Fighting Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Running Fight Between Crees and Blackfeet, Old Style Warfare

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:29 +0000

Russell’s watercolor depicts a mounted skirmish between Cree and Blackfeet warriors on the open plains. Figures on horseback are arranged in a loose diagonal across the sheet, some firing rifles from the saddle, others wielding lances or bows as their horses gallop at full stretch. Russell uses graphite underdrawing to establish the anatomy of horses and riders, then washes in color to differentiate the two groups by their dress, weapons, and horse trappings. The palette is restrained—earth tones for the prairie, blue and grey for the distant sky—with brighter accents on shields, feathered headgear, and painted ponies. Dust kicked up by the running horses softens the middle distance, a device Russell used repeatedly to convey speed across flat country.

The subtitle “Old Style Warfare” signals Russell’s intent to record intertribal combat as it had been waged before the consolidation of the reservation system, when raiding and counter-raiding between Cree bands from the north and Blackfeet on the northwestern plains were ongoing features of life on the upper Missouri and Saskatchewan drainages. By 1895, when Russell made the painting, those running fights were a generation in the past. He was thirty-one and had been living in Montana since 1880, first as a wrangler and then increasingly as a working artist; he had spent the winter of 1888–89 with the Blood (Kainai) Blackfeet in Alberta, an experience that shaped his lifelong attention to Blackfeet material culture and to the horse cultures of the northwestern plains more broadly. Watercolors of this period helped him transition from illustrator to recognized painter of the West.

Russell (1864–1926) produced thousands of works ranging from quick sketches to large oils, and intertribal combat scenes form a recognizable subset within his output, distinct from his cowboy subjects and his Lewis and Clark paintings of the early twentieth century. The present sheet bears the credit line of the Amon G. Carter Collection and entered the holdings of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, the institution Carter’s collection seeded, which holds one of the most comprehensive groups of Russell’s works on paper. Its current location is not recorded in the available documentation.

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Curly Bear Wagner on Blackfeet and Lewis and Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:04 +0000

to the T of many voices my name is Ranger Aaron and I have been traveling on the Lou and Clark Trail with this mobile exhibit for about 2 years now it’s been an exciting trip we’ve seen a lot of places along the trail and met some really interesting people and at this hour one of those interesting people and friends that I’ve met is Curly bear Wagner and he’s going to introduce his film today and talk a little bit about his people cuz he come comes from the black feet Nation all right so let’s give him a nice round of applause and welcome here to the ten many voices and I’ll hand the microphone over to curly bear thank you can you say Oki Oki that’s how are you in black feet say n that’s how are you my friends then you reply you say Sugi C that means good but you guys look EXO copy that’s real good all right well my name is Curly bear and I’m going to be your I’m going to show you a documentary which we did on uh the encounter that they had with the black feet this is very important to us telling our perspective of Lewis and Clark from coming from the first nation’s people it’s important because we were here a long time before Lewis and Clark came into our country our people we first made contact with a white man in 1754 a guy by name Alexander hendre when Alexander hendre came he came with the Hudson Bay people and they wanted to open up trade with us and so he succeeded and we created a good work and relationship with the Hudson Bay and the Northwest Fur Company up in Canada and the Northwest Fur Company was a Scottish and Irish and the Northwest were the English and my people the black feet there is us here today the black feet were’re in the United States of America our reservation is a million and a half acres in size the population of my people around 20,000 enroll members in the United States we have three bands in Canada the blood the Pagan and the cisa and they’re North in Canada so traditionally our land started from the headwaters of the saskatchwan river by Edmonton Alberta and running East to battle for saskat then running South to the Missouri up the Missouri to the Yellowstone following the Yellowstone back up to what we call the backbone of the the world the Rocky Mountains that was traditionally black feet land now my people are the oldest Plains living tribe we can trace our ancestors back over 6,000 years of living out on the Plains and so we were hunters and gatherers we had about 75 plants that we used for food and for medicine and the Buffalo being the staff of life for our people and so our people very connected with uh what we call Mother Earth today huh and this is how we sub maintained ourselves this is how we survived by what the Creator give to us we used for our survival and it was very important in those days and very important even today because a lot of people want to learn about survival and so this is some of the things that we do by teaching and educating about our people but I did a we did a documentary on what we call Two Worlds at two medicine now this is the only deadly encounter that occurred on the whole journey uh Sergeant Floyd died Council area that was one death but there was two other because two other black feet got killed in this Expedition and I want we want to we captured that we put it on DVD for educational purposes because it’s so important to educate the people about our way of life everybody was Lewis and Clark but nothing really perspective coming from the first nation’s people and we want to change that we want to do our story which is a very interesting story how our people lived before and after the coming of Lewis and Clark so we’ll get started with it and then I’ll talk to you I’ll tell you a story afterwards we’ll get started with the Expedition now or the the documentary oh the Creator gave it the moon that’s why we called them our father and mother the Creator made man and woman too and breathed life into to them and to everything the animals plants rocks water and wind the Creator gave a Living spirit so we can learn from them and that’s what we’ve been doing here since the Creator first placed us on this land then one day one day just 200 Winters ago some boys were coming home they were not old enough to be Warriors yet but they were coming home with horses they captured from the crow it was a big day for them a big day with many consequences for many years but the boys didn’t know that Captain Merryweather Lewis didn’t know it either but this chance encounter on this vast Untamed Horizon began to change our world forever in Lewis and Clark’s relentless push Westward to the Pacific Ocean the Expedition met with a great number of Native American tribes but one tribe the Expedition avoided on their way west was the black feet stretching from the Saskatchewan River and the mountains of Canada hundreds of miles south through the Yellowstone Country and the Grand Tetons the black feet are estimated to have once numbered 50,000 strong or more with a reputation of defending their homelands ferociously the captains could find no other natives Brave or foolish enough to guide them into black feet territory let alone act as interpreters but after wintering at Fort Clatsop on the Pacific the expedition was returning home in the summer of 1806 and Merryweather Lewis had a mission from Thomas Jefferson he had not yet accomplished that would take him into the heart of blackfeet territory facing something he had hoped he would not a party of black feet and the only deadly encounter with Native Americans of the entire Expedition a chance meeting and a clash of cultures that is still being felt today we’ve been here according to to our ancestors our creation story we were created by our Supreme Being and this is the land that we were he created for us some of the old leg in stories they they go back to Genesis black feet Genesis how long have the black feet been here why not ask the Rocks that’s one of the things Anthropologist and archaeologist Brian Reeves does Dr Reeves is also an adopted member of the blackfeet tribe the Blackwood people speaking peoples have been here at least 3,000 years probably a lot longer but as an archaeologist I can say at least three probably five and could be a lot longer they covered a large range of territory in Northern Montana and and up into Canada seasonly they would winter here in the Foothills along the mountains cu the Buffalo came into the Foothills and then in the summer they’d move out uh well maybe here about 100 miles east of the sweet grass Hills for the Sundance their way of life was tied to the Buffalo they had what I think was a very beautiful life they were happy and they were healthy up to that time there were pedestrians on foot and they just travel along slowly you know ask a black feet what was more important the coming of the white man or the coming of the horse and don’t be surprised when the black feet says the coming of the horse the crows