue [a mountain ridge].” She gives him her moccasins to wear and instructs him “when you arrive, put them with the fore-ends back.” The second woman repeats the indications, and so do the third and fourth. However, the fourth woman adds a new twist, and directs him to Morning Star, who will tell him “how you can live.” According to Swims Under, the old woman (“Old Lady”), whom Paii meets in

74 Ibid. pp. 96–97. 75 Ibid., pp. 141 and 257, transcribes part of the Blackfoot story of creation. A summarised version, which leaves intact Grinnell’s dialogues and punctuation was published by Ella E. Clark, who attributed the story to a Blackfoot informant “Chewing Blackbones”. While Clark claimed to have been given the story in 1953, “in the old language of the Blackfeet,” it is evident that the claim is false, as there is no doubt that the source of the story is Lodge Tales. See her Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1966] rpt. 1988, pp. 235–9. Chewing Black Bone (Sikochkeka) was a venerable and knowledgeable Pikuni “Grandfather”. He was an excellent storyteller who narrated some of the stories later written by Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, for example, pp. 338–46.

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consecutive lodges, is Natosi’s wife, the Moon. Unbeknown to Paii, he arrives at Natosi’s lodge, only to be sent away.76 Paii’s wanderings and his continuous return to the same lodge are explained by the fact that “the whole world is the Sun’s lodge.”77 The old woman always meets Paii before her husband arrives, and she intercedes on behalf of the former. This female interceding role is re-enacted during Ookaan, which to take place requires the vow of a chaste woman. Through this vow, the woman intercedes on behalf of her relations to request assistance from Natosi (see Chapter 2).

Paii’s actions that demonstrate his respect for all his relations are re-enacted during Ookaan.78 The four-fold repetitions that recur in the story relate to the sacredness with which the Blackfoot view the four directions, North, South, East and West.79 For example, in Uhlenbeck’s version,80 Paii meets four times the Old Woman before finding his way to the Star people; and Natosi takes Paii through four sweat baths before the scar disappears. In Grinnell’s version the Old Woman gives Paii moccasins and food before he leaves his camp. The four helpers who give him directions are “wolf”, “bear,” badger, and “wolverine”. Wolverine, being the fourth helper, tells Paii where to find the trail.81 Boas noted similar rhythmic repetition as a formal aspect fundamental to the stories of many First Nations in his earliest

76 Mike Swims Under’s version is in Hernandez, Mokakssini, pp. 86–9. In this version Paii is told by the “Old Lady” to wait for her husband, who gives Paii directions. Her husband is Napi, Old Man, who is the same as the Sun. In other stories, Napi and the Sun are represented as different beings. See note below. 77 In “The Theft From The Sun”, Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 167–8, Old Man (the Blackfoot creator and trickster also known as Na’pi) tries to steal Sun’s leggings. During the night he steals away from Sun’s lodge, but each morning he finds himself back inside Sun’s lodge. Grinnell (p. 258) notes that “the flat circular earth in fact is his home, the floor of his lodge.” 78 For a detailed description of Ookaan’s proceedings, see Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 263–66. 79 In McClintock’s version Paii fasts and prays for three days and three nights when he reaches the “Big Water”, which McClintock interprets as referring to the Pacific Ocean. Bullchild’s version also indicates that Paii travelled westward: The Sun Came Down, pp. 338–9, which contradicts another story that claims that Paii travelled east. In Wissler and Duvall’s version, four sweat baths are required to remove the scar. In the Piegan man’s version Morning Star asks Paii four times to go in the forbidden direction. 80 Although Uhlenbeck’s version is briefer, it includes more repetition. 81 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 95–97. The two versions in Wissler and Duvall differ greatly in this section of the story, but the Piegan Man’s version contains other actions that are repeated four times: Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, p. 63.

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fieldwork in the late nineteenth century.82 For example, in a story of Blackfoot creation, when Napi first created “a woman and a child … her son,” out of clay, he covered them up and uncovered them each morning during four consecutive days. On the fourth morning “he told them to rise and walk; and they did so.”83 However, linguist Dell Hymes argues that “so-called sacred numbers” may not be primarily “something of transcendental mystical value,” but may have “developed from the aesthetic values of rhythmic repetition.” It would be difficult to ascertain Hymes’s claim because the stories are re-enacted in ritual, and are therefore intrinsic to ritual. During the Blackfoot nomadic days and the early reserve era Ookaan began after the Blackfoot camp had moved four times. From an aesthetic perspective, drawing out the resolution of the passages that are repeated increases the suspense in the story, at the same time that it represents the perseverance of the characters. Unfortunately, some repetition seems to have been eliminated from the written versions, possibly in order to speed-up the narrative.84 The opposite would have been required from storytellers whose role was to inform, but especially to entertain their audiences.

The story reaches a crisis point when Paii faces the “Big Water,” the last obstacle in his quest to find Natosi’s abode.85 It is only when sacred helpers take pity on Paii that he is finally able to find his way. In Schultz’s version, two swans (a male and female couple) find Paii when he is ready to give up living: “So is it that here I die”, he tells them, after confiding his troubles. They take pity on Paii, ask him to “take courage,” and offer their assistance. They take him on their backs to the “island home” where Sun lives. In Grinnell’s version, after carrying Paii across the water, the swans show him the trail he must follow. In McClintock’s version, Paii fasts and prays for three consecutive days and nights and, on the fourth night, he “beheld a

82 Hymes, Now I Only Know So Far, pp. 17–19, citing Boas’s “Poetry and Music of Some North American tribes,” Science Vol. 9 (1987): pp. 383–85. 83 “The Blackfoot Genesis,” in Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 138. 84 In Wissler and Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot, pp. 61–66. The “Version by a Piegan Woman” has no repeated sequences. This version occupies a fourth of the space of the “Version by a Piegan Man,” which indicates that it is an abridged version. 85 This water is variously described as a lake, or in McClintock’s version, the Pacific Ocean. However, since in another version Paii travels East toward the Sun, the Pacific Ocean interpretation by McClintock is probably inaccurate.

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light trail leading across the water.” In Uhlenbeck’s version the Morning Star guides Paii, but there is no mention on how the water is crossed.86

Although Paii embarks on an individual quest, his success is reliant on his relations who help and guide him. He could not undertake such a quest without the moccasins and food the Old Woman gives him; and he could not have arrived at his destination without the helpers who pity him and point him in the right direction. By the time he arrives at Natosi’s lodge, Paii’s perseverance, strength, and his willingness to follow the instructions of his sacred helpers and to offer ritual sacrifices have all been tested. He has been respectful of all beings and has offered the required sacrifices, suffered physical pain and risked his life. During these trials, Paii’s has shown respect for all his relations. Further tests await him as he reaches the abode of the Star People.

The friendship between Paii and Morning Star stems from incidents on which the various versions of the story disagree. In Schultz’s version, Paii saves Morning Star from being killed by “angry birds.” In Grinnell’s version, Paii finds “a war shirt, a shield, and a bow and arrows,” which belong to Morning Star and which Paii leaves untouched, following his helpers’ advice. In the latter version the killing of the birds occurs later. Paii’s courage and honesty respectively, make him a worthy tak.a or takai (partner) for Morning Star. The Star People live parallels lives to those of the Blackfoot. By becoming Morning Star’s tak.a, Paii enters into a relationship similar to that which develops between two Blackfoot males from early childhood. This relationship is formalised through joint participation in societies, warfare, and at times even through the sharing of a wife.87 As Morning Star’s tak.a, Paii becomes like a son to Morning Star’s parents.

The significance of bravery in the Blackfoot worldview is evident in that all versions of the story contain the killing of the birds to save Morning Star. As noted

86 It is possible that McClintock’s “light trail” is related to Morning Star, whose light may have guided Paii, because in this version Paii does not meet Morning Star until after meeting the Sun. This step is omitted in the versions in Wissler and Duvall. 87 Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women”, p. 175; and Glenbow Archives, M4421, f. 118, R. R. Wilson fonds, “Palandry”.

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above, Schultz’s version described the attackers as “angry birds”; in Grinnell’s version they are “large birds with long sharp bills”; in McClintock’s version they are “seven enormous birds”; in Uhlenbeck’s version Paii kills “four ... cranes”; and in the Piegan Man’s version in Wissler and Duvall, he kills “seven geese.”88 In the contrast between the birds who help Paii and those who attack Morning Star it is evident that nature is not always benign. Facing fear with courage on this occasion resulted in Paii’s coming of age. Grinnell notes the value of courage by the Blackfoot, who taught boys “that to accomplish anything they must be brave and untiring in war; that long life was not desirable; that the old people always had a hard time ... Much better, while the body is strong and in its prime … to die in battle fighting bravely.”89

Interpretation of the didactic aims of the story of Paii is made easier by the similarities between the Blackfoot world and the world of the Star People. One of the teachings from the story is the need for humans to purify themselves through a smudge (incense) before their rituals.90 The Star People have a smudge place, a “kind of earthen square, some cedar-brush, and buffalo chips,” which describes also the smudge place in the Blackfoot lodges. Before any propitiating activity, the Blackfoot observe Natosi’s teachings by having a smudge. According to the story, incense is meant to disguise the smell of humans, which Natosi dislikes.

Following established protocol in the conduct of social interactions, Paii waits until Natosi invites him to express the reasons for his visit, whence Natosi agrees to remove the scar. In Grinnell’s version, Natosi assents for the woman to marry Paii. In Uhlenbeck’s version and that by the Piegan woman, Natosi removes Paii’s scar through four consecutive sweat baths shared by Natosi, Morning Star and Paii. After each sweat, Natosi rubs Paii’s face with an eagle tail feather and calls his wife, whom he asks to point out which of the two boys is her son. Three times she accurately identifies Morning Star, but the fourth time she mistakes Paii for Morning

88 As mentioned earlier, the old woman gives Paii seven pairs of moccasins, and in the versions by McClintock and the Piegan Man in Wissler and Duvall, Paii kills seven birds. 89 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 189–90. 90 Sweet pine needles were used by the Blackfoot to make incense for Medicine Pipe Bundles, but also to make perfume. Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 35.

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Star. Because of her confusion, when Paii eventually becomes a Star Person (Jupiter), his name becomes False Morning Star, or The-one-you-took-for-Morning- Star in the Piegan man’s version, or Poks-o-piks-o-aks or Mistake Morning Star in McClintock’s version.

The didactic purpose of the stories is evident in that Paii’s visit to the Star People is one of continuous learning. The most significant knowledge he acquires is how to honour the Sun through Ookaan, which he is expected to teach to the Blackfoot so that Natosi will better hear the Blackfoot’s pleas for help. Paii is instructed on the ritual sweat bath, and how to prepare a smudge, for which he is given “a forked stick, and cedar for the smudge, and some feathers”.91 In Schultz’s version Paii is told that white buffalo belong to the Sun. They must be left where killed as a sacrifice and their tanned hide must be attached to the centre pole during Ookaan. Apart from knowledge, Paii returns to his people bringing proof that he has met with the Sun—his scar is gone.

The generosity shown to Paii as a guest of the Star Beings further illustrates the high regard in which the Blackfoot place generosity. When Paii arrives at Natosi’s lodge, he is given shelter, food and clothing. Prior to his departure he receives valuable gifts. The Moon made him beautiful clothes, and Morning Star gave him a shield (Schultz). Natosi gave him two raven feathers (Grinnell and McClintock); and in Uhlenbeck’s version a “cloak”; a “hat,” and a “wooden pin”, which are respectively the Elk Woman’s robe, the Natoas Bundle, and the digging stick which are part of the attire worn by the Holy Woman during the Sun Dance (see Chapter 3).92 In the Piegan Man’s version, Paii receives a shirt and leggings on which he paints seven black stripes, one for each of the birds he killed. He is also given songs to go with the suit, to be sung each time this is transferred to a new owner. This is the weasel-tailed suit that should only be worn by those who have killed an

91 In the Piegan woman’s version by Wissler and Duvall. 92 According to another story from the Star People’s cycle, “The Woman Who Married a Star,” the digging stick was used by So-at-sa-ki to dig a sacred turnip. She had been forbidden to do so, and as a consequence had to return to her people: McClintock, Old North Trail, pp. 419–96.

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enemy (see Chapter 3), which in turn Paii presents to his Blackfoot tak.a (male friend/partner) when he returns to his people.

In the versions in Schultz and Grinnell, Paii marries the chief’s daughter and they both live happily into old age and die without pain. According to McClintock’s version Paii and his wife are taken back to the sky by Sun, whereupon Paii becomes Mistake Morning Star—the name he received when Moon confused him with her son. In Uhlenbeck’s version Paii treats the Chief’s daughter (who was unkind to him) with contempt. He throws a piece of sinew into the fire that had been given to him by Morning Star, who wishes the woman for his wife. His action causes the woman to die, whereupon she joins her Star husband. Paii’s words as this occurs are: “Partner, there goes your wife.”93 In the way that Natosi agreed to Paii’s request to surrender his wife, Paii agrees to Morning Star’s request for the woman, even though marrying her was the reason for his quest. The contradictory endings of the story lead us to speculate whether the version where the woman is punished with death belongs to a more recent era, when the Blackfoot world became more male-centred (see Chapter 3), but evidence is lacking to support this view.

