ss Ss x SY Ny S _ ws x - \ ~ SASS NS SIS \\ AY NAA \ » \\ \ NK \\ AN NY RNY LAY LOAN . WQy \ A RRA \\ MA RA RY \ CK >™°#}M SOON Bip t ; j G ae Tei 1 * 4 : a lin 7 a a = Be << i . ¥ v =) 5 ; : BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 159 PLATE 1 Blackfoot Indian pony. (Photographed by Thomas Magee, ante-1910. Courtesy Museum of the Plains Indian.) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 159 THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE With Comparative Material From Other Western Tribes By JOHN C. EWERS UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 1955 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, Bureav or AmMertcan ErHno.ocy, Washington, D. C., January 18, 1954. Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manuscript entitled “The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture, with Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes,’ by John C. Ewers, and to recommend that it be published as a bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Very respectfully yours, M. W. Stiriine, Dzrector. Dr. Leonard CARMICHAEL, Secretary, Sinithsonian Institution. I ZATHSON 47 APR4 1°55 LIBRARY Kor sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office Washington 25, D. C.—Price $2.75 CONTENTS PAGE Horew ord: {2haubs aa eee lite eos cette ee = SO ee ee XI she acquisitiontomthe horse-s24-0e esse. <- SUU Ei, O07 10) AA Gene 1 (ehe northward spread of horses... ..-—-=+-. =< 22 2) Sse _Maliom 2 Sources of the horses of the Plains Indians____________________ 2 Dating the northward spread of horses among the Indians______ 3 ihe process of diffusion 22M io 2--< i225. .ceka oe ID Bee 7 Acquisition of horses by the Blackfoot.._......-._.---.-1./_ iL. 15 NiealThinvnOrses 23 ieee 23o0 Seis 2 Bee Ae es oe ee ee OVE OM 20 Blackfoot. tribalcwealth:inhorsesit/22=-<-.22 84 2108 IO 20 Wealth in horses of other Plains and Plateau tribes________________ 22 Horse wealth of individual Blackfoot Indians______________________ 28 Horse wealth of individuals in other tribes___._._..________________ 31 Ware olphorses#2. 22s 08s cee cree cetacean: SIO 33 (heslindiany ponyns Sos tee oe so Se ee eee ee Fe ethos he! 33 Hater theindian pony... UTI NO ele Ve 34 Meansjotcidentification. 2 222524. see eke c= eee ee ese eee 35 Darnlyacarerothorsestss 228625250 Soe. eee ton OE I Ol 37 Mopblings: soe Seto lees 422 SOE: ween cee ede ten cel 38 Bicketiners = 522-5 sates eceee nce ae tee eee sees =e SE Bi 39 PAStUBAGO HS 266 oa cae ces sete ee es IE RE OMA 40 Winiteni¢arel $32) 264% 2.55252 SRS SU Od Te) OIITETS EE 42 Rustlingsss 222s ss ee BR ROMA? ADNGe De a 42 Supplemental winter horse food_-__-___________ , BOOM OE 43 INighiicaress: <2) 22s s52 eee ee UD 1A) OPTIONS 44 Winter losses of horses. .-_--__----__ BE ASE TRO ETRE UN 44 Mayistormannt cas eee mck iiia aa tae tlt) 8 iy sie | yt 45 Sprinercondition® Mews hs. bod OMe. Se RG 46 Conmimonyhorse:remedies 2a essere s4 FES SSDI 2 RGra he is Se 46 Greatment.of saddle:soréssee =. 22-2. -2 52 nen = =. ROS A 47 dreatment of sorefeet=s2-.. 322222222 -.--- > SPOd BIDS 47 Treatment: of colic and distemper-_=-- -.= 222) i4UUi2 SAN Dyes 48 Rrecautionsiagainstvebills. 52234. = ck eee eee nse aeee ON 49 iwceneral tomichs 2 25k eS eek eae ls seen = Seo Ry Ma 49 ‘freatment.of broken: bones’. =: -.-<222222..2 090 BAT. 49 Treatment,of unknown illmesses.....=..==..+-2=+.=-=-2eT VOOM _ 50 ossestofvhorses ade 8 So er Ue De OME 50 osses;fromidisease: — =... 