and other tribes nearby around here uh acquired the white man’s horses about 1730 soon the black feet were raiding for their own horses now tribal Hunters could follow Buffalo herds for long distances assuring food for the tribes as well as shelter and clothing suddenly a man could acquire wealth in the form of more horses and where do you get more horses from another tribe who has them that’s when into trial Warfare started as they got horses they started going to other tribes to get more horses you know so they used to go back and forth and steal horses and women from each other whatever the case happened to be so when that happened they stop and fight each other and before long inable Warfare in this area had become a way of life the transition to an equestrian Society was Swift and complete for the tribe of the Great Plains and mountains by Lewis and Clark’s arrival the black feet were some of the best equestrians the world has ever produced the scope and the scale that they lived on is hard for us to imagine for the black feet the horse had made them masters of the high plains and the white man’s guns which they traded for from the British Hudson Bay and Northwest companies in the north made them rulers of it too the first white man that week we seen it was in 1754 and in fact we had a white man living with us at the time and he was with the Hudson Bay people early contact with whites had led to new technology for the plan’s people and general Hospitality toward the white Traders we were exposed to the French people you know from from the north the Trappers and whatnot and they seem to get along quite well with our people because they didn’t want to take everything from our people they learned to coexist and hunt and trap and whatever we had had two other fathers the the Spanish and the French nothing had changed in our world when these other two fathers came in and so we didn’t look at being displaced Thomas Jefferson that was his plan for for westward expansion his reasoning to send Lewis and Clark there was to to open up the uh Louisiana Purchase that they had bought from France we somar acquired it from Spain and neither of them owned it to begin with now an entirely new nation was coming into native lands the United States of America a nation located on their same continent with designs for expansion and the people and power to do it by the time Merryweather Lewis chose to enter blackfeet territory the exped Edition had already been to the Pacific Ocean and the effects of the stress on Captain Lewis had at times become evident Lewis was a a brilliant hyper energetic Brave fellow but he was I think you can call him a manic depressive also they were mean two Indians along the way up there in his country black feet they killed a boy and shot after some other Lewis had been Sur with the Clatsop at the expedition’s rain soaked winter quarters later impatient to recross the snowbound bitter rout mountains on the way home Lewis caught a shanuk stealing an iron socket of a canoe pole and struck the native man repeatedly the second time he had beaten a native now back at traveler’s rest captains Lewis and Clark split their men into smaller groups Clark will explore the Yellowstone while Lewis heads North up the Marias or what the black feet call the Bear River into what he knew to be black Fe territory he intends to follow the moras north possibly across the 49th parallel hopefully fulfilling Thomas Jefferson’s aspirations that the Louisiana Purchase encompassed some of British held Canada despite the danger of black feet or perhaps because of it Lewis intends to travel quickly taking with him just three volunteers though arguably the best three men on the Expedition George drer the half shaie Marksman Hunter and salker and two trustworthy brothers Joseph and Ruben fields at first the Marias takes them northward but then turns Southwest on July 22nd the party sets up camp so Lewis can take readings but overcast Skies render Lewis’s seant useless the next day brings dangerous news drer out hunting finds a camp of empty native Lodge poles 2 days later he and Joseph Fields come upon an empty black feet winter camp in his journal that night Lewis writes we consider ourselves extremely fortunate in not having met these people Merryweather Lewis July 25th 1806 July 26th is still overcast and Lewis’s chronometer had stopped working the day before dejected he names their position Camp disappointment and leaves taking a more direct route back the party of four find themselves in the Two medicon River Valley at midday leaving drer to hunt along the river Lewis and the field Brothers climb out of the rugged Valley to look around round I had scarcely ascended the hills before I discovered an assemblage of about 30 horses I used my spy glass by the help of which I discovered several Indians on top of an Eminence who appeared to be looking down towards the river I presumed it rier this was a very unpleasant sight however I resolved to make the best of our situation and approached them in a friendly manner a con 30 head of horses and so he figured there’d be that many warriors also another 30 Warriors maybe resting down all kinds of thoughts may have went through his mind at that point and he knew he was in all kinds of trouble about this time they discovered us and appeared to run about in a very confused manner in looking at the oral tradition within the black feed tribe itself and particularly at the chronicle of wolf CAF who was here at the actual event the the uh group that encountered Lewis Here were composed of young boys primarily in the age group of uh on the average of 12 years old these boys have just got came from Crow country where they’ve taken horses from the crow and when they did finally see Maryweather Lewis they were quite frightened just as Mar Lewis was frightened when he seen the Indians so both parties were kind of spooked of what one another at the beginning I think they were curious curious to who the people were I think they considered themselves becoming Warriors and I think they possibly realized that this encounter might be a test they thought well let’s see what they’re made of one of them rode full speed towards us he came within a 100 Paces halted looked at us and turned his horse about and returned as briskly we leared that from the bear huh if he’ showed fear and I’m sure that black feet would have taken a war club and probably cracked his head open I expected that we were to have some difficulty with them I was convinced they would attempt to Rob Us in which case I should resist to the last extremity preferring death to that of being deprived of my papers and instruments he figured if he gets killed then he’s going to get killed but he wanted to make sure that the paperwork his journal was saved in some way some sense and that’s what he was really worried about years later wolf CF one of the black feet boys in the group that day reported that he was just 13 years old when his small party encountered Lewis and his men we met them in a friendly manner wolf CF Lewis’s journal concurs with Wolf’s account I Advanced singly to meet meet the Indian with whom I shook hands Lewis uses what little sign language he knows to try to communicate I asked if there was any Chief among them and they pointed out three but to Lewis the boys appeared too young to be Chiefs I did not believe them however thought it best to please them and gave to one a medal to a second a flag and to the third a handkerchief Lewis is now close enough to count and size up his potential opponents his confidence returning I now concluded that there were only eight in number and became much better satisfied with our situation as I was convinced that we could manage that number should they attempt hostile measures the boys accept the gifts and ask Lewis if he has tobacco Lewis sends one of the fields and a black feet boy down to the valley to find duer who carries their pipe and all agree to Camp by the Two medicon River Buffalo robes were set up next to the Two medicon River for shade Lewis smoked with the black feed boys communicating through George dreer’s sign talking into the evening I learned from them that they were part of a large band which lay encamped near the foot of the Rocky Mountains Lewis had noticed two boys carried British muskets they informed us that they trade on the Saskatchewan River and from these Traders they obtain arms ammunition spus liquor and blankets in exchange for wolves and beaver skins Lewis realized the Hudson Bay Company was the source of their arms then he launched into his usual speech about the new great white father who now owned this land that’s when he gave him his uh his dog and pony show huh and I’m sure that it must have just been bewildering and maybe even funny to some of them it certainly was very seldom taken the way that Jefferson met it to why is this great white father now going to come here and tell us how to live when we never did need him before I told these people I had come a great way from the East and seen a great many Indian nations all of whom I have invited to come and trade with me on the rivers one of the blunders that Barry weather Lewis made was when he began to talk to the black people that they were going to bring trade in here and start trading and give and to other tribes rifles amunition things of sort that would uh make other tribes equal with us and we didn’t want anybody to be equal with us confident of his diplomacy Lewis writes I found them extremely fond