The above summary, without being exhaustive, provides sufficient evidence that Paii’s success depends on an ongoing ethical engagement with all his relations. The teachings bestowed on Paii by Natosi define not only the reciprocal relationship between the latter and the Blackfoot, but also those of the Blackfoot with all their relations. These teachings, Hernandez argues, “reify the strength and continuity of a uniquely Blackfoot way of understanding the world.”94 This claim of uniqueness, like the relationship between the Blackfoot and Natosi, denotes the Blackfoot-centred worldview of the Blackfoot Stories, which is not concerned with how other First Nations peoples may relate to the same Star beings. Blackfoot ceremonies, Hernandez points out, re-enact “the sacred paths that those who journeyed to or from the sky travelled.”95

93 Uhlenbeck, Original Blackfoot Texts, p. 57. 94 Hernandez, Mokakssini, p. 77. 95 Ibid., p. 83.

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While the ethical ideals taught through the Blackfoot Stories serve to maintain a reciprocal relationship between the Blackfoot and all creation, Ookaan is the most significant ceremony for the maintenance of such reciprocity between the Blackfoot and Natosi. Showing generosity towards Natosi (including gifts of a person’s own flesh – see Chapter 2) was at times meant to propitiate him to help the Blackfoot in their coming endeavours, and sometimes meant as reciprocity for benefits already received. Generosity also was shown at this time to fellow Blackfoot. Moreover, Ookaan was a time for feasting fellow Blackfoot, especially those who visited at this time from other bands. Generosity elevated those Blackfoot who practiced it in the eyes of the whole community. Although the contemporary texts in the analysis that follows belong to an era that is distant from that represented in the story of Paii, these contemporary texts continue to emphasise ethical ideals, especially generosity. Despite the transformation of the socio-historical context, the ethical ideals from the Blackfoot Stories are a significant component of Blackfoot subjectivity in contemporary literary representations.

5.6 The Role of Ethics in Emma Lee Warrior’s Blackfoot Imaginings in “Compatriots”

A focus on the ethical dimensions of the text serves to establish a contrast between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot subjectivities in the contemporary short story “Compatriots”, by Emma Lee Warrior. Like the teachings contained in the story of Paii, “Compatriots” is an allegory that contains a moral dimension that readers must actively interpret. To do so requires some awareness of the colonisation process that has led to current social conditions on the Pikani reserve where the action is set. More than a century of life on the reservation has blurred the boundaries between white and Blackfoot.

Despite the contrast between the setting of the Story of Paii and the contemporary life on the Pikani reserve, the ethical ideals enacted by the characters in “Compatriots” intersect with the Blackfoot Stories through the centrality of kinship relations in the Blackfoot worldview. The contemporary setting involves walking a different path to that followed by Paii, but one that continues to demand among other things generosity, reciprocity, and compassion from those who strive to lead moral lives in accordance with the Blackfoot worldview.

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Warrior distances her Blackfoot characters from the stereotypical chiefs, medicine men, brave warriors and silent women of representations in popular culture. Her constructions of Blackfoot identity are heterogeneous and devoid of a fake authenticity and timelessness that characterise the popular portrayal of First Nations peoples as noble or ignoble savages. However, although the identities of Warrior’s Blackfoot characters are not fixed in an essential past, their current living conditions on the reserve need to be understood in terms of their experience as colonised peoples.

One way in which Warrior departs from stereotypes is by creating a female protagonist whose ordeal consists of everyday acts that help to uphold the Blackfoot community. Lucy, the principal character in “Compatriots”, provides a contrast, not only to Paii, but also to the male stereotype of the “Indian” in historical writing and popular culture. Reading the short story as an allegory of the hero quest, but at the same time as an antidote for the male hero, requires that the everyday be valued as heroic.

Lucy is introduced sitting in the outhouse, an image reminiscent of Molly Bloom sitting on the chamber pot in James Joyce’s Ulysses. In the same way that Joyce represented Molly as a symbol of Modern womanhood, Warrior represents Lucy to symbolise the contribution of Blackfoot women in upholding the Blackfoot community—a role that has been consistently neglected in male-centred historical and literary representations. Warrior portrays Blackfoot women as the everyday heroes who keep the Blackfoot ideals of generosity and reciprocity. Thus, from the start Warrior leaves readers in no doubt that “Compatriots” will not pander to the desire for a timeless “Indian” tale and will not satisfy readers’ cravings for predictable outcomes, either of the noble or ignoble savage variety.

One aspect that sets Warrior’s Blackfoot characters apart from their non- Blackfoot counterparts relates to the social disadvantages accrued during more than a century of colonialism. Poverty, unemployment, alienation and alcoholism in the reserve stretch the resources of those Blackfoot striving to uphold ideals of generosity, reciprocity, and community focus. There is a gulf between nurturing women and dysfunctional males such as Lucy’s husband, Bunky and her uncle Sonny. Bunky does not provide well for his family, but somehow can afford getting

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drunk with his friends. While Lucy lives in a house with no running water or plumbing, Bunky may lose his job due to absenteeism (pp. 48–49). Sonny is a binge drinker who has frequent alcoholic bouts that keep him away from home for days at a time.

The non-Blackfoot characters are two German compatriots: Hilda Afflerbach, a young woman who is “studying about Indians” (p. 49); and Helmut Walking Eagle, a self-styled ceremonialist who is taking a leading role in the Sun Dance. Walking Eagle is married to Pikani Elsie Walking Eagle, on the basis of whose knowledge he has authored a book called Indian Medicine: A Revival of Ancient Cures and Ceremonies. The name “Walking Eagle” caricatures the bearer, since an eagle’s ability to fly higher than other birds is what gives it a privileged position, a position that is closer to the Above Beings. Such a subversive name indicates that Warrior has little sympathy for this character. Paradoxically, not only does Hilda wish to learn about Blackfoot traditions from her German compatriot, but also Flora, who grew up a Catholic, has learnt about the Sun Dance from Walking Eagle’s book (p. 56).

Warrior constructs a community where interest in cultural revitalisation takes concrete form through participation in Ookaan. Flora’s interest in “exploring traditional beliefs” had started recently, having grown up a Catholic (p. 56). Lucy has no interest in traditional religion and has never been to a Sun Dance, which she views dismissively as a “big mess” created out of Sioux and Cree practices (p. 51). Notwithstanding this, Flora sees some value in Walking Eagle’s ethnographic salvage, which revitalises Blackfoot culture by promoting, to borrow the term from Beverly Hungry Wolf, a “spiritual reawakening”96. Delphine is already occupying the place designated for her family in the Circle Encampment, and Flora is searching for her own place. Moreover, Flora believes that Walking Eagle’s knowledge comes from his Pikani wife and as such she sees no reason to reject it.

The representation of the German “compatriots” as “Others” turns the world of the narrative upside down in relation to colonial representations of “Indians.” By contrasting the compatriots with the Blackfoot characters, Warrior also represents the

96 Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, p. 32.

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way in which colonisation inevitably makes it increasingly harder to distinguish the emic from the etic. This entanglement between the two perspectives is evident in the role played by Walking Eagle as a catalyst for Blackfoot religious revitalisation. In the story, Walking Eagle participates in the re-introduction of Ookaan, a reinvented tradition rather than the continuation of an ancient practice (see below). Walking Eagle’s commitment to the continuance of Blackfoot ritual ceremonies places him in an ambivalent position. While his presence can be an indicator that the introduced ritual is “phoney”, it can also serve as a criticism of Blackfoot indifference.

As in the story of Paii, generosity occupies a central place in “Compatriots”, where characters lacking this quality are portrayed unsympathetically. Lucy’s generosity touches the lives of her relations, not through once-off heroic deeds, but through her everyday conduct, which, in turn, elicits acts of reciprocity. Her first act of generosity and/or reciprocity is called for when her aunt Flora arrives at her doorstep with Hilda, whom she met at the Calgary Stampede. Flora is taking her to the “sun-dance”, but needs Lucy to look after Hilda while she goes to work. Flora’s request for Lucy to look after Hilda calls for reciprocity. Lucy “knew she was boxed in … but Flora had done her a lot of favours” (pp. 48–49). Lucy agrees, and this is one of several instances in the short story where she is represented as mindful of her relations.

Through the actions of the characters in “Compatriots”, Warrior demonstrates that, as exemplified in the Story of Paii, generosity is a valued Blackfoot ideal. Lucy may be uninterested in performing her Blackfoot identity through what she sees as a re-invented ritual life, but she upholds this central Blackfoot ideal. She shows Hilda the generosity that according to the Blackfoot worldview is due to a guest, despite her limited resources, for which she apologises: “I’ve got no running water in the house. You have to go outside to use the toilet.” Although Lucy does not have much food, she does not hesitate to share it with her guest:

Lucy cooked ... even thought it was only the usual scrambled eggs and fried potatoes with toast and coffee. After payday there’d be sausages or ham, but payday was Friday and today was only Tuesday.

Lucy’s hospitality is the more remarkable since she “didn’t relish having a white visitor” (pp. 49–50), a discomfort shared by Lucy’s dog, which barks furiously at the

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visitors, which surprises Flora: “I don’t know what’s wrong with Bob; he never barks at me,” she says. However, it is not Flora who upsets Bob, as Lucy notes: “He’s probably barking at her … Not many whites come here.” The irruption of Hilda into the Blackfoot-centred space of the reservation can also be read allegorically as akin to white arrival in Blackfoot territory. In the same way that the colonisers forced their worldviews on the Blackfoot, Hilda believes she knows more about Blackfoot culture than her hosts.

Paii’s knowledge gained through his quest helped to uphold the Blackfoot community, because it strengthened the reciprocal relations between the Blackfoot and Natosi. Lucy’s allegorical quest likewise can be read as a quest to uphold the Blackfoot community. Her quest consists of sharing what little she has with her relations during the course of the day. When Lucy refuses to help her husband’s relative, “[a]n unkempt Indian man [who] dogged them, talking in Blackfoot,” it is because: “I used to give him money, but he just drinks it up” (p. 51). However, when Lucy meets her uncle Sonny, who appears to be suffering from alcohol withdrawal, she buys him soup and drives him to her place, where he prepares to endure the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal (pp. 51–2). Despite being ill, Sonny helps Lucy to carry her bags of washing, because he thinks it is wrong for her to be carrying heavy things in her pregnant condition (p. 52). Thus, Sonny is also mindful of his relations. These small actions may be simple acts of common courtesy, but if read allegorically, as well as in the light of the Blackfoot ethical ideals of the Blackfoot Stories, these actions are as significant to the maintenance of the Blackfoot community as the ritual actions enacted by Paii.

Although the short story avoids overt didacticism, the portrayal of those who transgress Blackfoot ethics is clearly unsympathetic. Like the unkempt Indian, other Blackfoot characters fail to honour their relations. Flora’s cousin, Delphine, is mean to the point of denying Lucy’s son a cupful of water: “‘I have to haul water, and nobody pays for my gas,’ grumbled Delphine, as she filled a cup halfway with water” (p. 56). It is evident that not all Blackfoot manage to live by the ideals of generosity that are valued by the community, the fact that they are minor characters (like Delphine), indicates that Warrior’s intention is to portray heterogeneity, but

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without allowing their transgressive behaviour to occupy equal space with other Blackfoot characters that do honour their relations.

Hilda, although behaving in a kindly manner, is disrespectful to her hosts by expecting them to conform to her own ideas about the Blackfoot, whom she expects to be living in a time warp. Contemporary Blackfoot such as Lucy disappoint Hilda’s expectations of meeting the stereotypical timeless Blackfoot from books written by whites—the burden of authenticity imposed by white constructions of what “Indians” are like. She is disappointed that Lucy has never been to a Sun Dance. Hilda’s reliance on Walking Eagle for Blackfoot knowledge is ironic. Warrior poignantly underscores the exclusion of Blackfoot voices in the articulation of a Blackfoot subjectivity in books such as that by Walking Eagle. This character has a referent in the real world, not Englishman Archie Belaney of Grey Owl fame as some critics claim, but a figure familiar to the Blackfoot: Adolf Hungry Wolf, the German- American husband of Kainai Beverly Hungry Wolf, and an adopted member of the Kainai. Adolf and Beverly Hungry Wolf have been keepers of Medicine Pipe Bundles.97 Just as Walking Eagle obtains material for his book from his wife, so the real-life Adolf Hungry Wolf obtained knowledge from his wife, Beverly, although the real husband and wife are both prolific authors, and have co-authored some of their work.98 Here is an adopted member of the Kainai, who has chosen to embrace the culture and lifeways of his wife’s people, but whose position as an author does not fit into the Native paradigm by virtue of his non-Blackfoot ancestry.

The issue of who represents Blackfoot culture is key to “Compatriots”, although for present purposes, the ethical dimension of Walking Eagle is more

97 Ibid., p. 8. 98 For a short biography of Beverly and Adolf Hungry Wolf, see the Regents of the University of Minnesota “Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers and Artists of Color, An International Website, available at: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/hungry_wolf_beverly.html [Accessed 10 June 2007]. Among the many books by Beverly Hungry Wolf are the already cited Ways of My Grandmothers, and Daughters of the Buffalo Women. Adolf Hungry Wolf’s publications include: Traditional Dress: Knowledge and Methods of Old-Time Clothing, Skookumchuck, BC: Good Medicine Books, 1990; The Blood People: A Division of the Blackfoot Confederacy: An Illustrated Interpretation of the Old Ways, New York: Harper & Row, 1977; and some books co-authored with Beverly Hungry Wolf: Children of the Sun: Stories by and about Indian Kids, New York: Quill William Morrow, 1987; and their jointly edited Indian Tribes of the Northern Rockies, Summertown, TN: Native Voices, 1989.

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relevant. He has adopted the outward trappings of a “traditional” Blackfoot: he is never seen dressed other than in full Indian regalia, and he “wore his hair in braids and always wore round, pink shell earrings” (p. 57). While Walking Eagle’s absurd and anachronistic attire reminded Lucy “of the Plains Indian Museum across the line”, his outward appearance is not matched by the inward qualities that are most valued by the Blackfoot. He is rude to his compatriot who is trying to make small talk by asking him if he knows her hometown of Weistbaden. He speaks in the Blackfoot language addressing his wife instead of the visitor and finally has an outburst suggesting to Hilda that she should ask his wife: “She’s been there”, he said, while his “jaw twitched with resentment.” An embarrassed Elsie dismisses the visitors when her husband calls her name: “I don’t have time to visit. We have a lot of things to do.” (p. 58). Walking Eagle fails the tests of generosity and respect; and shows no sense of community toward his compatriot, Hilda, or toward Lucy and Flora, who are part of his adopted Blackfoot community. The most enjoyable part of the Sun Dance, the feasting of neighbours and visitors from other reserves that gave the Circle Encampment its special character, has been trampled on by Walking Eagle, and through his influence, also by his wife.