5... aul SWIG Beam ooehs 50 esses, from/animal:predatorse-.— o- -.... ek JI i Be 51 ossesifromistock-poisoning plants... ....=.+..-00V21) Seon 51 Warcvotoldshorses.. 02. =. se 2 OUI Bit ae eI 51 hlarse: breeding ere 2 took oe ek Seen BIOL 53 Importantrolevot horse breeding. _ 1s ane Tere en SiG L | 53 welectionrof: studs... 8 4.22.5) 25.0 ee a 53 Maintenancesoficolordiness/22: € 2.0 a) eRe) BNE NG Lye 54 Magical breeding formulas_________ Jie oe ce OS BRO. 55 Carezof gravidimarestand) coltsunin Je Moye) O80 My SOMO MONA | 56 Sel clin Gee eye psalm A se ye 56 LY, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 PAGE Gaining of Horses: and Tideisi== =". 39 222 nea cee ee a eee 59 Capture of wild Rorsess=< ==. 252- 42552 5 eae Bee eee ee 59 Breaking horses for riding - - - -- ------ 2 1g ee eae Pa pene SE 60 Pondvoristream: breakin Geese 61 Bogey pround breaking. =s—sseaae 2 2 eee 62 Surcingle ‘breaking 2.2) 2. S254 2s'95 2 2 See ee eee 62 Pad-saddleibreaking-- 322) 22.28 eee ee ee eee 64 Breaking horses for the) travois__...-=.----__. 4388 F Se ie ee 64 Teaching children to ride-_.2- =... _#2as3-*s Sa ees ee 65 Riding and guiding _ == S2thay ait eds ts Soe Se aes 68 Mounting:2¢ 344 spe. y4- eeeod Uy igs eee igrmgl debi afl = 68 Horse COmMMaAnGS: 2 Soe en = pe ee 69 Guiding: <2 o5.2.222:S-2.=-5 tee SS nee ee 70 Use of whip... 25-22-22. 222.5222 eee ee eee 70 Use of short/stitrups 3... see <3 55. 25sent eo eee eee 70 Ability as horsemen=; 2:23:22 we Abs ee Se ee 71 Riding ear: ..2 225-2 -- ==. satel tonite eee eee 73 Makingvof rawhide ropes=-— === === at alaghialnp © be ab ieeer eee 73 Hackamores = 2) 2222222522. s ee ee ee eee 74 Bridles. 2 2222-2 see ees Sepak 282 one ae ee oe eee 75 Comparative data.on bridles. _ = --* 4. es eee Eel eh hes 78 Woariate. 2-52. 2 ae a ee eee eee 79 Theidragging line= 2252222 222 eet 2 eee eee 80 ror ta (0 Ler o eaeg Wee) Co ae A en a, EE 225, et eas ieee ae ee 81 Saddiewmakine 2 2.284.223. $28 2 ee 81 The padisad les 8 Vek. koe ss al Se eS eee 81 Distribution, of the pad saddle--).=- = =---- =) =. ae eee 83 Pad saddle variants among the Blackfoot____--_-_-------- 85 The “wood saddle” 2: 2-252 5. Sah pee ae eee eee 85 Distribution of the, ““wood (saddle’)—--=- = =. ees eee = 89 The “prairie chicken snare saddle!)=2 =: sae 2b Ss See ee 91 Distribution of the “prairie chicken snare saddle” _______- 92 Stirrupse cf oo oe BS ee ee eee ee ele ye 93 Use of white men’s saddles and accessories___----------------- 93 paddle blankets] = 2222-522 Je Lueee les We Se Se eee eee 94 Saddle housings... L25-c20. 5224655 -- 46 eee 95 Martingales. and cruppers: .- 22. =s2Nasie). Be ee ere ee ee 95 Wihips_ io. 2.082 shee en Pe Sea ee ee 97 Horse decorations. -2'2.2. 2b 542552. 2b2. 24S eee ee = 99 Head omaments) 22224 «242 322 = 5 eee ae a eee Pee 99 Body paint=<. 2-2-2. -_ 55... see eae ZED 100 Mane and: tail ornaments. 2. =<. 2-2 oe ee 100 Decorationof womens horses. — 2-2 ee ee 101 The travois and transport gear______-___-__- phi. ce fg inden papery) athe Eo 102 The horse travois._. -- 22.2. 2-23 ee ee Ae ee 102 Horse travois construction... 22=....2-25--2-— = 358 eee 103 TravOis ACCSSOTICS.... =.= = 22 oe oe eee eee 105 Travois adjustment and repair: - «=! 4sse0 Sead ee Seer eee: 105 Care of the travois in camp_-_______-_------ 22.2 ete Mee es Rpnio®, 106 Survival of the horse tray.ois. = — =~ - 52.2 eee ere eee 106 The lodgepole hitehu-_...... 