of smoking and plied them with the pipe until late that night Merryweather Lewis July 26th 1806 yet Lewis is wary of his visitors he takes first watch that night then wakes Reuben fields at movements of the Indians as I apprehended they would attempt to steal our Horses The Tobacco was running pretty low so they thought they’d get some rest but the Indians talked amongst house that night the chief Among Us said we should try to take some of the white men’s things wolf C I think they were these are young teenagers just looking around he thought they were going to steal something emboldened by their success in raiding horses from the crow the boys plot into the night the horses meant great wealth to them already and as you gain a little wealth and you push your luck and the plan was to take these Fire Sticks get those hidden then run off their horses while they’re still half asleep I fell into a profound sleep and did not wake until the noise of the men in Indians awoke me a little after light in the morning the boy’s first move seems to be working when early Dawn finds Lewis and two men asleep and their Sentry groggy it is now or never at daylight the Indians got up and crowded around the fire Joseph Fields who was on post had carelessly laid his gun down where his brother was sleeping one of the Indians slipped behind him and took his gun and that of his brother Joseph’s Fields seeing that he’s taking his pistol hollered at him drop that pistol drop that gun on this point both the black feed and Lewis’s accounts agree the white men killed Sid Hill calf with their big knives wolf calf Reuben Fields as he sees his gun stabbed the Indian to the heart with his knife Merryweather Lewis when breath killed instantly Rob stabbed him right in the heart he didn’t get permission from Mara loose to kill this boy he just acted on his own impulse at the same instant two others Advanced and seized the guns of duer and myself Dam you I reached to seize my gun but found her gone I then drew a pistol and saw the Indian making off with my gun I B him lay down my gun which he was in the act of doing when the fields returned and Drew up their guns to shoot the Indian which I forbade the Indian dropped the gun and walked slowly off Merryweather Lewis then the blacki boys seen what was occurring and so they begin to chase their horses off one of the white men I think it was their Chief chased another boy and shot him wolf cat one of them stopped at a distance of 30 steps from me and I shot him through the belly he partly raised himself up and fired at me being bareheaded I felt the wind of his bullet very distinctly Captain Maryweather Lewis July 27th 1806 if Lewis had been shot there it would have made a a big difference we can only speculate what difference it would have made but um I wouldn’t have been surprised if if there had been a whole Army sent out to wipe out the black feet from the black feet point of view it certainly set to Stage that uh the United States government and their uh uh their emissaries were not to be trusted or that although they came in peace uh they ended up killing two young boys I think Lewis from the moment it happened realized that there were going to be repercussions they were determined to get out of there as fast as they could which meant basically riding day and night our people did take after him I we sent our real Warriors out after but they had a good day and a half start on us their awareness of everything I’m sure was terribly heightened by the by the fact that they had just had a life and death confrontation and they were crossing this section of the Plains which is just enormous there was a bright moon overhead and there were thunderstorms going off on all the different Horizons here they were right reading themselves to exhaustion after that tremendous moment of of uh combat and uh to me the scene is just one of the most intense they run their horses Full Tilt and they about a day and a half and then they the next day they made it all the way down to what we call the big water and they were falling the Bear River or the Marise River and about the time they were getting there they heard these shots and they knew it was their party coming on down miraculously it was orway mcneel Thompson and Goodrich coming down the Missouri to pick them up they dropped everything I left everything they got on those canoes and they high tailed it out of the country the confrontation with the black feet at Two medicon River must have made quite an impression on Captain Lewis he wrote page after page about it more words in fact on that one incident than any other episode in his extensive journals Merryweather Lewis left black beat country that hot July day never to return but it didn’t take long before many other Americans did arrive hunting trapping and taking whatever they could from the land almost immediately after the Expedition fur Trappers went up into the mountains and instead of buying Furs from the black feet the way the British Traders up in Canada did um they went up there and began trapping themselves which left the black feet out these new frontiersmen didn’t need the natives to trap for them they could trap beaver and shoot Buffalo for themselves and when the Americans opened up the Missouri River for Commerce steamboats took Buffalo hides Away by the millions with them went the black Feet’s main source of food shelter and clothing and a way of life that would never be seen again Missouri hide trade took him out and it’s well documented like 18 uh oh 1858 uh there was something like 110,000 hides were shipped out of Fort Benton they made the leather belts yeah was very important they were far stronger than cows cow high and so it fueled all the old you know first Industrial Systems of the the belt systems they were killed systematically by uh people who wanted to kill the the Indian’s food source you killed off the food source you you killed off that way of life an establishment of the forts the coming of the steam ships up to Missouri you know and establishment of Fort Benton and their trade area and hey these guys are taking over okay I’m going to talk to you a little bit I feel better now I got to speak with my hands uh you guys are from St Stevens huh St Peter St Peters sorry I’m sorry for all the interruptions that’s going on here but that’s all right uh we have a very famous person that you seen up there James Alexander Tom is right here uh James has written a book called sign talker if you get an opportunity to see read that book read it it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read I I when I put it down I felt Lonesome so I told my business manager who’s Vicki who runs our institution Vicki you got to uh I got to try to meet this gentleman right away boy we met and his also his wife dark range is also a very famous writer and she had a lot to do with the core Discovery uh putting everything together she’s worked very hard at it and uh my business manager Vicky that holds our institution and does everything Vicky privet right there from Indiana and we just brought Joanna on board she’s going to also be working with us doing fundraising and writing grants because this is just a start of it for us we’re doing a segment on women called a backbone of my people we’re doing the Indian story of women is very important story because when they wrote about the Indian people they never wrote anything about the women the women were the backbone of our people and so we’re doing a documentary on that also and we’re doing all the tribes from kokia to Fort clup telling our story of Lewis and Clark uh the National Park Service said it was one of the best documentaries theyve seen on Lewis and Clark and so they funded us to uh continue on so just the start for us they might be finishing today here or this week but we’re just starting and we’re traveling on inding time ending time is whenever you get there and so we’re just getting there uh it’s been great putting together was a lot of fun working in doing this I was very excited to work on this project uh telling our story uh the the the kids the boys that you seen in there those are kids from heartb uh basketball those are my my one the kid with the wolf Rob on is my son and the rest are my nephews I had to throw them out of bed before we get started huh they we don’t do anything else we had a lot of fun doing it though you know a lot of things have happened after coming of Lewis and Clark and when they left our country and uh we continued on with our lives while after lwis and Clark came it was the free Trappers came up into our country when the free Trappers came up into our country of course the black feet we kept them out of our country because they just come in and start taking the beaver and that was our economic base was the beaver and so there was a lot of skirmishes could have never happened should have never happened a lot of Bloodshed out on the planes all they had to do is come up and say we want to trade with you because they had things that we wanted like the steel pots and Beads and stuff that kept our people satisfied and keep our people didn’t have to work so hard or whatever but they just come and start taking our Beaver so there was a lot of skirmish out on the planes that happened but there was a lot of interesting men that came up on the Lewis and Clark expedition some of them came back one of them was by the guy by the name of John calter John couter wrote a book called John coulter’s run I’ll tell you a little story about