Walking Eagle has appropriated Blackfoot knowledge and he has deployed it to his own advantage. While the Pikani in the reserve struggle to make ends meet, Walking Eagle is wealthy. He has a Winnebago next to his tepee. The tepee is “stunning”, filled with “buffalo hides. Backrests, wall hangings, parfleche bags, and numerous artefacts … magnificently displayed.” (p. 57). On the basis of his own behaviour, Walking Eagle has completely misunderstood Blackfoot culture and the imperative that anyone aspiring to become a leader should attain such position on the basis of their proven generosity.

Lucy has never been to a “sun-dance,” but she knows enough to scorn Walking Eagle, as indeed does Lucy’s uncle Sonny, who calls him a “phoney” (p. 53). This underscores Warrior’s rejection of the appropriation of Blackfoot culture by the likes of Walking Eagle. To compensate for his rudeness, Flora offers to take Hilda to a forthcoming Sun Dance at another reserve, and to take her to a sweat bath. Her generosity restores order to the world of the narrative. Flora pities Hilda while Hilda’s compatriot behaves as one who has no relations.

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Warrior avoids portraying her Blackfoot characters as caricatures, by representing them as a heterogeneous community, including some characters such as Delphine, who fail to mind their relations even in the most basic manner. Warrior’s irony targets in particular the compatriots. Walking Eagle believes that he can become Blackfoot by adopting the outward appearance of a museum figure and by speaking the Blackfoot language. However, his adoption of a Blackfoot persona is only superficial, because he fails to uphold the most basic Blackfoot ethical ideal: he fails to mind his relations. Moreover, both Walking Eagle and Hilda are arrogant enough to believe that Blackfoot culture is what is written in books, and not the everyday actions and relationships of current-day Blackfoot people.

Warrior addresses more than ethical stances both from the Blackfoot characters and the compatriots. She points to the social disparity that is a legacy of colonialism. She also points to social problems such as alcoholism. The women in “Compatriots” are in different ways involved in upholding the Blackfoot community. Even Delphine—who has yet much to learn about the Blackfoot ideal of generosity—is seeking to revitalise Blackfoot culture and to recover the connection with the Blackfoot past. Although Lucy is not taking an active part in this revitalisation, her generosity and the way in which she minds her relations serve to uphold the Blackfoot community in such a way that her ancestors would have been proud of her. Lucy’s behaviour is motivated by ethical ideals of generosity, reciprocity, and community focus that, without being overtly emphasised, provide the foundations for those Blackfoot who strive to lead moral lives.

5.7 Trickster Tropes: Turning the World Upside Down in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water

King’s novel, like Warrior’s “Compatriots”, rehearses what it is like to be a contemporary “Indian”, through the experiences of the Blackfoot characters. The ethical dimension of GGRW focuses on a broader sphere of intercultural encounters between writing and storytelling, between Christianity and Native beliefs and between the historical, the imaginative and the sacred. In the same way that Walking Eagle’s writing cannot be disentangled from the Blackfoot knowledge of Elsie Walking Eagle in Warrior’s narrative, King’s narrative becomes a borderland where

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Native (not necessarily only Blackfoot) and white worldviews overlap—the effect of several centuries of white contact and over a century of confinement to the reserve.

To the crossing between genres and worldviews, King adds geographical crossings that see the narrative move between the United States and Canada; between Calgary, Edmonton, and Blossom, a fictional town 210 kilometres south of Calgary (which corresponds to the city of Lethbridge); and between Blossom and the fictional reserve (which corresponds to the Kainai Reserve near Lethbridge99). Unlike Warrior’s characters who live on the reserve, King’s characters move constantly between the above locations, which requires constant accommodation on their part. This location functions in the narrative as a borderlands.100 Chicano writer Gloria Anzaldúa argues that “the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other”101. However, despite the continuous movement of the narrative and the heterogeneity of the characters, King provides a Blackfoot-centred perspective of the world of the novel that draws, among other sources, from Native literatures. Hence, GGRW pays attention to the concept of “All my Relations”, which King himself has theorised as critical to Native ethical behaviour.

From the first contacts with Native Americans, Europeans disparaged their worldviews and sought to replace them with their own. Reserve life, where Indians were to be forcibly assimilated provided instead a focus for the maintenance of indigenous cultures (see Chapter 2). As such, reserves have provided the space for the maintenance of indigenous identities that, while in constant transformation, remain separate to that of the surrounding non-indigenous world. However, contemporary life entails a constant engagement with white culture, which, like the cranes that attack Morning Star, is a threat to Native practices whose raison d’être has been removed by colonialism, but whose continuity is crucial to maintain a gap

99 King was a Professor of Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge for ten years. Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King”, p. 72. 100 The term borderlands here refers to a contested space where different cultures coexist. Unlike the Middle Ground, which is a place of encounter in which accommodation is reached temporarily, borderlands are permanent spaces. 101 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera, San Francisco, Calif.: Aunt Lute Books, [1987] 2nd. ed. 1999, p. 19.

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separating Blackfoot from non-Blackfoot identity. Maintaining this gap and maintaining difference is crucial for colonised peoples: a worse fate than losing their autonomous lives and ancestral lands would be to lose recognition of a separate Blackfoot identity. Articulating this difference in fictional representations inevitably conjures notions of “authenticity” which, in King’s novel, are expressed by Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot characters only to be subverted and made fun of. Like Warrior and Welch, King privileges the Blackfoot perspective, but due to his trickster hermeneutics, interpretation of the novel can also be creative, destructive and even farcical.

Like Warrior’s characters, King’s characters are a heterogeneous group of complex individuals. They walk a fine line between adopting white technologies and remaining true to a distinct Blackfoot worldview, with its ideals of generosity, reciprocity, and community focus, among others. White education provides them with means to achieve financial prosperity, but comes at the cost of leaving the reserve and risking alienation from the Blackfoot community. The alternative is to remain on the reserve and face unemployment and a marginal existence.

In contrast with Warrior’s financially strapped characters, and indeed with Paii, who was a poor youth, King’s characters belong to an educated and business elite. Alberta Frank and Eli Stands Alone are university professors; Charlie Looking Bear is a lawyer, and Latisha owns the Dead Dog Café in Blossom. The least successful is the principal character, Lionel Red Dog, who is the contemporary equivalent to Paii, the Blackfoot culture hero. Lionel is in a dead-end job, selling televisions and stereos in a store owned by a white man called Bill Bursum, or Buffalo Bill Bursum as one character calls him.102 Eli, Lionel’s uncle, sees nothing

102 A play on the Bursum Bill, named after Senator Holm O. Bursum of New Mexico, who introduced it to the U.S. Congress in 1921, and which was defeated in 1922 after a public campaign. Passage of the bill would have resulted in a loss of land and water rights for the Pueblo Indians. Reported in “Proceedings of the Central Section of the American Anthropological Association,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 25 (1923): pp. 284–6; see also Florence Stratton, “Cartographic Lessons: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”, Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne, Number 161–162 (1999): pp. 82–102, p. 95. The famous Buffalo Bill Cody toured various countries with a troupe of Indians who performed in his “Wild West Show”. At one point the Lakota Chief Sitting Bull joined his show. See William C.

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wrong with this job. At a time of 80% unemployment on the reserve, “[a]t least the boy has a job” (p. 318), he tells his sister Norma. Lionel is a dilettante about to reach his fortieth birthday. He is a university dropout, and he left the reserve to live in Blossom. He had a short career as a bureaucrat in the Department of Indian Affairs (see below), and keeps talking about applying to go back to university to get a degree (pp. 44–5). As a hero, Lionel compares poorly with Paii: perseverance is certainly not one of his best qualities, and his community focus is practically non-existent. His goal in life is to become the quintessential Hollywood hero and Indian slayer John Wayne: “[b]y the time Lionel was six, he knew what he wanted to be. John Wayne. Not the actor, but the character. Not the man, but the hero” (p. 265).

Lionel’s cultural confusion is understandable, considering the influence of white culture on contemporary Blackfoot. The absurdity of his identification with John Wayne is a consequence of life between two cultures. King challenges the imposition of burden of authenticity on contemporary Blackfoot by poking fun at the stereotypical trope of “The Indian who couldn’t go home”:

It was a common enough theme in novels and movies. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, goes to the city, and is destroyed. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, is exposed to white culture, and becomes trapped between two worlds. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, gets an education, and is shunned by his tribe (pp. 316–7).

King refuses to reify Blackfoot subjectivity according to these stereotypes. King’s heterogeneous characters respond differently to the challenges presented by the need to live between two worlds. As such, they provide the antidote for stereotypical representations of “Indians” in popular culture. King represents Blackfoot characters that function quite well within the two worlds, the principal being Alberta Frank (see below). However, this imperative to function within and without the Blackfoot community makes it difficult, if not impossible, for King’s Blackfoot characters to mind their relations and to retain a community focus. Lionel, like Lucy in

Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., Washington: Smithsonian Institution 1988, pp. 631–2.

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“Compatriots”, refuses to attend the Sun Dance, even though he knows that his father keeps hoping each year that he will change his mind.

However, some parallels can be drawn between Paii and King’s contemporary hero. While Paii underwent many sacrifices to seek what others thought was impossible, Lionel’s quest also involves an impossible goal, which is to become John Wayne. This desire sets Lionel in complete opposition to Blackfoot ethical ideals of minding their relations—Lionel doesn’t even want to be Blackfoot. Like his ancestor Paii, Lionel is enacting a ritual repetition whereby his first attempts at reaching his destination land him back at his point of departure. Towards the end of the novel, after three failed attempts, his fourth journey ends up in the Blackfoot reserve during the Sun Dance.

In the same way that King’s characters vie to reconcile the need to function within two cultures without becoming alienated, King’s position as a Native author requires him to exercise care of his relations when representing the Indian world while utilising a non-Indian genre. As a Native author, he is expected to represent a Native-centred perspective of, in the case of GGRW, Blackfoot subjectivity. This is amply fulfilled in the novel, one of the reasons why this is a quintessential text of Native fiction, as is evident in the voluminous critical response it has received and in its canonical status.103 King’s emic perspective of Blackfoot culture derives from an acute awareness of Blackfoot colonial history and his own personal experiences. Having resided in Blackfoot territory, King’s explorations as author, academic, storyteller, and radio personality traverse the intersections between the Native and the non-Native, between the oral and the written, between Canada and the United States, and between representation and lived experience. According to Margery Fee,

King’s varied perspectives as a writer and academic of mixed European and Native ancestry, as American-born Canadian … have

103 For a detailed treatment of the oral storytelling dimensions of the novel, see Blanca Chester, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel”, in Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne, Number 161–162 (1999): pp. 44–61. This issue is dedicated entirely to GGRW.

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meant that he himself has had to cross many borders in constructing a place from which to write.104

However, although King’s trickster hermeneutics widen the field of interpretation of the novel, the world of the narrative is Blackfoot-centred.

King’s novel gets as close to oral storytelling as it is imaginably possible within the realm of writing. King’s extensive use of dialogue re-creates the dialogue that happens between an audience and a storyteller. According to the author, his inspiration comes from Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson (1900–1990), whose “blending of traditional oral literature with contemporary written literature has created a unique and powerful voice.”105 In critic Blanca Chester’s words, King theorises about the world by telling stories in the same way that oral storytellers do.106 One of the key points he theorises about is the representation of the Native in white texts. King plays havoc with reader’s expectations by deploying a multiplicity of voices that, from different speaking and narratorial positions, share the novel’s textual space.

GGRW is quintessentially heteroglossic, reproducing colonising and decolonising discourses from history, literature and popular culture. Bakhtin coined the term heteroglossia for the multiplicity of social speech types that converge in the novel.107 Of particular interest is the representation of Christianity as the Other to Native beliefs. King unsettles Western linear narrative conventions by constructing a textual space in which an omniscient narrator (presumably King himself) and the trickster Coyote, (who is both a narrator and a character in the novel) alternate with

104 Margery Fee, “Introduction”, Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne, Number 161–162 (1999): pp. 9–11, p. 11. 105 Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King,” p. 72, citing among Robinson’s publications are Write It On Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller, compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire, Vancouver: Theytus/Talon, 1989; Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller, compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire, Vancouver: [Douglas & McIntyre, 1992] Talonbooks, 2004; and Harry Robinson & Wendy Wickwire, Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 106 Chester, “Theorizing the World”, pp. 44–5. 107 Mikhail Milkhailovich Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, p. 263.

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characters from the novel to tell different parts of the story, including the story of how the world was created.

Focusing on the representation of ethics in GGRW and linking those ethics to a distinct Blackfoot worldview is but one among the many available readings of the novel. The comparative analysis of the ethics of the Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot characters underscores King’s multiple decolonising strategies, which include poking fun at stereotypes on both sides of the divide. The very title of the novel sets the tone by reminding readers of the false promise made by U. S. President Andrew Jackson to First Nations displaced to an area west of the Mississippi as per the Removal Act of 1830 (see Chapter 1). They were promised that they “and all their children” could live on this new location “as long as grass grows and waters run.”108 The broken promise sets the tone for the unfavourable portrayal of white ethical values. It also sets the tone for the debunking of myths of the superiority of white civilization. In other words, King’s questioning of white ethical ideals occurs at the macro-level.