2.2. L. 22.22 cep ee ee 107 Distribution of the travois and methods of pole transport-_----- 108 CONTENTS The travois and transport gear—Continued Principal items of luggage carried by pack animals_________________ Thespariiochet ie sess oo et en Re EO Ms Antiquity ofthe parileche 2 VP AOC Ge O8? IS Vos he IN ANS YRC8 Vos 01]. 0) Care ofA ie i ee On ees ee ea i a Principal items of luggage transported by riding horses_____________ athe double sad dle ban nn sn en DEMS NU Soe AS Rectangular rawhide saddlebags- 2 222 222) SY BL Cylindrical rawhide saddlebags-.----- + - n O S ‘Rie horse: inveampimovements. = 0.422 OUT Ae Oh 20 ON EEN Te ihe, Blackfoot Country 22 io ail Salas SUM 20 BS ODL oA EY The Blackfoot yearly round Rheawinterxcampes -00R. 202s GP eel A en ne BW, PS OM Spring hunting and collecting season_______________________-- Summer hunting and Sun Dance season______ ___ - Fall hunting and collecting season Movement of a Blackfoot band camp Preparation for movement Ra ckin epee ee eee re RE At Raekinget he lod Ge apse i Be bade Le s Packing household furniture____________- IPA CKAIN Get 0 Csaba eee pent ania Lek oe tet af Aca WE TE cy (Clothing ess Ai Bed pa nee ethene tee en eh a eae AE eet Household utensils. ee A ie sm I Society and medicine paraphernalia___... 20-2228! Lee Wieaponst ee). 8 Ee i @ NGO ar poe ere ee UO, £74 Diet PRP EN OLE Weightsand- loads...-<. 2... POT HOMNGES BO. CELE Hy 4 ON Horse needs for the average family__________________________ Moving camp on the part of a wealthy family_________________ Moving camp on the part of a poor family___-________________ Comparative data on the poor in horses_________________- Formations on the march Themnoon' stop for lunehse 293 _AMELIOONE NEON 86a. TAVIS Crossing streams: en routes 2.2222.) JU) 2 eS eee 10 eno Stops en route because of rain__________ < BOITIAD BO AS jf ae Arrival at nighticamp 2 seee ~-< eee es oe SEI A OPE Making eamp without wood or water__~-__.-_-____2 2 2 et Le Distances. traveled: perday 222222. 2 2 DAE ous Fh Boek, ‘he: horse anshungingas_ = =e te ee ee OU ROW Eh 19 Be Buifaloun the Blackfoot: Country =< ~<—< es 2 iene vetrigh esis arise ~ ; inet Oe Swi nteukaa be ae ¥ Weep laren "sale & ‘ares py, A ole bs ‘ Arata B64 any ia “Ty ne inp Oe be ‘ r AMM Tick ° ives =; lege ie i, te; Jt aaa . < adi 7 : > . ayes heen o : verti oe - ria) > aE Ske | ; & Thy - a aie ¢ ae hes ; (abe OF) : é ¥ FY Y 4 iy wy I i : ' Garais THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE WITH COMPARATIVE MATERIAL FROM OTHER WESTERN TRIBES By Joun C. Ewers THE ACQUISITION OF THE HORSE Clark Wissler (1927, p. 154) has named the period 1540 to 1880 in the history of the Indian tribes of the Great Plains “the Horse Culture Period.” This period can be defined more accurately and meaning- fully in cultural than in temporal terms. Among all the tribes of the area it began much later than 1540. With some tribes it ended before 1880. Yet for each Plains Indian tribe the Horse Culture Period spanned the years between the acquisition and first use of horses and the extermination of the economically important buffalo in the region in which that tribe lived. Anthropologists and historians have been intrigued by the problem of the diffusion of the European horse among the Plains Indians. It is well known that many tribes began to acquire horses before their first recorded contacts with white men. Paucity of documentation has