John couter he he started from here in St Louis and went all the way back up but on their return trip he came back and he went to go live with a guy that built the first Trading Post in Montana uh and he so he came back and he worked with him and one of the he was one of the guys that uh went into the first white man toee Yellowstone National Park was talking about the guers or what have you and uh nobody believed him and so these uh they finally got the opportunity to see him but John calter told a story about the black feet very interesting story P John couter was one of the free Trappers that came up into our country him and a guy by the name of pots and they were out on the what they call Three Forks Montana that’s the Madison Jefferson Gallatin River we called those Rivers Medicine Woman River blood clot River and beaverhead now blood clot might sound like a weird name but it was very important story about blood clot and it’s a long story and it’s blood clot was a very famous legend about him amongst my people but that’s what we called those three rivers well anyway him and guy by name of pots were coming down the Gallatin River and they were very feared of the black feet because of all the stories that they heard about our people and John calter had a previous had a skirmish with the black feet the black he joined up with the flatheads and they were free trapping and there was a fight out there and and blackfeet would run the flatheads off but John calter was wounded and so we knew John calter is a guy who fought on the other side but when he came up with manal Lisa was the first that built the first Trading Post where the Little Big Horn pours into the Missouri or to the Yellowstone excuse me and he was working with him and uh they wanted him to be an ambassador to the black feet but he never got that opportunity like I was saying they were coming down the river that one morning because what they’ do they’d hide during the day and trap at night and what they were coming down the river the Gallatin River John cter said listen that noise that noise I think there’s some Indians around here and so they hid out and pretty soon they were spotted he said in his his writings said there was over 2,000 black feet that they seen and when they seen him they called him asure motion to him come asore so John calter and pots they rode their canoe to the shore and John couter got out po didn’t and uh said one of the black black feet took a shot at him and pot shot back then they riveted him with bullets couple hundred shots went into his body they said so when John when he came asore cter his old man approached him said you better run you better run kept telling him that about three times told him you better run but he didn’t pay much attention to him and so that old black feed man but they set up a line they run him through there and they gave him a stripped him of his clothing and gave him a good whipping called a gat line that’s what they do it’s kind of teaching him a lesson from coming up here in Traen but John culture he kept running he took off running at a Full Tilt running and running and running out running those Indians and a big he looked behind a big group of Indians were following him black feet chasing him but he couldn’t catch him he was running running he must have run about a couple miles and there was this one black feet that was Hut on his tail and this Indian was running but this Indian had a spear and a blanket and he was getting closer and closer my goodness John couter begin to Tire blood was coming from his nose and he beun to come come tired and his legs begin to cramp up and so he waited for this black feet Indian to catch up with him the one with the spear in the blanket when he cut up caught up with him John they had a rasle match John cter threw him to the ground busted his Spear and ready to stab him and that black feet start begging taking for his life and so John calter didn’t have no pity on him went ahead and killed him took that busted spear in that blanket and took off running again because he seen some more of these Indians running for him and he found a stream and he jumped into the stream there’s a beaver dam and a beaver hut in there Beaver Lodge and so he went up inside this Beaver Lodge and he got up in there and he stayed there all day until the sun went down and got night and when night came came when Nightfall came he came out and he crossed the mountain range now remember this guy has no clothing no shoes or nothing but he crossed the mountain range and and went about another 250 miles back to Camp Manuel Lisa and he stayed there and he told the story now the story’s been written several times and in previous I’ve did a lot of research in fact I I met the culture family out here in St Louis I think I was with Chris and those guys remember what school was that Chris cter Landing I met the cter family and told them that story all right so I got five minutes anyway you I’ll tell you the story that really happened now we would never travel with a thousand people because look how much food it would take to feed a thousand black feed Indians and they they consume about 2 and2 pounds of meat A day or or one setting excuse me and and uh when John cter said he met him we didn’t rivet with nobody with 100 bullets because ammunition was very hard to come by and so we didn’t shoot no we didn’t shoot 100 bullets into that man if we did shoot it might have been one bullet his ammunition was hard to come by and we get up he said that old man was talented now we were come from a warrior Society of people and it meant treason if you commit treason it meant death because we come from a warrior Society of people so no old man talked to him and when they run him through that line and he and everybody gave what happened he kept running there’s no way in the world that you’re going to outrun a black feed Indian or any Indian as far as that concerned the Indian boys are excellent Runners they raised out on the planes and we can run run run run John cultra was wounded in the leg remember so he was kind of crippled huh he couldn’t really run that fast and and so and no Indian is going to be carrying an 18t long spear with a blanket chasing a person for goodness sakes we had horses to do those things huh and chasing him like that and then then killing him and if like I say when the black feet was down he would never beg for his life we had a death song that we sang and it was against our Traditions or law to beg for our lives because we do come from a warrior Society but we do have a death song that we saying then he said he jumped into the side Deb Beaver Lodge now there’s no way in the world that you’re going to fit in inside of a Beaver Lodge huh there’s an opening you can’t even get inside of one and then he ran over those mountains 250 Mi back to Fort Manuel Lisa well he’d have never cross those mountains because he’d have froze to death up there huh and there’s a lot of pickly pair out on the Plains and so this is a story that from our perspective that we’re I did a lot of research on this in fact I was in Chicago not too long ago with a western writers association we was going to put this story into a book form but they didn’t they wanted to keep that Legend the way it is because it’s just what it is it’s just a legend it’s just a story that he’s told some say that John couter killed pots himself but and if we get into a battle and this occurred what we do we always let one person alive to go tell a story so we give him the best horses and the best Provisions feed him and let him go back to tell a story not to come into black feed country so that’s one of the stories of uh John coulter’s or Maryweather Lewis’s people coming up and and staying amongst my people to black feet John couter story I only get a couple minutes uh any you guys have any questions you want to ask me now this documentary if anybody’s interested in the documentary we do this for educational purposes because it’s very important that we leave something for the young people but we’ll be selling them back over here Vicki will have them and I think she’ll be back over here where’s Vicki at she’s right over there she she has the documentary and we sell them for how much you selling them for she selling them for $20 nobody’s interested after my questions I’ve got a microphone if you’ll just raise your hand I’ll bring it around to you questions you guys could to ask me one question anyway what’s the history of the name black feet the name black feet what’s the history of how we received our name heard many stories about how we received our name one of them boils down to that we crossed a prairie fire one time and at the other side the cree were our allies and uh this is during the what they do dog day period before coming to the horse we received the horse around the 1600s and so we crossed we always we met with people always sat down across Lake and they notice the souls of our moccasins were black and so he called us the black foot today we go by by the name of black feet I remember this guy from Cleveland Ohio asked me a question said curly bear what’s the difference between the black foot and the black feet I said there’s a big difference up in Canada they have one foot and down here we have two that’s the big difference you did you write the documentary did I what did you write the documentary did I write the documentary well we’ve interviewed a lot of our people yeah we a lot of there’s a lot more to than that and because