Ethical ideals are questioned in GGRW via the process of colonisation which is ongoing, and which begins with a refusal to recognise value in the culture of the Indian Other. Moreover, a refusal to recognise “Indians,” forcing them to assume the roles assigned to them by whites, places white ethical values in a questionable light. The many layers of significance in King’s narrative are built by deft allusions to historical, literary, popular culture, and even biblical representations. In particular, King deals at length with representations that collude to construct the “Indian” (see Chapter 1), a signifier that erases geographical, tribal, and even gender differences. These erasures reach their apogee in the portrayal of the stereotypical male “Indian” of Western films, there to be defeated by gallant soldiers and colonists, an image King’s narrative subverts in his portrayal of Lionel, an “Indian” who wants to be “John Wayne” (p. 265). As is the case in Warrior’s short story, King’s narrative voice counters the homogenising image of the Indian created for white consumption

108 Cited by Kenneth Lincoln, “Native American Literatures,” in Brian Swann, Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 5.

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by privileging a Blackfoot perspective that reverses the gaze and turns whites into the Other.

The notion of what “real Indians” should be like is explored in GGRW through the misadventures in Hollywood of Portland Looking Bear, a Blackfoot actor who cannot get roles to play “Indian” parts because his “nose wasn’t the right shape” (p. 168).109 King explores this idea in The Truth About Stories, under the heading “You’re Not the Indian I Had in Mind,” where he notes that Edward Sheriff Curtis, the most famous of the “Indian” photographers, travelled c. 1900 in search of his subject with boxes of “wigs, blankets, painted backdrops, clothing—in case he ran into Indians who did not look as the Indian was supposed to look.”110

King uses humour in a classical trickster pose to unsettle “Indian” stereotypes, and to expose the racism behind the notion of “authenticity” when applied to the Native, a mechanism of exclusion that anthropologist Jeffrey Sissons dubs “oppressive authenticity.”111 The myths surrounding the construction of “Indian” identity form a thread that runs through King’s oeuvre, illustrated in the previous paragraph. The expectation that to be authentic, Indians had to be culturally frozen in the past, has not been dispelled. In her study of “authenticity” based on the Indians of the North West Coast, historian Page Raibmon argues that Indians performed authenticity as a means to fulfil white demands, while “challenging colonial notions that locate Aboriginal authenticity in the past.” As Raibmon notes, “[t]oday, many pizza-eating, satellite television-watching Indians retain a clear sense of what sets them apart from non-Aboriginal people with similar consumer habits.”112

The adaptation of Blackfoot culture to modern circumstances—a transformation intrinsic to any viable cultural practice—confounds those who expect indigenous peoples to dress and behave like Hollywood’s imaginary “Indians.” This

109 King mentions the many white actors that played Indians in Western films, noting “Everybody gets to play Indians except Indians”: Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King”, p. 76. 110 King, Truth About Stories, pp. 32–3. 111 Jeffrey Sissons, First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and their Futures, London: Reaktion Books, 2005, p. 112 Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, p. 207.

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is the view of Clifford Sifton, the engineer in charge of the dam that the construction firm Duplessis International Associates has built on the Blackfoot reserve in GGRW. Sifton regrets that the much touted discourse of the “disappearance” of the Indian, which gained currency at the turn of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 2), turned out to be a hoax: “Who’d of guessed that there would still be Indians kicking around in the twentieth century”, he regrets. Sifton has the obtuse idea that a university education wipes out Indianness. He contends that Eli is not a real “Indian” because he is a university professor (p. 155).

Sifton’s idea of “real Indians” is far removed from contemporary reality: “you guys aren’t real Indians anyway. I mean, you drive cars, watch television, go to hockey games” (p. 155). Sifton’s skewed views are reminiscent of the lack of understanding shown by his real-life namesake, Clifford Sifton, Canadian Minister of the Interior and Superintendent of Indian Affairs at the turn of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 2). Sifton, as Minister, introduced drastic reforms in a bid to reduce the cost of fulfilling treaty obligations. Although his central interest was the development of white Canada, he sought to assimilate Indians in order to reduce the Government expenditure by letting them take care of themselves as rapidly as possible. Moreover, as King notes, Minister Sifton “helped with that flood of Western migration”.113 Thus, King parodies history in the novel. Authenticity within the contemporary setting of GGRW remains a problematic notion, as illustrated by the dismissive attitude of Sifton the character.

In GGRW, expectations and stereotypes of what an “Indian” should be, flow in both directions—the double burden of being a contemporary Blackfoot. Norma articulates the views of what the Blackfoot community living on the reserve expect from Lionel’s generation. They not only expect, but they need younger Blackfoot to be committed to the survival of Blackfoot culture. However, in order to be of assistance to their Blackfoot community, younger Blackfoot need a white education to prepare them to deal with the white world in its own terms. This double burden forces Eli to distance himself “between who he had become and who he had been”

113 King’s quote is from Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King”, p. 68. For the role of Sifton as Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, see Chapter 2; and Hall, “Clifford Sifton”, p. 133.

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(p. 317). Lionel’s quest to find his place in life is difficult, because he needs to equip himself with a white education and immerse himself in white culture, but he must retain his Blackfoot identity and avoid becoming “white” in the process.

The Indian as faithful companion to the white hero is one of the classical tropes employed to represent white superiority vis-à-vis the Native in popular culture.114 The character of Chingachgook, which also embodies the white myth of the vanishing Indian, is one example. Chingachgook is Nathaniel (Nasty) Bumppo’s sidekick in John Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans. In GGRW Bumppo, who claims “I can tell an Indian when I see one” (p. 433) mistakes Old Woman for Chingachgook . Bumppo claims that:

Indians have Indian gifts … And Whites have white gifts … Indians have a keen sense of smell … Whites are compassionate … Indians can run fast. Indians can endure pain. Indians have quick reflexes. Indians don’t talk much. Indians have good eyesight. Indians have agile bodies. These are all Indian gifts, says Nasty Bumppo (pp. 433– 4) … Whites are patient. Whites are spiritual. Whites are cognitive. Whites are philosophical. Whites are sophisticated. Whites are sensitive. These are all white gifts, says Nasty Bumppo (p. 434).

King discredits these stereotypes through a combination of irony and humour. Moreover, to counter Nasty Bumppo’s stereotypes, King’s Blackfoot characters indulge in constructing negative stereotypes of whites. Between the racist caricatures produced by both Blackfoot and white characters, an ethical dimension emerges that places the Native worldviews above those of whites.

Lionel, like Paii, has a variety of helpers, the principal being an Old Woman, Norma, who is his mother’s sister. Camelot, Lionel’s mother, is also Eli’s sister. Norma regrets that Lionel behaves like a white: “if you weren’t my sister’s boy, and if I didn’t see you born with my own eyes, I would sometimes think you were white” (p. 7). Lionel’s “cultural confusion” is illustrated in his admiration for the quintessential Hollywood hero and Indian slayer John Wayne (p. 265). The absurdity of Lionel’s identification with Wayne reflects the influence that popular culture exerts over contemporary Blackfoot and how they construct Blackfoot identity on the

114 The Lone Ranger’s companion, Tonto, is another example.

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basis of “discriminatory knowledges.”115 Lionel’s self-loathing wish to become white represents the most abject position for a member of the proud Blackfoot people. It is tantamount to betraying those Blackfoot ancestors who sought to remain distinct despite the colonisers’ efforts at forced assimilation (see Chapter 2). Within the Blackfoot world of GGRW, the lowering of an individual’s standards is equated with “becoming white.” According to Norma, when Eli and then Lionel fail to mind their relations, they are behaving like whites. King explodes myths of the “Indian” becoming “white” by moving away from the reserve and acquiring a university education. It is probably no coincidence that, like King himself, two of the main Blackfoot characters in the novel, Eli Stands Alone and Alberta Frank, are university professors. Through these characters King can air some of the contradictions inherent in his own position as an academic, author and storyteller of Cherokee, Greek and German descent.

Lionel has made three mistakes in his whole life, which in different ways stem from his bewildered identity, as he grew up in a world of encroaching white culture. The articulation of each mistake provides some points of contrast between the representation of Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot ethics. The first mistake Lionel made was to want to have his tonsils removed when he was eight years old. He viewed this as an opportunity to take time off from school and to receive the extra attention like that paid to his schoolmate Lois when her tonsils were taken out. Lionel’s mistake is to ignore the advice from Martha Old Crow, who finds nothing wrong with him, and to follow the advice from Dr. Loomis, the white reservation doctor. Dr Loomis thinks it’s a good idea to remove Lionel’s tonsils while he is young. When the Blackfoot on the reserve need doctoring, they prefer to see Martha and Jesse Many Guns. However, on this occasion, Martha encourages Camelot, Lionel’s mother, to take him to Dr Loomis to cheer him up. Martha takes pity on Dr. Loomis, who was feeling hurt because no patients came to see him (p. 29). No such pity is forthcoming from King, who portrays Dr. Loomis as the stereotypical mad- scientist of popular culture films:

115 Stratton, “Cartographic Lessons,” p. 91.

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Dr. Loomis was a skinny old man with a huge pile of white hair and eyes that looked as though they would pop out of his head. His tongue was inordinately long, and as he talked, he would run it around his face, catching the sides of his mouth and the bottom of his chin (p. 29).

King’s portrayal of Dr. Loomis as a caricature reverses the negative portrayal of “Indians” who doctored the sick in colonial representations, both in history and fiction. This is a familiar image of the much-maligned “Medicine Man” (Medicine Women were seldom written about), whose sorcery killed rather than cured. They were singled out for attack by the 1883 U. S. Secretary of the Interior, Henry M. Teller, who claimed the influence of anti-progressive “medicine men” was a “great hindrance to the civilization of the Indian.”116 Dr. Loomis’s portrayal upturns these discourses. Yet, despite Martha’s advice that Lionel is fine, Camelot follows his suggestion to have Lionel’s tonsils removed, a mistake her sister Norma attributes to the fact that “Camelot is progressive” (p. 32). The oxymoronic noun-phrase emphasizes the danger for those Blackfoot who uncritically adopt white views, but also alludes to the heterogeneity in Blackfoot subjectivity. The Blackfoot reserves have consistently been divided between traditionalists and progressive. While the former claim the high moral ground, the latter are adept at navigating between two worlds to their advantage.117

Lionel’s quest, like that of the hero Paii, has him travelling only to return to the same place where he initiated his quest. Lionel returns to the reserve after his first incursion into the white world, having come close to mistakenly having a heart operation. When Dr. Loomis arranges for Lionel to go to a hospital in Calgary to have his tonsils removed, Lionel is mistakenly flown to Toronto, instead of a white boy named Timothy, who was to have heart surgery (pp. 33–5). Lionel’s attempt to do things according to white fashion backfires, and his ordeal is a result of the harmful effects that the white world historically has caused for the Blackfoot. He

116 Josephy, Now that the Buffalo’s Gone, pp. 84–5. For similar attitudes in Canada LAC, RG 10, Vol. 3826, f. 60511-3, “Letter 2 February 1917 from Blood Agent; 60,511-4A, “Letter 508558, 14 February 1918, Jas. McDonald, Griswold Agent to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Ottawa”. 117 For the divide between “progressive” and “traditionalists”, see Paul C. Rosier, Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation 1912–1954, University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

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returned with his “tonsils intact, and by the time they got back to the reserve, Lionel’s throat felt fine.” Lionel’s return full circle echoes Paii’s ordeal, wherein he follows the Old Woman’s advice only to find himself back at his point of departure. Lionel’s failure is not his alone, but reflects the state of affairs of the surrounding white world, over which he has no control whatsoever. Marlene Goldman—who is addressing the repetition of various characters in GGRW being sent to jail at Fort Marion—suggests a reading that could apply here. She notes that the socio-political situation forces the Native to return always to the same place in a way “akin to a rigged game of Monopoly. No matter what card the Native characters draw from the Chance pile, it always says the same thing: ‘Go to Jail.’”118

Lionel’s second mistake is a repetition of the first one. It involves another journey, this time to the United States, and another failed attempt at assuming a white role. Lionel replaces his supervisor at the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Scott,119 on whose behalf he is to deliver a conference paper on “Indian education” titled “The History of Cultural Pluralism in Canada’s Boarding Schools” (p. 58). Taking Scott’s place, Lionel crosses the Medicine Line (Canadian-U.S. boundary) to read what Scott has written at a conference in Salt Lake City. As Lionel seeks to mime Scott’s words to the audience, protesters from the American Indian Movement interrupt the speech to air their anti-colonial sentiments. Lionel finds himself in jail after unwittingly becoming involved with an armed group of protesters travelling to Wounded Knee.120 His efforts to assert that he is a Canadian citizen are ignored. The absurdity of his position again is compounded by Lionel behaving like a white bureaucrat, mindlessly repeating colonial history instead of speaking out for the Blackfoot. By the time he returns to Canada, he has lost his job and has two

118 Marlene Goldman, “Mapping and Dreaming: Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water”, Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne, Number 161–162 (1999): pp. 18–41, pp. 23–4. 119 The poet and essayist Duncan Campbell Scott was the Canadian Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs 1913–32 (see Chapter 2). 120 In 1973, protestors from the American Indian Movement staged a protest at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. See Eric Cheyfitz, “The (Post)Colonial Construction of Indian Country: U. S. American Indian Literatures and Federal Indian Law,” in Idem, Ed., The Columbia Guide to American Indian Literatures of the United States Since 1945, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, pp. 1–124, pp. 48 and 114, n. 43, citing Joseph M. Marshall, “Wounded Knee Takeover, 1973,” in Hoxie, Encyclopedia of North American Indians, pp. 697–99.

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convictions recorded against his name. Once more, Lionel finds himself back where he started.

His third mistake also involves adopting a white appearance. He takes a job with Bill Bursum selling household appliances, and wears a gold blazer provided by his employer (p. 124). Wearing this dubious fake-gold garment earns him the scorn of his rival and distant relative Looking Bear,121 who calls him “Mr. Television, Mr Stereo, Mr. Video Movie” (p. 124). Lionel’s mistakes seem a repetition of the initial mistake: his flirting with the white world and his lack of “fit” into that world. His experiences epitomise what it is like to live in two worlds and to belong in neither.