I give a big yeah I did a lot of writing on it and put help putting that thing together but we just added a half hour on onto this and so PBS is going to pick this up hopefully it’s going to be on national TV we added a half hour onto it the summer so I’m going out to Florida and meet with those people sometime in November I guess yeah questions question in the front row um you said that merwe Lewis gave him a flag the Indian why would he give him a flag why would uh Lewis give um the native tribes a flag he get you mentioned in the movie that they gave him a flag well when they there was kind of a tradition that they give everybody a tribe that they met now see when Maryweather Lewis and them came up the river through black feed country we knew they were coming but we also knew who they were they didn’t have nothing to trade with us and we were we spent a short time out there preparing ourselves for winter and we didn’t want to stop the river hey Louis you guys where you guys going we didn’t know who they were you know we could care less who they were but they weren’t bothering anybody so we just let them go but it was a tradition that they gave something to each tribe that the tribal members they met so they gave one of our members a flag um how many black feet Native Americans do you think are still around today how many Native Americans are there today black feet black feet well we’re uh we’re over 50,000 today maybe 60,000 and that’s all four bands of us so we’re about the seventh largest tribe I think somewhere in that figure that’s gotten our people in Canada in the United States there’s 20,000 enrolled members of us today in the United States so we’re a huge band a huge tribe questions okay we have a last question here just time for one more why did the Indians take the guns why did the Indians take the guns in the movie this why why did we take the guns we didn’t call them guns we call them lightning rods or Fire Sticks and they were great to hunt with and and and defend our country with huh and so it’s something that we used we didn’t really hunt Buffalo with them but we we used them in other ways as defending ourselves with a with a gun so they’re very important and also very important in trade this girl had one question right here please all right we’ll make this one our last one did black feet tribes live in different places than Montana is our reservation in Montana yes it’s in the northwest corner of uh Montana it set borders Canada to the north of us and to the west of us is Glacier National Park and you’ll see the black feet we’re sitting right there today okay I want to thank you and if any you you want a question uh Vicki will have the DVDs back there if anybody’s interested thank you and God bless you all thank you very much curly bear it’s a pleasure to have you here in the Ten of many voices coming up next we have e

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Lloyd Topsky on Chippewa Cree Language and Culture

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:00 +0000

of Discovery 2 and the tent of many voices this tent has been set up as an opportunity for us to learn from different individuals with different backgrounds different areas of expertise also gives us a chance to hear different sides different aspects of that Lewis and Clark story today we are very fortunate to have with us Lloyd tops Sky who is chipa walk Cree from the Rocky Boy reservation and he will be giving program on cultural language so if You’ please help me welcome Lloyd topy thank you very much uh that was a good welcome I had to clap for you too because you look like you’re going to be a good audience uh as Native Americans when we greet each other you’ve probably often seen some of the sign language that we’re known for because it’s universal language and tomorrow I’d be doing the sign language within the planes but I have a commitment back home and with a youth group that I’ll be working with but when don’t we see each other uh from different reservations or different communities among our the plains tribe we go like this to each other when we wave at each other or look at each other we do that that’s a sign language universal language that means good and so if you ever look at the CM Russell Prince sometimes you’ll see some of the the illustrations there indicate that when they meet each other they’re going to have a hand up like this and what they’re doing in that is there they’re giving the language good so that’s what I’m doing to you today I’m glad to see all of you and I feel good about it and seeing you here today but um I’m a uh Adjunct professor at MSU Northern in h Montana and I’ve taught there for a while and I teach the cre language there and sometimes I have a a good turnout of students that are non Indian so when we have a class we um I’m used to seen a lot of non-indian faces within my class they say they’d rather take that than take in French or Spanish or German they’d rather see something that they’re going to you utilize within the community of H and I once I had been in in the hospital in Hab Montana and this guy started talking to me in my language and I thought yeah I was answering him and uh then he says do you remember me and I said no I turned around and here it was that guy he was a student of mine and he was talking C to me in there and I got a good kick out of that one but I’ll remember that for a long time but he took that because he can speak to people that were admitted into the hospital and and have her somewh in long-term care and some were were there shortly but some are in dialysis and different places and and surgery and they need people in there to kind of relate to the language of the people that that utilize that facility but those are the reasons why a lot of them are enrolled there but um again I I also taught the chipa language which is another form of the alonquin language the family tree of our language and uh that comes from the Great Lakes area and into Canada and the cree language extends down from Canada into the mountain the Rocky Mountain Area here so that’s a brief background of our of our tribal ways we’ are actually refugees from the Canadian area and also the Great Lake area that’s where here due to Western span expansion that we we arrived at this area here so that gives you a little a little background of our tribe here and um uh the language itself is made up of an alonquin language which is made up about oh about 50 or 40 Tribe 40 50 tribes and in the in the this area here there’s about three or four Algonquin families they’re the black feet tribe that’ll be up here Northern Glacier country that’s now gonin tribe we have the chip was they’re in the area here we have the cre they’re Al gonin and then we go back outside a little bit further we run into the shaune tribe down in Oklahoma the Delware tribe and then we have different tribes scattered out the Mohan Indians out toward the East uh you’ll see a lot of Al gonan words out there but today I’m going to guarantee you when you walk out of this tent you’re going to know at least 8 to 10 terms a cre and you’re going to you’re going to live with those the rest of your life and these are words you’ll always know on the definitions and you’re going to remember them forever until until uh until the sun will shine no more forever I think I heard that someplace before and the Ricks the cricks Run dry or so anyway um going back into the philosophies and culture that we speak of today this is a cultural Exchange in diversity hopefully that gave you a little background and understanding of where we came from and there there were at least 500 languages on this continent here of North America and Canada they say that the alanin language is the largest speaking tribe of people in in the North American continent and statistics and the census show that the Navajo Nation is the largest tribe in the United States but the cre that that we’re uh introducing today is the largest tribe in North America so those those two estimates are true but they don’t count the cre as being the largest tribe of the continent of North America so it is a widely known tribe goes all the way from this area back into New York and that area so I’d like to just go ahead and start right now uh we’re going to identify this area here as we come through Lewis and Clark had traveled in this area he came down the Missouri River and as we talk about Missouri River he had ran into rivers that were very very rapid and Swift I guess you’d known that that some of the rivers can get very bad out there in the Missouri and uh in our language when they call the rapid the Rapid River we call it SU chian suu one that means the water is really rapid and you you get in there and it’ll just flow you down the river as fast as you you could possibly go and those there’s dangers involved in that so that’s the word so getu one and that that’s the word there and then in there when you go into the rivers and stuff you’ll see little names running off the CCS or running toward the river of uh the Missouri you’ll see these little words are CP CP those means ccs that go toward the the river so those that’s a subject matter today as we talk about the the different areas of this mountains here and in the terrain here soan is a water that runs rapid and as you as we talk about things we talk about pollution in this area and then we we we talk about places pollution is so strong here in some areas that pollution runs off and we say that word notos so we talk about it’s better to have a place that’s pure with the way the ground is and the earth and the air we talk about pure ground so we say so that’s uh the definitions of the nice clean air we have around in this area the next one is where I’m going to go into animals and boy you probably come across the area where you smell that strong smell it’s kind of very fumigating in your body it just clears your nostrils and what would that be skunk we call that a seog seog that’s what we say oh boy that seog is too much you know it’s Cog one getting plug your nose you know that’s one of the things you’ll find the open air here that’s about the only thing we smelled long ago was to to kind of dampen the air here would be shag that meant that it was very very strong in the smell and also we talk about the uh different animals we had here and stuff from one of the who’s a hunter in here who’s one of our Mighty hunters and in here must have did a little bit of hunting boy we’re all conservative huh con the only thing we hunt is down at IG or Albertson’s to get our meat anyhow uh who’s familiar with the word w te okay that’s a familiar so see W te actually means and so what that means is the elk has a white rump and that’s how they describe it that’s how they describe that elk now that’s an animal that we’re very familiar with in Montana Boseman boy they’re bow and arrow crazy here and they gun crazy and boy they take weeks off to go hunting over here a lot of people hunt just really a good a good exercise and also a good thing to do also we talk about tribes that we had who’s familiar the uh the uh tribes around here who who knows that some of the tribes around in the area okay give me one okay black feet okay Flathead groon Crow cinin okay those are all tribes there’s one little boy in a bike just rode in and said I know one show shony okay most those words derived from uh from the traders that came here the French the story I heard about the black feed was when the Indians were first noticed in this area that they had a lot of black black uh feet on their moxin their feet were black that was because there’s a a roaring fire that went through and they walked across and did some hunting and when the French came here or whoever they disc discovered them first they had uh black feet on there and also the Flathead were known for having been put in a cradle and they had a board put on their head and that’s how their their children grew with a flat forehead and you know and these little kids they’re U when they’re little they call them TIG or you direct that L that little boy so that’s how they would say that when these little kids are very tiny they have lot of words that indicate that too they believe in the mythology as we refer to today is as a the little people and I think they call them dorfs or the little people in in in Western thought of Mythology of of the little people that they have too in in their culture but here they also had people that up and um these are some of the uh ways also if you look back at that Tepe back there that’s known as uh we go we go from the people that that that live there we that’s what that meant we and so these are terms that we use throughout the time to to know that we means your or them and also who’s uh what do you what do you call your shoes shoes that’s what you call them all right and we call them the same thing thing in in our language too we call them musna and what that means you can term those as boots shoes or slippers or anything anything that covers your feet we we refer to those as musk and U these are parts of the clothing that we have um in this in this culture too when we refer to animals we refer to Montana as being a a protector of U conversation of the conservative people that that conserve animals here we talk about the wolf as being a as being a protected animal within the forest here in cre we call him mahik and he’s a protected animal here too mahik and so these words that we talk about here uh we talk about the land being pure and and uh how it feels and to be here and open there and the waters also being defined area as being polluted in in cre we call it a a that’s what that means the water we then we say a particular place we say that means that the water is very dirty and stinky so we can apply that to things that are very polluted right now so we call that so as we go back into our language we see all these patterns of things that are important around our area here there through the culture and the gift from from God and we we look at it in a beautiful way and so I want to start right now by saying have you heard anything in within that definition that I gave about the nouns that I presented has anybody in there um perceived anything that we applied to the English language did anybody hear anything in there nobody anybody okay Blackfoot okay moccas you heard of that huh okay good that’s very your very uh uh really Keen sense of hearing there moccasin I said we said that we talked about that I said muskin that’s where the word mockasin came from in our society musk sin okay that’s one term when you leave here you’re going to know that word mus moxen that means musen that’s a cre word okay anybody else he another word what was that anybody Wigwam good you hear the word uh Wigwam Wigwam that’s a cre word that meant that their Lodge that’s what that means their Lodge and so that’s two now you learned two terms anybody else here another word seog what that what do you think means stink what what stinks yes skunk yeah okay Chicago Chicago means shagu it really stinks okay that’s three you’ve learned anybody else learned another word in our content TP okay that was Wigwam any others W he heard that right away w w means white rump and that’s wasu WAP that’s what they meant the elk has a white rump it’s what you heard WAP te that’s the a word they use here all the time I mean even we don’t know the word sometimes we say hey they’re going to go I think they’re going to get a and all the creaser on well what is that you know they don’t even know their language sometimes it’s kind of reversed into a different a different sounding word what else did you hear how about the rapid water when I said soet one did you hear anything in there sayu one holy smoke that was a very keen AED person Saskatchewan I think she’s she’s doing better than my wife here and learning some of it’s new to her no I’m just kidding uh Saskatchewan okay that’s five anybody else hear anything okay well how about when I said CP what does that kind of catch the tune of a word nationally and internationally known all over the world in other places okay what if you made it bigger it would be Mississippi the Big River or the Big Creek that’s another word that’s six Mississippi okay somebody said no sir okay no I’m kidding okay how about the word when I said AB Abu did you hear anything in there Abu that means Sue Indian Sue remember we we we talk about the Sue tribe the lotas well that’s Sue that’s where they got the word when we wanted to intimidate them when we wanted to make war against them we’d say up the little people let’s go ahead and knock the tar out of them today you know and take take all their women and forget their horses but that was Sue that’s where it came from excuse me how about uh mahik can you think of anything that sounds like Mikan mohin oh boy there’s another one there Mohan probably heard of The Last mohin by the famous famous author James ww Longfellow I think that was his name I just made that it sounded good okay moan how about how about a state what sounds like moan that’s a State Michigan holy smoke these guys are ahead of me Michigan okay now we’re down to eight now what’s left boy I don’t have anything left do you think you guys clean me out here words okay that’s 10 turn terms you learned these are all cre words but just a different sounding way of saying it in the English language for instance in h it’s not Indian word but H when the French got a hold of that word they called it La larve and when they got when we got a hold of it we messed it all up and said have her and then there’s there’s old stories that go back into how they changed that word and how got to be have her there’s a couple guys are fighting and and they were so fed up with the the fight that finally the other guy well go ahead you can have her after he got the tar knock out him that’s how the name came out to be H Montana but they never tell you they’ll they’ll come up with a real fancy way of saying it was the French had called it laar they always say that it was these two drunk guys that fought over a woman but those are names of the things that we know in our area have uh the chip was have named a lot of words in in their their places in min soda and the Great Lakes area there’s a lot of names I hear there I think there’s a song they had long too long ago the uh the boat that God lost out there was a mitoi or something like that I think some of you might have heard that it’s a real old song but that song is the the lake that’s very big and the monster that got those guys that that W monster got was under the water well that’s a legend of the chipa but he sings it into a tune where you can’t understand what what he’s saying but that’s that’s actually a tune of that of the chipo language that turned into a contemporary song but those are some of the things that I’m glad that I got to show you some words that you already knew all this time so I’m not telling you anything you don’t know I guess but uh I just gave you