As is the case in “Compatriots”, there is a clear gender dimension to the alienation experienced by Lionel. Before him, his uncle Eli wanted to “become white” (122). Eli left the reserve, went to Toronto and obtained a Ph.D. in literature. He became Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He married a white woman (p. 67), and he learnt of his mother’s death two weeks after the event. His sister was going to call him, but then she forgot. After all, she explained, “Last time we saw you was twenty, thirty years ago” … “Haven’t written in four or five years either” (p. 121) … “Thought you might have died” (p. 121). Norma blames Eli’s behaviour on the fact that he “wanted to be a white man” just like Lionel (p. 36): “‘A white man,’ said Norma ... As if they were something special. As if there weren’t enough of them in the world already” (pp. 37–8). Norma’s “Occidentalist” view of whites treats university degrees with scepticism if they alienate young Blackfoot from their community. What makes Eli exemplary in Norma’s eyes is that he returned to the reserve to fight against the building of a hydroelectric dam that would have flooded part of the Blackfoot reserve, including Eli’s late mother’s cabin (p. 67). He takes out an injunction against Duplessis, stalling the operation of the dam (p. 128). The company counteracts by hiring a Blackfoot lawyer, Charlie Looking Bear, to act on its behalf (pp. 125–6). Charlie’s first and only case, Stands Alone v Duplessis International Associates (pp. 125–6) sets him head-to-head against Eli, a manoeuvre echoing the historical role of tribal enmities in the dismantling of

121 Charlie Looking Bear is related to Lionel “through a second marriage” (p. 30).

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resistance against European colonisation—the old “divide and conquer” strategy. Charlie justifies his dubious ethical stance by saying that since the Blackfoot will not benefit from the deal, “[t]hen, some of us should” (p. 126). The unsympathetic portrayal of Charlie leaves no doubt that this character is a foil to the hero, a contrast that serves to portray Blackfoot heterogeneity.

5.8 The Sun Dance as the Allegoric Centre of the Blackfoot Universe in GGRW

The Blackfoot characters live between two worlds where the centrifugal attraction of the surrounding non-Blackfoot culture is countered by the centripetal pull of traditional culture, which in GGRW is symbolized by Ookaan (see Chapter 2). GGRW is set during a long weekend in July, when the Blackfoot have pitched their tents for their annual circle encampment in preparation for Ookaan. Ookaan is the centre towards which all the main characters, knowingly or not, are destined to converge. The Sun Dance provides a point of reference for Blackfoot culture in GGRW. Ookaan is emblematic of Blackfoot culture (see Chapter 2). In the face of long-term official efforts to suppress it, the continuance of the Sun Dance attests, better than anything else, to the persistence of Blackfoot culture. As such, a great deal is at stake when Lionel Red Dog, the central Blackfoot character in GGRW, is reluctant to participate in the Sun Dance.

In GGRW the place of Ookaan as the centre of Blackfoot culture is shared by the cabin built by Eli’s mother, which is threatened by the construction of the dam by Duplessis. Eli comes back to the reserve to ensure the preservation of her mother’s cabin, and “finally got an injunction that stuck” (p. 128). While for Sifton, the cabin “is a pile of logs in the middle of a spillway”, the cabin is Eli’ home (p. 157). Symbolically, Eli’s home is more than the cabin, it is the Blackfoot reserve. According to Norma, who embodies the voice of Blackfoot tradition, Eli’s return to the reserve is due to the Sun Dance: “Coming to the Sun Dance is what did it. Straightened him right out and he came home” (p. 67). Norma hopes that the same thing will happen to Lionel. She tries to entice him to come to the Sun Dance: “Your father just set up his lodge at the Sun Dance. Said he hoped he would see you there this year” (p. 66). Indeed, Lionel’s aunt Norma wants him to forget about university, and to run for council and settle on the reserve, because “[w]e need young people to

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stay at home.” Eli sees nothing wrong with getting away from the reserve, and when Norma tells him: “We’ve been here for thousands of years,” he replies: “Tourist talk, Norma” (p. 318).

Eli refuses to confirm or deny that Norma is right in attributing his return to the reserve to the Sun Dance. He refuses to give Lionel a straight answer, because Lionel needs to find his own answers, and because if he did, it “[w]ouldn’t be much of a story” (p. 400). Thus Eli is not only a character, but he is aware that he is part of a story, and is articulating how that story should be narrated. Moreover, by refusing to preach to Lionel, Eli allows him to learn from his own experiences and his own mistakes.

Like Warrior, King’s female characters are represented as the ones who prevent the Blackfoot community from fragmenting. Alberta, who like Eli is a university professor, adopts different methods to navigate between the Blackfoot and the non-Blackfoot worlds. Alberta is the Molly Bloom in GGRW; she wants a child, but no husband. As such, Alberta has no referent in Blackfoot history or literature. Yet, Alberta continues to mind her Blackfoot relations during her repeated visits to the reserve (p. 60).

Alberta’s relationship with Charlie and Lionel replicates the condition of contemporary Blackfoot living between two cultures. She is comfortable dating two men—Lionel and Charlie—who compete for her attentions at a distance, since they both live two hundred miles away from Calgary, but in opposite directions. She prefers to maintain a relationship with both men because when things get uncomfortable with one of them she can move towards the other. Having them both, in her opinion, is better than having only one, and better than having none. Given a choice, she prefers to meet them both on her own terms. She likes it better when they come to visit her in Calgary:

Her city, her house, her terms. She was not happy chasing after them, suffering bathtubs ringed with hair and grit, and refrigerators organized around hamburger, frozen corn, white bread, French vanilla cookies, and beer. With prehistoric vegetables turning to petroleum in plastic sacks (p. 45).

Alberta’s positive attitude allows her to use ambivalence to her own ends. She teaches both Canadian and U. S. colonial history (pp. 14–19). Metaphorically,

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Alberta has already arrived at her destination; she is comfortable in both worlds, while Lionel is comfortable in neither.

In contrast with Alberta, Eli has a PhD in literature, a colonial tool that devalues Blackfoot knowledge vis-à-vis the Western Canon. Norma and Alberta follow in the footsteps of Blackfoot women such as Eli’s dead mother, who built her cabin with her own hands “log by log” (p. 123). Women like Norma, Eli’s mother, Alberta, Camelot and Latisha provide an antidote against the male-centred Native representations of popular culture, but also against the male-centeredness of Blackfoot Stories such as the story of Paii.

There are some parallels between Lionel and his sister Latisha, although the latter has already resolved her own attraction to whites. Her ex-husband, who apart from being white is also “American”, has been abusive to her. When he finally walks out on her, Latisha finally finds contentment and prosperity, although the latter at the expense of pandering to white negative stereotypes of Indians. Following Norma’s suggestion, Latisha exploits the myth that the Blackfoot used to eat dog to attract tourists to her Dead Dog Café. She serves “hamburger” (pp. 59–60 and 143–4) to tourists from all over the world “Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, Brazil, England, France, Toronto [a false cognate that shows King’s sense of humour]” (p. 59) under the pretence of serving dog delicacies. Her menu reads as a veritable feast of canine- based delights: “such things as Dog du Jour, Houndburgers, Puppy Potpourri, Hot Dogs, Saint Bernard Swiss Melts, with Doggie Doos and Deep-Fried Puppy Whatnots for appetizers” (p. 117). Latisha is constantly reinventing names for “the same beef stew” served as the daily special at the restaurant, using names such as “Old Agency Puppy Stew.” The idea for the restaurant came from Norma: “Tell them it’s dog meat ... [t]ourists like that kind of stuff” (pp. 115–7). And she had been right. Not content with indulging in the food, tourists purchase menus to take home as souvenirs.

It seems that Norma, who is always talking about Lionel returning to the reserve, and who acts as a gatekeeper against the Blackfoot becoming “white”, sees no contradiction in perpetuating “Indian” stereotypes, provided they can be turned into profit. The restaurant provides an opportunity for tourists to validate their prejudices, which is ethically acceptable to Norma, because the local Blackfoot know

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of the pretence: “[e]verybody in town and on the reserve who came to the Dead Dog Cafe to eat knew that the special rarely changed” (p. 116). Through the visitors to the Café, King indulges in some reverse stereotyping, enticing his white readers to laugh at themselves in ways that mirror Lionel’s admiration for John Wayne. For example, when a bus arrives at the Dead Dog Café, the passengers all have “name tags neatly pasted to their chests”. They file off “the bus in an orderly line” and stand “in front of the restaurant” waiting to be all together, and then march into the restaurant “two abreast to the front door, each couple keeping pace with the couple in front of them”, Latisha shouts to the staff, who wish to know what the incoming tourists’ nationality is: “Canadian” (p. 171).

5.9 Coyote Becomes Lionel’s Sacred Helper

Although Lionel, unlike Paii, is unaware of the ways in which the Blackfoot were taught by Napi to seek help when in need, four helpers have appointed themselves to oversee his affairs as part of their wider project to “fix the world.” This aim requires turning the world upside down, following King’s confessed aim “to create the universe again” in GGRW.122 The four characters escape from a U. S. mental asylum, reminiscent of Fort Marion where Native Americans were incarcerated during the late 1800s, and they are travelling to Blossom, and to the Blackfoot reserve, accompanied by Coyote. Coyote is one of the embodiments of the trickster from Native American mythology; he is both a creator and a transformer, but he can also be vulgar and greedy.123 Old Man or Napi is the name of the Blackfoot trickster. Coyote is not only a character, but also a narrator, weaving his way through the novel. Coyote’s appearance is that of a yellow, “scraggly dog” dashing “back and forth, chasing its tail, spinning in the rain, as if it were trying to dance” (p. 320). His four companions go under the names of the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe,

122 Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King”, p. 67. 123 Coyote is a protean trickster, and can be different things to different narrators of oral stories: see Dell H. Hymes, “Coyote, The Thinking (Wo)man’s Trickster” in A. James Arnold, ed., Monsters, Tricksters and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996, pp. 108–137.

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and Hawkeye.124 Oddly, despite the literary resonances of their white male names, the four are collectively referred to as “Indians”. These four characters are living proof of the instability of the signifier “Indian” and its capacity to conceal meaning right from the very moment when Christopher Columbus made his mistake (see Chapter 1). Moreover, according to Babo, a cleaner at the asylum from which they escaped, these four are in fact women. Babo’s word is given an emic perspective: she drives a “red Pinto” which bears an uncanny resemblance to a horse, “the muffler drooping down like a ripe brown fruit” (p. 20). Dr. Joseph (Joe) Hovaugh, who is in charge of the missing patients, gainsays Babo’s assertion about the Indians’ identity. He is trying to obtain false death certificates for the “Indians,” insisting they must be dead despite lack of evidence, a clear allusion to the myth of the vanishing Indians of white colonial history.

5.10 Restoration of the World Order in GGRW: Mythological Reversals and Christians Who Refuse to Mind Their Relations

King depicts a Christian “G O D” who is stingy, and fails to mind his relations, in contrast with his Native counterparts, who abandon the garden rather than put up with “Christian rules.” Nowhere is the coexistence of two cultures more entertaining than in King’s representation of Christian and Native American stories, through a series of vignettes where the two worldviews vie for the last word on the history of Creation. It is Coyote, travelling with the four “Indians”, who connects King’s narrative to the oral stories. Coyote—like the Blackfoot ancestors through their vision quests—has a dream, which he names “dog,” but this dream has a knack for getting things backwards.125 Moreover, rather than a “little god”, she/he/it wants to be called “G O D”. G O D vies with Coyote to create the world, and wants to get started with an “earth with no form.” Coyote chooses water as the primordial element (p. 37), but G O D wants to know “What happened to my void? … Where’s my

124 For Thomas King’s own views on the names of his characters in GGRW, see Gzowski, “Gzowski Interviews Thomas King”, pp. 65–76. 125 The play on Dog / G O D is particularly relevant in a story of the Blackfoot. Apart from Latisha selling dog at her Dead Dog Café, dogs have a very special place in Blackfoot history. Before the introduction of the horse, they served as beasts of burden when the Blackfoot moved camp, carrying loads by use of a travois, a time subsequently referred to as the “dog days”.

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darkness?” (p. 37) First Woman falls into this water and the birds place her on grandmother Turtle’s back. Following the Iroquois sacred story with a few creative liberties by King, the two of them “get some mud and they put that mud on grandmother Turtle’s back and pretty soon that mud starts to grow.” (pp. 38–39). The discrepancies between the ethical ideals of “that backward G O D” and those of the Native characters begin to clash when First Woman “makes a garden and she lives there with Ahdamn” (p. 40). G O D refuses to share the food in the garden: “What bad manners, says First Woman, who thinks “G O D” is “a stingy person.” She scolds him: “You are acting as if you have no relations.” (p. 73). But “that silly dream has everything mixed up” and demands to impose “Christian rules.” While turning the world upside down and narrating the story of creation from a Native perspective, King represents generosity as the difference between the Christian and non-Christian ethos. King resorts to a non-Blackfoot story to make this point, but this is consistent with his preoccupation with representing a more inclusive Pan-Indian perspective.

King’s restoration of order in the narrative occurs at several levels. Within the realist realm of GGRW, after journeying unsuccessfully on three occasions, the hero Lionel finally arrives at the Sun Dance, the symbolic centre of the Blackfoot universe. Eli, who ostensibly was taking Lionel for lunch to the Dead Dog Café to celebrate his birthday, takes him instead to the reserve, where the Sun Dance is taking place. Lionel is at first uncomfortable, his attitude being due to a generational attitude of inadequacy and ambivalence towards Blackfoot ceremonies (p. 403). However, Lionel has begun to demonstrate that he is not altogether ignorant of his own culture, asserting that “The Blackfoot didn’t eat dog” and continuing: “[i]n the old days, dogs guarded the camp. They made sure we were safe ... Traditional Blackfoot only ate things like elk and moose and buffalo. They didn’t even eat fish.” (pp. 59–60). Lionel’s quest reaches its climax when Eli dies when the dam bursts and destroys his cabin. Lionel helps to rebuild the cabin, symbolically returning his focus to the Blackfoot community, and even offers to occupy Eli’s place when the cabin is ready, although Norma claims the right for herself. Readers are left to decide if the Sun Dance has anything to do with Lionel’s return to the Blackfoot fold, or if the reason for his return must be attributed to the cabin, the symbol for the Blackfoot reserve and therefore Blackfoot ancestral land.