a brief rundown definitions and the way we say them but uh I’d like to go ahead and go over to some of you folks in here and see if anybody wants to ask me any kind of a question something you always wanted to ask but didn’t want to ask anybody like me okay anybody okay we got one and I have a microphone that I can come around so we can all hear your question that’s a good idea yes this has to do with sign language was that is sign language Universal or was each tribe uh it was it peculiar to each tribe okay that’s a good question in the Plains area there was so many tribes that had about uh they say there was about over 100 tribes in this area here in the Plains area all the way from some of the tribes that you spoke black feet Flathead Crow CVO Grove on uh the different tribes that that we had here but there’s more that extended down the Shoni knew the language the crows the cheyen uh the excuse me Mandan hota rarra and different lotas had Dakota Lota and they had the cabins up in Canada and there were just a whole bunch of tribes the reason why that came about there’s so many dialects that they couldn’t communicate all in one language so they they devised a hand a hand signed signal system that would indicate what they were saying for for home you crossed you crossed your hands into a point with your two index fingers that meant home which actually an indication illustrating that is a teepee and when you went to go go and to your teepe you wanted to eat you’d make that sign language of putting something in your mouth and then if you wanted to buy something You’ put your two index fingers and cross them together that meant you’re trading but now we called it buying so that that was a thing about buying and so those are some of the the signs that they had everybody had that universal language packed down to to knowing everything about your age how old You’ be and how what what people were there what tribe they were if they were white if they were black if they were Flathead Indian or or Japanese or whatever people were here all the Races they they indicated through sign language what they were and so that was that was the purpose of that because there’s so many languages that they couldn’t all talk the same language similar to The Babylon story where there’s so many languages involved there that EV eventually one there was only one language but uh I think it’s kind of turning into that too like in a in a sense and and in a way that we speak today that most tribes are learning the English language as their first language and our language is decaying I should say that that not all of us know the language there’s some out there that acculturated into languages and of uh the Western the Western thought of language presentations the way they speak is there any other uh questions I think I had one more over there okay during the time of the Expedition where did the cre tribe live and did the Crees have traditional enemies and or and traditional allies good question when the when the arrival of Lewis and Clark we had had philosophers and we had practitioners we had forecasters I’m not talking about forecasters on Channel 3 but forecasters that could can tell the the future of time and when they when the future was was shaken in a particular place by a practitioner that practiced the forecast they said that when these people come across they’re going to bring a large number of people behind them but with that langu with that idea that there’s going to be a lot more there was going to be a lot of epidemic of sickness and death and what occurred after that does anybody know what occurred after the yes small poox that wiped out lit literally almost 34s of the people here and so when the cre heard about that they backed back up into the Canadian area of Saskatchewan and that’s how uh Saskatchewan in Alberta and uh Manitoba they went back in there and they stayed there for a long time until around the mid 1800s they came back down into the sweet grass area around from all the way from sweet grass all the way back to the Trenton area of North Dakota and that was where they were at our allies are actually the CBS they helped us through a lot of Wars our enemies were the forever enemies almost were the black feet today we’re comfortable with each other but we go back to the old times when black feet and the creep people were were enemies almost forever and uh those are those are the people that we had had fought for a long time the sue people are also our our most you know forever enemy almost and so those those are the people we’re friendly with who had enemies with where were we were at at the time when LS and Clark was here so if it wasn’t for the forecasters and the practitioners and the people we refer spirituality people with medicine the medicine men and the shamans that were sometimes referred to we’ probably been one of the one of the U uh people that couldn’t have survived in this area too it was very terrible yes you had one question back there sir the wamp I not very sure of the from but I I think it was around from the Mohan tribe or in that area back there past the great lakes that that tribe uh also practices different ways but they’re identical to us but they’re so far back to the east of the AL gonan tribe that some of the culture that they know in definition of a certain tribe a certain thing that signified something is something we didn’t practice in our area we didn’t practice the the wamp and belt which stood for The Prestige and also the value of something we didn’t go by that value system and we didn’t go by that significance so we were very sure of what that really meant for our our people we had different ways of identifying significance of different different values here too yes anybody else two quick questions uh one do did the moccasin designs distinguish the various tribes and secondly are there dwindling numbers of purebred cre or black feet now and uh to be a member of the tribal council do you have to be a purebred full-blooded uh Native American yes yes no yes yes no I just kidding no the BL the moccasin represented different things as as he answered it was a very important way of identifying the significance moxin sometimes the baby moxin would have a little hole on the bottom of the soul that indicated the place where the Soul was not able to to be taken away by an evil spirit or something that would be a nightmarish way of harming the child so the little moxen hole at the bottom protected the child from that and so that was a way of keeping the soul of the baby as it grew into a different stage of manhood they would get different designs and moxin as an older person you may earn the the uh the right to have a certain design knowing that you are a medic Medicine Man a shaman or a practitioner of certain things those would be indicated in your moxin finally if your moxin are beat at the very bottom the top and the bottom that means those are moxin used in burials so you hardly ever see those they’re only a limited commodity those was long ago and uh sometimes they’d make those at the last minute and quill them and later on they start beating them at the bottom so when people died they put these moxin on them finally and that’s what they’re called IAL moxin and sometimes it’s kind of a scary thing people didn’t have them around the house or in their camps or anything it was a very delicate thing to have around the house usually a message of of death uh anything else oh the the council yes very very good question you don’t have to be a full-blooded member you could be a quarter down to the bottom of the of the blood Quantum to be uh just as long as you’re enrolled an enroll member of that tribe that you can be a councilman a councilman has a different version today as it did before long ago it was leadership uh regarding wisdom to be kind to other people be helpful other people an ambassador of good faith from a religious background as well as a a warrior status today you could you could be involved in drugs you can be involved in alcohol you can be abuser of all these things you don’t have to have an education and all these things that we used to have have high value in are not applied and now we have a lot of mismanagement in our funds and of our management of our tribal our tribal duties that we should have long ago if you mismanaged anything you were taken from your camp like like that Tepee and takeen to a Little Thicket of trees over there and they would beat the living tar out of you if you mismanaged anything and they would your hands would be cut bad and have two black eyes and boy you couldn’t sit down for about a month but now today nothing happens I mean there’s a lot of mismanagement like in other places corporations are a good example of where mismanagement of funds are but that’s that’s the the the differences from long ago and today so that’s just a brief background of our ways I hate to say that but that’s the way it is in reality yes um how have the traditional animosities between tribes carried over to Modern Life um politically politically now we speak politically today before it was a animosity because we had did so much uh tear between each other I mean it wasn’t even safe to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and it wasn’t safe even for a baby to cry at night because the enemy was always there you never knew if they were there or not uh they used to put water in noses of babies when they started to cry cuz that was an indication there was a baby in that camp and they could steal that baby or the woman in there and kill the man and take whatever he had or they could take the the the horses that he had those are of high value and these are the things they had an animosity of fighting all the time back and forth and in one in one way uh my my aunt had said we were in through so much tear throughout the days and months and years of Our Lives that all the tribes are always against each other and that maybe maybe this is was a sign that we should go into a different pattern of getting along that’s why the white man came here because we was we was always in Terror whenever we did anything and you couldn’t even go out to the bathroom middle of the night without getting your head crushed by an enemy it was that dangerous at night and so those are the things that we went through you know that it would just payback payback payback all the time it was hardly a good a good way of living you know but it was a brave way of living that’s why we had some many warriors yes but we are friendly today we don’t do that no more you please comment on the role of the mate uh with your tribe the chipa Crees are they fully assimilated now the mate te the mate the mate te are they assimilated I I had did a lot of uh study and long ago they had called the mate te they had called them in in English the translation of their their of their group was known as the burnt wood wood people what that meant was the wood was burnt on the outside but inside it was white and so that’s the way they Define the the mate when you may meet a mate te they say they’re German they’re French and they’re uh uh any other tribe that’s from the western part and also Native American they’re chipa they’re cre Cabo and these are the tribes they are and so when you say they’re fully assimilated they’ve always had that trait with them to always play the fiddle and they’ve always even across in the 1800s when they come across them 18 a Plains he’d be sitting on his he’d be kneeling on a prairie and he would be praying to the in a Christian way so you could see that in 1800s most of the tribes are still uh conservative in their way their thoughts were in religion and the way they attended these these religious Services we call ceremonies but mate they they practiced Christianity at that time since they were met here in Plains so I think they’ve always been assimilated into the Western World all these all these times and they didn’t really attend too many too many Native American Events or activities or too many things that they would include themselves in but they were more into these newer newer things that are coming out yes chip tribe and then I’ve also read a lot about the L little shell yes little shell are actually uh the people that are the people from they mixed of mate and the tribe that were here the cre people that arrived and married any intermarried with different cultures around the area the people that were in cities like Helena but Great Falls and that’s what we call the little shell people I just gave definition of what they were in 1800s when they were here the red Cart People the Burntwood people there are different names for that for that group and they arrived here back in a long time ago actually they’re from the French area of the Great Lakes from Manitoba and Ontario and that way and as western expansion they came out this way and they developed different relationships as they came along and that’s where we get the little shell people yes was there an actual desire for those two tribes to kill one another or what was the was there any of this counting coup okay that was a good question uh we never invented killing we invented Ved coups like he said counting coup it was better to shame a person to death rather than to kill him by touching him while he a warrior if he touched him on a head and rode by his rode right by him while he armed with a spear and a knife and a bow and arrow and a shield and if you touched him that’s how close you came to death and he never even got to kill you well that shamed that person into being humiliated when he got back to his camp and that’s how we counted coup if you went over there and took his gun away from him that was even worse I mean this guy he practically lived out in the sticks by himself he was a shame to come back but that’s the way we had War long ago but black feet and cre were always at War and the one the one thing we always had as creep people we had arms we had uh rifles and knives that we got from the French traders in Great Lakes and they were we had a trade system going from the Great Lakes to the Plains area and we’re always ahead of them also another thing that we had we had practitioners that forecasted and also the the way of the medicine man he was he was the person that can predict danger within the next few days of the war war path that they would go on and so if it’s going to be good they would go on a story behind that is the one in h Montana South there’s a place called squab and there’s they say there’s a spirit up there and when the war path would go by a group of Warriors they would camp overnight there and if they’re going toward the area of the the black feet country they would stop there and they would pray overnight and if they heard the woman give the sign of a of a woman crying that meant they would turn back the next day and go back if the woman made a victory sign in her voice they would continue on and that mountain still stands there and they call it squab beute but because of the derogatory uh historic word for squa has been changed to a a woman some kind of woman Mountain up or something something like that but it’s been changed now but Squall in our language mean is squil that meant the woman that has power lives there in that mountain and so that’s a story behind that war and that story so uh those are the things Victory yes follow up on that question how do you account for the reports that when the Hada reportedly kidnapped Saka near the Three Forks that there was a number of that uh Shon band that were killed in that raid what would have happened there okay according to our cultural background I had said that we had it was unsafe to live in certain areas when you went Camp uh doing hunting or or certain areas of the country you were bound to be killed you’re bound to be captured you’re bound to be to be uh to be some way your health would be affected and this at this time time they were practicing raiding the camp and that was a victory when they took those horses and they took this young gdle back that was a victory and so there are probably a number of U captives there so that was counted as a victory at that time and that’s how they got they got a hold of this gal here that was Saga Goya is their is their name for that weah means woman in the Sue language and part of those tribes over there part of the suenan language a family tree of them uh again they have no such language in the Shoni language so I don’t know how that that came about where her name is sagaia there’s conflicts in that quite a bit where they use the Sue language in there to Define her we have a question back here yes we heard we heard a great deal about uh interpretation of the English to the French to the Hada to the U uh Shashi in uh leis and Clark history um I’m wondering how much uh sign language was actually used uh between uh Lis and Clark and their people and Indian tribes again a lot of these are real sketchy that was in the 1700s what we know we don’t have an oral literature of the the incidents that happened there was nobody there to record them all these were oral literature that was brought down from certain individuals to certain individuals even the documentary sometimes get questionable from Lewis and Clark when they when they indicate anything that happened a serious a certain time in that time when they’re in a certain area so sometimes there’s there’s conflicting things that happen because some tribes didn’t affiliate themselves with a certain activity that they did in their so it’s always questionable whether these stories they gave are actually true and I’m not the person that’s a historian all I can talk is about the culture that we practiced so that’s that’s a good question it should go to a very authorative person that was uh researched a lot on History the document the documents and other people’s uh stories in there but that’s that’s a good question I think I’m going to go ahead and close here because uh I think they’re having another I’d like to sit here all day and just speak with you and order some hamburgers and boney sandwiches and chips and potato salad but boy I think these guys go right on time here that’s one thing Native Americans do we’re always on Indian time I mean Indian time means whenever you’re going to be there whenever you’re going to leave that’s when we’re going to that’s when it’s over it starts so we never say yeah let’s go because we don’t have that kind of a schedule on our watch we always go on Indian time whenever you’re there yeah that’s right okay well I’m going to close here I guess that’s a conclusion I really enoy enjoyed you I hope when you leave here you take those words with you cuz you always knew them but now you know what they mean so uh whatever you do don’t head to Chicago okay thank you very much thank you once again Lloyd top Sky we appreciate you coming out and sharing your history and culture with us today our next presentation

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