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The cabin represents Blackfoot culture in a state of constant renewal and adaptation, but attests foremost to its revitalisation. King captures the texture of the experience of the Blackfoot through the artful use of stereotypes and clichés that expose the raw nerve of racism. In so doing, he questions many false dichotomies and constructs a more heterogeneous perspective of First Nations peoples, lifting some of the burdens imposed on them by trite notions of “authenticity”. Moreover, by looking at the world through the eyes of the Blackfoot protagonists, the novel reverses what can be described as the characteristic gaze of Western literature on the ‘Other’.

To King’s credit, his Blackfoot characters are not immune from indulging in their own forms of racism. King uses humour to question many Western misconceptions and beliefs, including the Bible. He turns the world ‘upside down’ through the interplay of religious and urban myths that resonate with all readers, whether indigenous or not, but which he skilfully appropriates and re-deploys. Through this interplay, King creates a space where indigenous subjectivity is transformed, lifting the burden of “authenticity”, and foregrounding the absurdity of attaching more value to one culture over another.

5.11 A Hero for all Seasons: A Late Nineteenth-Century Paii in James Welch’s Fools Crow

The Blackfoot ideals of the ethical behaviour of the hero in Fools Crow coincide with those represented in the story of Paii. This is not accidental, given that Welch has based the novel on readings of the salvage ethnographers analysed in the previous chapter, all of whom included in their texts a version of the story of Paii among their collections of Blackfoot literature. Moreover, during 1870, the year in which Welch sets his narrative, Blackfoot autonomous lifeways were yet to come to an end, and life was as always had been. Welch’s novel is set in Montana, when the Pikuni126 still pursued their erstwhile nomadic existence. Despite having signed a treaty with the United States in 1855 which marked new boundaries of their land,

126 In the discussion of Fools Crow, the terms “Pikuni” and “Pikunis” is used to reflect Welch’s own use of these terms.

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while the buffalo herds remained, the Pikuni continued their autonomous existence, travelling in separate bands, hunting buffalo within their traditional domains, raiding enemies’ camps and, every summer, gathering together in the Circle Encampment in readiness for Ookaan.

From an ethical perspective, the Blackfoot social organization in bands sets a premium on community focus and makes survival dependent on the minding of all their relations, particularly those with their sacred helpers who, often through dreams, provide them with knowledge to lead better lives. The wellbeing of the bands was dependent on securing a supply of buffalo meat and hides; maintaining ascendency over enemy First Nations to ensure territorial dominance; and the acquisition of prestige and wealth through horse raiding that provided the means for youth to make a name for themselves and become akáinauasiu (full grown in age). Welch’s hero, White Man’s Dog, obtains sufficient horses in his first raid to acquire a wife, and in a subsequent raid proves his valour, earning a new name for himself, that of Fools Crow. It is perhaps significant that Welch has chosen this name, which resonates with a court case in which a summary judgment found against a Lakota and Cheyenne claim regarding the interference with their religious practices caused by the construction of roads and parking lots at Bear Butte in Fools Crow v. Gullet.127 Frank Fools Crow presided over the reinstatement of the “piercing” ritual of the Sun Dance, which had been only performed in secret by the Teton Sioux at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

The Story of Paii is set at a time when the Blackfoot travelled on foot and were yet to acquire horses and guns. By 1870 the Pikuni world was on the cusp of life-threatening change. Plains culture had already been transformed by the fur trade, which ensured a steady supply of guns and ammunition and other European goods. Contact with white traders also brought alcohol-induced violence (see Chapter 3) and diseases that killed large numbers of Blackfoot. The most dreaded was smallpox, which greatly reduced the Blackfoot population. Between 1869–1870 more than one

127 John Petoskey, “Indians and the First Amendment”, cited in Vine Deloria, Jr., Ed., American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, rpt. 1992, pp. 225– 27 and 237, n. 7, citing “541 F. Supp. 785 (D.S.D. 1982)”; and Mails, Sundancing, p. 8.

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thousand Pikani died from the disease, which caused c. 2,200 Blackfoot deaths in that period (see Chapter 2).128 White Man’s Dog believes that by acquiring a much coveted repeating rifle from the traders “he could bring about his own luck.” (p. 4). Ironically, as critic Mary Jane Lupton remarks, the benefits of the fur trade were far outweighed by the consequences of white arrival in Blackfoot territory.129 Fur traders spearheaded colonisation in the West, which added to the already fierce intertribal competition for ever-contracting resources, consequently promoting increased intertribal and Blackfoot-white violence (see Chapters 2 and 3). Within this volatile environment, the ethical imperatives of Welch’s Pikuni characters are tested to their limit.

Welch’s choice of 1870 sets the narrative at one of the lowest points in Blackfoot history. In that year 173 Pikuni from Chief Heavy Runner’s (or Bear Chief’s) band, afflicted by smallpox, were massacred by the U. S. Army at their camp on the Marias River (see Chapter 2). Welch narrates the escalation of violence in the so-called Pikuni wars that culminated in the massacre. According to Welch, one of his great-grandmothers was a survivor of the massacre, while Malcolm Clark, the settler whose murder by a Pikuni precipitated the massacre, was also his relative.130 These connections illustrate the familial links attendant upon the middle ground (see Chapter 3). Welch, who despite his Irish heritage considered himself an “Indian,” writes about the massacre from the perspective of the Pikuni survivors, among them the well-documented testimony of Kai Otokan (Bear Head), whose life was spared, but who lost his immediate family.131

Welch, like Warrior and King, portrays the Pikuni as a heterogeneous community. However, his characters, unlike those of Warrior and King, continue to live a communally oriented existence. The autonomous bands respond to outside threats in accordance with what they perceive to be in the best interests of the band.

128 Dempsey, Crowfoot, pp. 59–60. 129 Lupton, James Welch, p. 84. 130 Ibid., pp. 2–4. Welch told Lupton that his mother was a Gros Ventre, and his father was a Pikuni, and that his grandfathers, both Irish, married Native women. 131 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, pp. 282–305.

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His principal characters are members of the Lone Eaters band.132 Welch portrays them as they go about their family affairs, and respond to intratribal events and intertribal wars. He also sketches the different positions they adopt in the Pikuni- white wars. The heterogeneity of Welch’s Pikuni characters and their everyday activities provide a multidimensional picture of a close-knit band whose known world and very survival are threatened. Rather than the fearsome warriors of the white imagination, the characters are fathers, mothers, wives, sons, band members, and proud Pikunis, apprehensive about war. They view their warring as unavoidable: a necessary means for individuals to gain respect and sufficient wealth to gain independence from their families. Moreover, within the competitive environment of the Plains, war is a mechanism for maintaining the respect of their enemies and to discourage them from making incursions into Pikani territory.133 Some deal better than others with the vicissitudes that survival entails, in a world of fierce competition for diminishing resources. This survival is dependent on the bison hunt, both to fulfil their needs for food and shelter: “only the blackhorn could provide for all the needs of a family” (p. 47); but also to manufacture tanned robes that could be traded for European goods, including firearms and ammunition—indispensable for the hunt as well as self-defence (see Chapter 3).

Authorial ethics are as important to the analysis of the text as the ethics represented in the novel. In choosing to write within the historical novel genre, James Welch takes on a challenge that most contemporary Native writers of prose fiction have avoided. This choice makes the narrative dependent upon historical documentation, mostly written by non-Blackfoot, which Welch then enlarges with his emic knowledge as Pikuni. Moreover, the weight of the history of colonisation borne by the Pikuni has to be dealt with. In order to create his work of fiction, Welch used the very texts from which the different versions of the Story of Paii used here have been taken. As noted in the previous chapter, Schultz, Grinnell, McClintock, and Wissler and Duvall, and to a lesser extent Uhlenbeck, whose texts are not as

132 The Lone Eaters is one of twenty-four Pikani bands listed by Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 208–10. 133 Displays of courage have, among other purposes, to show the superiority of Pikuni warriors in order to demoralise their enemies.

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widely available, are the sources to which scholars must return again and again because they are the earliest published sources of Blackfoot history and literature.134 Walter McClintock’s The Old North Trail (see Chapter 4) is one of Welch’s acknowledged sources for Fools Crow.135 McClintock quoted Blackfoot speech at length and, from his transcriptions, Welch recovers the voice of his Blackfoot ancestors. For example, in one passage of Fools Crow, Mountain Chief speaks to the assembled Pikuni after the hero, White Man’s Dog, has fulfilled his vow to offer his flesh to Natosi during the Sun Dance, in reciprocation for having allowed him safe return from the horse raid (p. 27):

Haiya! Listen, my people, for I speak to you with a good heart. Once again we have constructed the Sun Lodge in the way we were taught by our long-ago people … We have smoked the long-pipes together and are at peace with ourselves. Many have left presents for Sun Chief, and some among us have fulfilled vows made in times of trouble … [The Medicine] Woman and her helpers have shown our young girls the way to virtue. Our young men have listened to the wisdom of their chiefs… (pp. 120–1).

This passage is reminiscent of the words of Chief Mad Wolf, at the conclusion of a Sun Dance attended by McClintock:

Hear! my children, for I speak to you with a good heart. It does us all good to assembly every summer around the Sun-lodge. We have smoked the Medicine Pipe, and the rising smoke has carried away all of our bad feelings … Many have given presents to the Sun, and some have fulfilled their vows … The young men have listened to the wise counsels of the chiefs, and the young girls have seen the [example set by the] medicine women. (p. 322).136

The resemblance between the speech of the historical chief and the fictional chief illustrates how Welch’s dialogues are linked to his sources. Applying his creativity to historical accounts, Welch re-constructs the voice of his ancestors in order to represent a vision of history that privileges the Pikuni perspective. While

134 Lupton, James Welch, p. 4, only mentions Grinnell, McClintock and Wissler and Duvall. However, as noted before, Schultz provided Grinnell with some materials for Lodge Tales. 135 Ibid., p. 88. 136 According to Grinnell, Lodge Tales, pp. 190–1, a father would encourage his daughter to live a worthy life by pointing to the Medicine Woman during Ookaan as an example of virtue.

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McClintock, Schultz, Grinnell, and their white contemporaries represented “civilisation” in their writing as markedly superior to the Native worldview it was destined to displace, Welch’s Pikuni characters articulate a different view. Owl Child, a member of Mountain Chief’s band, who has chosen to fight against the colonisers, describes the whites as “devils” who will push the Pikuni “into the Backbone (the Rocky Mountains) and take all the ground and the blackhorns for themselves.”

Unlike the allegorical portrayals of the heroine and hero in “Compatriots” and GGRW, respectively, the character of Welch’s hero develops into a quintessential warrior and epic hero, but also a family man, a devoted husband and a proud father. He is introduced in the novel as White Man’s Dog, when he is about to join in a horse raid against the Blackfoot enemies, the Crow. He is yet to prove his courage and ability in order to earn for himself an adult name (see Chapter 1). He is also yet to acquire wealth sufficient to obtain a wife so that his friends will stop calling him “dog-lover” (p. 4). As his character develops, he grows in stature, not only as a warrior, but also as a person who is knowledgeable in the sacred ways of the Blackfoot. Fools Crow becomes larger than life, exhibiting all the attributes that lead to an ethical existence according to the Blackfoot worldview. He is honest, generous, compassionate, and respectful of all his relations. Fools Crow leaves aside his personal comforts in order to help his fellow creatures and does not hesitate to follow the instructions of his sacred helpers, whom he trusts with his life. Following this path, he displays generosity, strength and perseverance.

The concept of “all my relations” as articulated by King is embedded into the narrative of Fools Crow, in which the Lone Eaters band looks askance at those who deviate from honouring their relations, while those who uphold these ideals grow to maturity and earn respect. Like his ancestor Paii before him, White Man’s Dog observes the rituals necessary to propitiate his sacred helpers. He cleanses himself through the sweat bath before he ventures on his first raid and throughout the novel is portrayed as maintaining reciprocity with his animal helpers, Raven and Wolverine. Attending to his sacred relations is as vital as attending to his Blackfoot

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relations, and to this end, White Man’s Dog seeks help from Mik-api,137 a “great and powerful many-faces man” (p. 8), a “grandfather” (see Chapter 1). Mik-api instructs White Man’s Dog in the ritual preparation required to propitiate his sacred helpers to ensure success when he faces the enemy. Aware that his life will be in danger, White Man Dog himself makes an offer of reciprocity to Natosi, vowing “that if he was successful and returned home unharmed, he would sacrifice before the medicine pole at the next Sun Dance” (p. 27).

The requirement for the Blackfoot to mind their relations, especially their sacred helpers, is cast in the novel as vital. Failure to observe this requirement can ultimately be paid by death. In the same way that Scarface must follow his helpers’ instructions in order to succeed, the characters in Fools Crow are rewarded or punished according to their behaviour towards their relations. For example, when Yellow Kidney leads a war party again the Crows, Fast Horse, one of the members of the war party is instructed by Cold Maker, who brings the snow and the winter, to locate a spring, where Cold Maker likes to drink from, and remove a rock that has blocked the spring:

if you do this for me, I will make your raid successful. As you drive the Crow horses home, I will cause snow to fall behind you, covering your tracks. But you must find my spring and remove the rock. If you don’t, you must not go on, for I will punish you and your party. Either way, because I offer my help you must bring me two prime bull robes for my daughters during the helping-to-eat moon. It will go hard on you if you do not do this.” (p. 14).

When the party fails to find the spring, the party leader, Yellow Kidney, decides to continue the raid (p. 21). Although the raid is successful and the party manages to take “one hundred and fifty horses” (p. 34), Fast Horse is late in rejoining his colleagues, and Yellow Kidney is missing. Fast Horse tells of an encounter with an angry Cold Maker, who takes him to look at his shivering, eyeless daughters. Cold Maker gives Fast Horse a second chance:

137 The name Mika’pi—Red Old Man, is the title of a Blackfoot Story in George Bird Grinnell, Blackfeet Indian Stories, New York: Riverbend Publishing, [1913] 2005, pp. 78–87.

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I will let you rejoin your friends, but you must promise me this: When the helping-to-eat moon is full in the sky, you must not only bring my daughters two prime robes but red coals for their eyes. As you can see they are sightless and they beg me to give them eyes but I have no fire here (pp. 37–8).

Fast Horse, who behaves like a changed man after the raid, fails to make his promise good to Cold Maker. He refuses White Man’s Dog offer to hunt with him to get the prime robes (p. 49). Fast Horse’s choice of not honouring Cold Maker, and therefore Blackfoot ethical expectations, contributes to his rejection by his band and to his becoming a renegade.

Both Yellow Kidney and Fast horse are the foils for Welch’s hero, White Man’s Dog. He has behaved admirably during the raid. He gave Mik-api five of his best horses in reciprocation for his prayers. White Man’s Dog’s generosity extends to Yellow Kidney’s family, whom he supplies with meat, since they have lost their only hunter. (pp. 47 and 53). White Man’s Dog’s generosity extends to all his relations. As White Man’s Dog begins to assist Mik-api in his routines, he is sent to the “Backbone”—the Rocky Mountains—to rescue a “four-legged” whose leg is trapped in a white man’s steel trap. Raven, who pities the trapped creature (Skunk Bear or Wolverine), tells Mik-api “If you send this young man I will teach him how to use this creature’s power, for in truth only the real-bear is a stronger power animal” (p. 52). Raven guides White Man’s Dog through this second journey, less than half a day away from his camp (p. 54). When he stops to eat, White Man’s Dog places a small piece of meat “in the fork of a tree” before beginning his meal (p. 54), a sacrifice which indicates his respect for all his relations. As he negotiates a ridge he slides four times (p. 55) but he perseveres. When Raven talks to him, White Man’s Dog falls to his knees: “Oh, pity me, Raven!” At this point Raven gives him a lesson regarding the interdependence of all beings, “I am one of great power ... but my power is not that of strength ... In all of us there is a weakness” (p. 56). Indeed, as Natosi tells Paii, “the raven” is the smartest of all animals “for he always finds

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food”138. After requesting some real-meat (buffalo) for Wolverine and for his wives, Raven transfers to White Man’s Dog the magic of Wolverine:

You will fear nothing, and you will have many horses and wives. But you must not abuse this power, and you must listen to Mik-api, for I speak through him, that good many-faces man who shares his smoke. (p. 58).

The meaning of “all my relations” is expressed thus, as the Pikuni, and their two- legged and four-legged relations care for one another. It is in this spirit that Heavy Shield Woman, Yellow Kidney’s wife, vows to build a lodge for Natosi, should her husband be safely returned to her (p. 44). Of the sacrifices a woman can undertake, becoming the Holy Woman during Ookaan is one of the most onerous (see Chapter 2). Heavy Shield Woman’s prayers are answered. However, Yellow Kidney, who made the decision to continue the raid without satisfying Cold Maker’s demand in Fast Horse’s dream, was captured by the Crow, who cut off his fingers. Lupton associates the missing fingers with frostbite, and hence with punishment from Cold Maker.139

The parallels between Fools Crow and Paii would be too extensive to enumerate here; of more significance is that Fools Crow meets So-at-sa-ki or Feather Woman who, according to the story of the Woman Who Married a Star (see Chapter 2) is in fact Paii’s mother. He meets her after riding for three consecutive days and nights, following instructions received in a dream from Nitsokan (pp. 315-16, and 333ff.). Feather Woman is the ancestor that, according to Brings-Down-the Sun, also travelled and lived among the Star Beings. When she dug a sacred turnip and saw the camp of her people through the hole left by the turnip, she became homesick and was sent back to her camp. She tells Fools Crow this familiar Blackfoot story. So-at-sa-ki lives in “a green sanctuary between earth and sky” (p. 360). She is forever mourning living apart from her husband and her son, the Morning Star and Paii (p. 337). This Pikuni Eve takes the blame for all the vicissitudes of her people but, regardless of her apparently futile efforts, she refuses to give up: “One day I will rejoin my husband

138 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 101. 139 Lupton, James Welch, p. 86.

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and son. I will return with them to their lodge and there we will be happy again—and you people will suffer no more.” (p. 352). Fools Crow sees the future that awaits the Pikuni in a painting that So-at-sa-ki has just finished. She tells him that he is to prepare his people for what is to come: a world dominated by whites. Thus, Welch links Fools Crow to the Blackfoot Stories, creating a sequel to the stories that ensures their continuity into contemporary times, a story in which Fools Crow refuses anger (p. 359), and in which So-at-sa-ki foretells: “The stories would be handed down, and [the Pikuni] will see that their people were proud and lived in accordance with the Below Ones, the Underwater People—and the Above Ones.” (p. 360).

Fools Crow depicts the disastrous effects of the fur trade as the bison herds diminish to a level that threatens starvation. However, the starvation winter of 1883– 84, in which more than a quarter of the Pikuni in Montana died (see Chapters 2 & 3), is left outside the span of the novel.140 By ending the narrative prior to these tragic circumstances, Welch avoids representing the Pikuni in a pathetic light and thus delving into the genre of tragedy. Welch choses to end his narrative with the Pikuni, despite the uncertainty of their future, welcoming the first rumbling of thunder after winter and welcoming Thunder Maker to the country of the Pikunis by opening the Thunder Medicine Pipe Bundle. The significance of the ceremony in which the sacred relations of the Blackfoot are honoured with the smoking of the pipe, is the anticipation of the abundance of grasses that will ensure plenty of buffalo. It is a return to the traditional world order: “all around, it was as it should be” (p. 391).

5.11 Conclusion

Literary criticism is sensitive to context. Having earlier set a context from which to view Ookaan—the Blackfoot Sun Dance—as a locus of resistance and a site for the reproduction of Blackfoot culture, this chapter has straddled the disciplinary boundary between history and literary criticism in order to seek the threads of continuity between the Blackfoot oral tradition and contemporary Native fiction.

140 Grinnell, Lodge Tales, p. 289.

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By focusing the analysis of the narratives of Warrior, King and Welch on their continuity with the Blackfoot Stories, the chapter has sought to fill a gap which is created when the contemporary literary production of colonised Others is viewed purely as a response to colonialism. The chapter has sought to focus on the oral stories as a point of reference that predates colonialism, for all that they were first written down during the era of the full implementation of colonial rule. The colonial influence on Native literatures is only too evident, above all through the adoption of the language and the several literary genres introduced as literary templates by the colonisers. Bill Ashcroft has articulated ways in which these influences can be analysed as “modes of transformation” and as such he provides a perspective that is useful in a more overarching sense.141 Nonetheless, an explicit goal of this dissertation has been to seek out cultural continuities—the implicit justification for comparing the story of Paii with the contemporary writings of Warrior, King and Welch.

Indigenous identity continues to be a contested terrain in fictional as well as in non-fictional representations. Despite the fragility of representations of identity as distinctive in a world that homogenises human experience, Blackfoot claims to a separate identity from that of the colonisers can be nurtured through more inclusive and creative re-interpretations of history as much as through fictional representation. Fictional representation is a site par excellence for cultural revitalisation, above all because of its capacity to imagine a world in which First Nations peoples become the subjects, rather than the objects of representation.

Literary representation has played a part in the creation and maintenance of derogatory stereotypes of Native Peoples, the coloniser’s “Other”. It is therefore to Native literature, in the first instance, that we can look to reverse the gaze, by directing it towards the colonisers. Warrior, King and Welch fulfil the expectations of a Native text by representing a world that, like the Blackfoot Stories, is Blackfoot- centred, a world in which the Blackfoot characters articulate a Blackfoot perspective of Blackfoot history. As is clear from the comparative analysis between the

141 Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformation, pp. 13–17.

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Blackfoot Stories and the three contemporary fictional texts, the ethical dimension functions as a metalanguage that links the old with the new.

The renderings of Paii analysed here represent the Blackfoot world in ways that contradict colonial negative stereotypes that generally constructed First Nations peoples as Others. The story illuminates how the Blackfoot chose to represent themselves. The three contemporary narratives by Warrior, King and Welsh likewise represent Blackfoot subjectivity as heterogeneous, thereby lifting the burden of authenticity imposed by colonial representations. They simultaneously constitute a revindication and revitalisation of Blackfoot culture, its values and lifeways.

276 CONCLUSION

Western expansion in the nineteenth century in both Canada and the United States transformed the lifeways of First Nations peoples of the northwestern Plains, who, until the middle of the nineteenth century, had remained relatively undisturbed by a burgeoning white presence in the East. Geographic distance allowed northwestern First Nations peoples to incorporate European technologies into their lifeways on their own terms. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the increasing presence of whites and white technology correspondingly increased the pace of cultural transformation of First Nations peoples’ cultures. From the early 1880s, this transformation took the guise of forced acculturation, encompassing the secular and sacred realms. In the specific case of the Blackfoot, the purported benefits of “civilisation” translated into a loss of autonomy, a marked decrease in population numbers, and a subservient position as “domestic dependent nations” and “wards of the state”. Within this context, the portrayal of Siksikaitsitapi cultural continuity within the historiography has been subordinated to the narrative of change. This study has sought to address this imbalance by emphasising the strands of continuity within a tapestry of change.

The four case studies that comprise this dissertation support the conclusion that, during the first half-century of reserve life, Siksikaitsitapi cultural transformation did not proceed entirely in accordance with white desires. The threads of cultural continuity are evident in the persistence of Ookaan; the continuity of ceremonial dress practices; the contribution of Siksikaitsitapi knowledge to the writing of Siksikaitsitapi history and literature; and the links between the Blackfoot Stories and contemporary fictional representations by First Nations authors. The stories of continuity that emerge from each case study broaden and enrich our view of the possibilities open to colonised peoples to resist absorption into the colonised Other.

By viewing Siksikaitsitapi cultural transformations via these threads of continuity, this study has thrown light on processes that hitherto have only been viewed as incidental to a larger picture. By applying this approach to the circumstances

277 surrounding the attempted eradication of the central ceremony of Ookaan, Blackfoot actions that led to the continuance of the practice come into sharper focus. The first case study challenges the notion that prohibition of the Sun Dance and its eradication are two sides of the same coin. It is clear from its unfolding that it is not sufficient to assume that, because regulations were enacted to eradicate Ookaan, eradication was accomplished ipso facto. The heterogeneous intratribal, intertribal, and Blackfoot-white relations that prevailed in the northwestern Plains during the early reserve era demand that a multifaceted approach be taken to the interpretation of the experiences of specific First Nations. In the current study, this approach has paid dividends by demonstrating how Ookaan’s continuity was ensured due to Blackfoot actions, despite the best efforts by officials and missionaries to eradicate the practice, and despite the progressive strengthening of legislation to that end. It demonstrates that the history of prohibition must be examined in its heterogeneity, and that broad claims regarding the prohibition of Sun Dances and kindred practices must take into account the “hidden transcripts” of both the coloniser and the colonised. Even within the asymmetrical power relations of the early reserve era, the unequivocal resistance of the Siksikaitsitapi to official and missionary efforts to eradicate Ookaan, their central ceremony, serves to revalorise their survival strategies as a mixture of accommodation and resistance, rather than compliance with white dictates.

Similarly, tracing Siksikaitsitapi dress practices during a century (c. 1830–1930) of steadily mounting contact with whites demonstrates clearly that the “middle ground” that had been created during the fur trade era was more than a mere conduit for the exchange of commodities. Trade and treaties were inextricably linked, and defined leadership in the subsequent inter-racial political developments during the first decade of reserve life. Blackfoot-white alliances forged during the fur trade established hierarchies that resulted in the conferral of authority to some Siksikaitsitapi leaders, such as Crowfoot, over and above the authority attendant upon their traditional leadership role. Blackfoot “loyalty” to their white allies can better be appreciated against the backdrop of such pre-existing alliances, most notably during critical moments such as the threatened war of extermination against whites by Sitting Bull and his followers, and during the

278 crisis of the Riel Rebellion in 1885. Hugh Dempsey’s contribution to the history of these alliances, through his biographies of Red Crow and Crowfoot, demonstrates the diplomatic and oratorical capacity of Siksikaitsitapi leaders during the early life on the reserves. It also underscores their political manoeuvring and refusal to accept a subservient role. Adroit leadership was crucial to Blackfoot success in navigating the colonial encounter, above all in the relatively brief transition from their traditional lifeways to the radically different realities of reserve life.

The second case study interprets power relations by way of “reading” dress practices. In particular, it interprets the adoption of Western military-style uniforms by Siksikaitsitapi leaders as continuous with intertribal protocols established long before white arrival, and not as evidence of a desire by Blackfoot leaders to become “white”. Moreover, this case study refutes stereotypical representations that homogenise Siksikaitsitapi women as powerless, by drawing the links of continuity in their dress practices during the first half-century of life on the reserves with the manifold ways in which they exercised power. Their dress practices within changing circumstances tell a story of Siksikaitsitapi women as exercising different kinds of power through womanly activities, elite status, and economic strength. As such it demonstrates that their erasure as actors in the historiography masks a capacity to exercise power, both in the secular and the sacred realms. Finally, the second case study provides a perspective of the way in which, during the early reserve era, Siksikaitsitapi continued to “imagine” their own subjectivity through the continuous deployment of the buckskin dress as the preferred ceremonial attire. More studies are required that emphasise the manifold ways in which First Nations peoples themselves deployed the buckskin suit, rather than the usual emphasis on white appropriation of this most potent symbol.

The first two case studies highlight two manifestations of the viability of Siksikaitsitapi cultural practices and the significance of Siksikaitsitapi worldviews within the rapidly transforming environment of the early reserve era. Both the continuation of Ookaan and the continuation of dress practices link the Siksikaitsitapi present to the Blackfoot Stories that have transmitted the Blackfoot worldviews to successive generations from “time immemorial.” These stories provide the foundations

279 of Blackfoot epistemology, and their preservation and transmission as written history and literature is the subject of the final two case studies. These are concerned with seeking continuity within the realm of representation, whether in history or literature. The imposition of Western epistemologies and thus Western ideas of history and literature ushered in by colonisation was integral to the “civilising” mission of colonialism—to wean the colonised from their own ideas of historical time, place, cosmology and causation, preparatory to infusing First Nations’ cultures with Christianity and Enlightenment ideas of progress and modernity. Jack Goody has charged that this Eurocentric project involved, and involves, the “theft of history”.1 Pre- colonial cosmologies and sense of a people’s origins are lost to view or devalued by the “civilisation” process. Such histories are thenceforth reclassified as myths, and are collected and transcribed by the colonisers with an almost antiquarian interest in documenting First Nations peoples’ knowledge—the task of “salvage ethnology”. The third case study demonstrates that Blackfoot knowledge provides the backbone for the writing of early Blackfoot history by non-Blackfoot authors. It vindicates the role of the Blackfoot “Grandfathers” and recognises the existence of a complex Siksikaitsitapi epistemology with its own coherent mechanisms for the construction of “truth” according to the Blackfoot worldview.

The reinterpretation of the Blackfoot past is ongoing, especially in the works of Blackfoot scholars. I have sought to incorporate their views into the four case studies. Siksikaitsitapi epistemology, like its Western counterpart, possessed its own complex dynamics for reproducing “truth”. Scholars are increasingly aware of the power/knowledge relations that provide the foundations for colonial histories such as those written about the Siksikaitsitapi. However, apprehending the ways in which Blackfoot knowledge was transformed into the early texts of Blackfoot history demonstrates that, despite the prevailing asymmetrical power relations that provided the

1 Jack Goody, The Theft of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 1. Goody, an Asianist and Africanist anthropologist who writes widely on comparative world history, refers to “the take-over of history by the west. That is, the past is conceptualized and presented according to what happened on the provincial scale of Europe, often western Europe, and then imposed upon the rest of the world.”

280 context for the writing of such texts, Blackfoot organic intellectuals contributed greatly to this history. Their role has not yet been sufficiently recognised. This is one of the contributions of this case study: to emphasise the significant part played by Siksikaitsitapi intellectuals to the writing of early Blackfoot history and literature. Quite apart from the conditions that provided for the writing of the early texts based on the oral knowledge of the Siksikaitsitapi, the Blackfoot Stories contained therein provide the beginnings and gist of Native literature and are thus part of the normative History of First Nations peoples. The histories within these stories have been, and still are, at play throughout the Blackfoot encounter with European, Canadian and American hegemonic régimes. They reveal themselves in such ethical imperatives as that of “minding” one’s relations, meaning the extended family but sometimes embracing tribal members generally. This ethical sense, a kind of moral economy of identity, is inscribed within (in the Western sense) normative as well as pre-colonial literature and history of the Blackfoot, and are reaffirmed in Ookaan, which ritually and cyclically encodes and reaffirms a protean Blackfoot identity that remains separate to that of the colonisers.

The perspectives gained through my research of Blackfoot history provided the ideal grounding for a critical appraisal of the role of literary representation as a major site for decolonisation, in particular through the fictional representations of Thomas King in Green Grass, Running Water, and Siksikaitsitapi authors James Welch, in his novel Fools Crow, and Emma Lee Warrior in her short story “Compatriots”. Establishing firm links between the Blackfoot Stories and these contemporary representations goes some way towards revalorising as literature the stories from the Blackfoot oral tradition. George Grinnell realised the intrinsic literary worth of these stories and was one of the first scholars who referred to them as “Blackfoot literature.” However, his interest did not extend to the relationship between the stories and the contemporary Blackfoot worldview, even though his knowledge of Blackfoot culture must have afforded him an appreciation of the interconnectedness between the stories, the ceremonies that re-enacted the stories, and the Siksikaitsitapi worldview. It is only through the more recent work of Blackfoot scholars that we have now increased access to these links, but the documentation of the stories through the “salvage ethnologies”

281 discussed in Chapter Four of this dissertation is crucial for the building-up of this scholarship. In a sense, Blackfoot Grandfathers fostered a connection between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship, and this connection continues in the present. This dissertation has sought to create bridges between these two strands, the emic and the etic, which are demonstrably both complementary and mutually beneficial.

The study of Blackfoot literature is as yet to receive the scholarly attention that Northwest Coast literatures have attracted, in particular from the groundbreaking studies of linguist Dell Hymes. The continued compartmentalisation within studies of First Nations literature, which leaves the stories from the oral tradition to anthropology or ethnohistory, creates an artificial boundary (as King points out) that negates the links between the stories from the oral tradition on the one hand, and contemporary Native writing, on the other. This dissertation has sought to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to represent a more comprehensive interpretation of literature, and a more nuanced history that establishes a balance between continuity and change, by infusing both genres with insights drawn from the Blackfoot worldview and epistemology.

Focus on continuity within rapidly changing cultural environments has served to emphasise the two-way workings of transculturation. More importantly, it highlights that, within the asymmetrical power relationships of the contact zone of the reserve and the reservation, the Blackfoot resisted forced assimilation and exercised considerable agency in defining the pace of their own cultural transformation. The combined product of the case studies presented here points clearly to the need for comparative studies in order to explore further how distinct First Nations peoples, who as neighbours endured the vicissitudes of colonisation processes, could end up having such vastly different colonial experiences.

One of the most rewarding aspects of research for this dissertation has been the availability of emic perspectives against which non-Blackfoot representations of their history and culture may fruitfully be tested, and from which fresher, more inflected reinterpretations can emerge. I am indebted to those Blackfoot scholars who have articulated Blackfoot epistemology in ways that widen the possibilities for researchers of Siksikaitsitapi history and literature. It is evident in the work of scholars such as

282 Hernandez and Bastien that it is possible to create bridges of understanding between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship. Deepening scholarly understanding of First Nations peoples’ epistemologies not only serves to cast these in sharper relief, but also adds complexity to present and future research agendas.

283 10,000 Appendix 1, page 284 Combined Siksikaitsitapi Population 1877–1929 9,000

8642 Prepared by: Blanca Tovías Based on Indian Affairs Annual Reports 1864–1990, Department of Indian Affairs, Dominion of Canada 8,000 7789 7681 7549

7,000

6,000 5469 5403 5365 5320 5183 5184 5,000 5052 4808 4734 4367 4,304

4,000 4054 3815 3579 3475 3387 3184 3048

3,000 2910 2804 2791 2725 2600 2547 2495 2477 2474 2465 2440 2379 2337 2329 2330 2326 2327 2317 2302 2296 2236 2,000

1,000 1111 250 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20% Appendix 2 Siksikaitsitapi Population Percent Change Yearly and Cumulative, 1884–1929 page 285 0% 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

-20%

-40% Percent Change Cumulative Percent Change Yearly

-60%

-80%

-100% Prepared by: Blanca Tovías Based on Indian Affairs Annual Reports 1864-1990, Department of Indian Affairs, Dominion of Canada -120% 4000 Appendix 3, page 286 Siksikaitsitapi Population by Nation 1877–1929 3500 Prepared by: Blanca Tovías Based on Indian Affairs Annual Reports 1864–1990, Department of Indian Affairs, Dominion of Canada 3000

Siksika Kainai Pikani 2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0

77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 Appendix 4, page 287

Siksikaitsitapi Combined Population 1877–1929

Change Change Year Siksika Kainai Pikani Total Yearly Cumulative 1877 1515 2,200 589 4,304 1878 1946 2488 750 5184 1879 2249 3071 n/a 5320 1880 n/a n/a n/a 7549 1881 n/a 3146 849 7789 1882 n/a 3508 900 8642 1883 2000 n/a n/a 7681 1884 2173 2270 922 5365 0% 0% 1885 2151 2310 942 5403 0.71% 0.71% 1886 2147 2382 940 5469 1.22% 1.94% 1887 2046 2199 938 5183 -5.23% -3.39% 1888 1952 2169 931 5052 -2.53% -5.83% 1889 1804 2097 907 4808 -4.83% -10.38% 1890 1827 1983 924 4734 -1.54% -11.76% 1891 1757 1696 914 4367 -7.75% -18.60% 1892 1472 1701 881 4054 -7.17% -24.44% 1893 1319 1665 831 3815 -5.90% -28.89% 1894 1308 1494 780 3579 -6.19% -33.29% 1895 1267 1427 781 3475 -2.91% -35.23% 1896 1226 1410 751 3387 -2.53% -36.87% 1897 1145 1300 739 3184 -5.99% -40.65% 1898 1099 1291 658 3048 -4.27% -43.19% 1899 1096 1278 536 2910 -4.53% -45.76% 1900 1038 1247 519 2804 -3.64% -47.74% 1901 975 1279 537 2791 -0.46% -47.98% 1902 942 1253 530 2725 -2.36% -49.21% 1903 896 1185 519 2600 -4.59% -51.54% 1904 845 1196 506 2547 -2.04% -52.53% 1905 842 1204 449 2495 -2.04% -53.49% 1906 803 1181 493 2477 -0.72% -53.83% 1907 824 1168 482 2474 -0.12% -53.89% 1908 817 1178 470 2465 -0.36% -54.05% 1909 795 1174 471 2440 -1.01% -54.52% 1910 768 1149 462 2379 -2.50% -55.66% 1911 767 1122 448 2337 -1.77% -56.44% 1912 763 1128 435 2326 -0.47% -56.64% 1913 752 1140 437 2329 0.13% -56.59% 1914 737 1154 436 2327 -0.09% -56.63% 1915 734 1138 424 2296 -1.33% -57.20% 1916 731 1154 432 2317 0.91% -56.81% 1917 726 1161 415 2302 -0.65% -57.09% 1918 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1919 n/a n/a 250 250 -95.34% 1920 n/a 1111 n/a 1111 -79.29% 1921 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1922 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1923 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1924 695 1158 383 2236 -58.32% 1925 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1926 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1927 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1928 n/a n/a n/a n/a 1929 724 1204 402 2330 -56.57%

Prepared by: Blanca Tovías Based on Indian Affairs Annual Reports 1864-1990 Department of Indian Affairs, Dominion of Canada SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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George H. Gooderham fonds

M4738, ff. 1–20, Gooderham Papers (old numbers) including “Gooderham Blackfoot Biographies”; “Articles Written by Gooderham”; “Religious Rites”. M4738-31, Series 2, Indian Agent correspondence and reports 1920–1928, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ‘K’ Division, Lethbridge, Calgary Sub-District, Gleichen Detachment, Corpl. E. E. Harper’s Report 25 July, 1921” M4738-217, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Lord Burnham and Chief Yellowhorse”, December 1955. M4738-227, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “The Making of a Brave” [1955– 1956]. M4738-255, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Biography, Joe Calfchild, Blackfoot [Siksika] 1875–1942.” M4738-259, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Weasel Calf and His Favourite Wife”, April 1956. M4738-260, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “The Indian Waltz [1921]”, April 1956. M4738-372, Series 6, Articles Written by Gooderham, “Indian Religious Rituals”, May 16, 1973.

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M8458, “Jane Richardson’s Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, Aug. 10, 1938”, f. 10, pp. 268–319. M8458 Series 1, Jane Richardson’s Typed Notes and Interviews M8458-1, “Chronological Story of Our Arrival and of the Sundance Events”, 28 June–7 July 1938. M8458-3, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal (interpreter)”, 24 August 1938. M8458-4, “Interview with Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) via Mary Royal (interpreter)”, 25 and 30 August 1938. M8458-8, “Interview with Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk (interpreter)”, 12 September 1938.

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M8458 Series 2, Jane Richardson’s Draft Articles M8458-14, f. 39, “History of the Skunk Band”, 1938. M8458-15, “Agwmaxkayi (Many Swans)”, 1938. M8458-17, “Life in Crowfoot’s Camp. ca. 1870–1877”, f. 22. M8458-18, f. 57, “Husband and Wife Relations and Horn Society”, 1938. M8458-19, “Jane Richardson’s Blackfoot (Siksika) Research–Medicine and Curing Power.”

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M4394, f. 22, Joe Little Chief’s Winter Count [Siksika], 1830–1913. M4394-18 Joe Little Chief’s Winter Count, “From 1830 the year Crowfoot was born.” M4394-19 Joe Little Chief’s Winter Count, “From 1880 the year the Blackfeet moved south”.

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M4423, Teddy Yellow Fly’s Winter Count, 1831–1877 [Siksika].

Library and Archive Canada, Dominion of Canada

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Other Media

Glenbow Museum, Raw Eater’s Story Robe, Exhibit, Nitsitapiisinni (Our Way of Life) [Visited July 2004]. Glenbow Museum, Wolf Collar’s Story Robe [as interpreted in 1961 by Paul Wolf Collar, grandson of Wolf Collar]. Exhibit, Nitsitapiisinni (Our Way of Life) [Visited July 2004]. Montana Historical Society, Portraits of Native America, Exhibition [Visited August 2005]

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