given rise to much speculation as to the sources of the horses dif- fused to these tribes, the date when the first Plains Indians acquired horses, the rate of diffusion from tribe to tribe, and the conditions under which the spread took place. The three Blackfoot tribes of the northwestern Plains, the Piegan, Blood, and North Blackfoot, were among those tribes that possessed horses when first met by literate white men. To view their acquisi- tion in proper historical and cultural perspective it is necessary to con- sider the larger problem of the diffusion of horses to the northern Plains and Plateau tribes. Critical study of this problem dates from Wissler’s paper, entitled “The Influence of the Horse in the Develop- ment of Plains Culture,” published in the American Anthropologist (Wissler, 1914). That stimulating, pioneer effort encouraged fur- ther study of the problem. Of the more recent contributions two papers by Francis Haines (1938, a and b), based to a considerable extent upon data unavailable to Wissler a quarter of a century earlier, have been most influential in revising the thinking of students of this problem. 287944—55 2 aL 2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 THE NORTHWARD SPREAD OF HORSES SOURCES OF THE HORSES OF THE PLAINS INDIANS Haines’ major contributions were to point out that the Plains Indians acquired their first horses from a different source and at a considerably later date than Wissler had considered probable. Wissler gave credence to the theory that the first horses obtained by Plains Indians were animals lost or abandoned by the Spanish explor- ing expeditions led by De Soto and Coronado in 1541 (Wissler, 1914, pp. 9-10). The historian Walter P. Webb, in “The Great Plains,” an important regional history published 17 years later, acknowledged his debt to Wissler in his acceptance of this theory (Webb, 1931, p. 57). However, another historian, Morris Bishop, who had made a critical study of early Spanish explorations, termed this theory, “a pretty legend” (Bishop, 1933, p. 81). Haines virtually laid the old theory to rest. After a careful review of the evidence he concluded that “the chances of strays from the horse herds of either De Soto or Coronado having furnished the horses of the Plains Indians is so remote that it should be discarded” (Haines, 1938 a, p. 117). This conclusion has been supported by more recent scholarship. John R. Swanton, who has been a thorough student of the De Soto Expedition over a period of years, concurred in Haines’ interpretation of the De Soto evidence (Swanton, 1939, pp. 170-171). Arthur S. Aiton, in publishing Coronado’s Compostela muster roll, commented significantly, “Five hundred and fifty-eight horses, two of them mares, are accounted for in the muster. The presence and separate listing of only two mares suggests that we may have been credulous in the belief that stray horses from the Coronado expedition stocked the western plains with their first horses.” Furthermore, he found no record of the loss of either mare during Coronado’s expedition to the Plains (Aiton, 1939, pp. 556-570). Herbert E. Bolton, profound student of early Spanish explorations in the Southwest, has pointed out that even though Coronado may have taken some mares to the Plains which had not been listed in the Compostela roll, the biological possibility of strays from this expedition having stocked the Plains with Spanish horses was slight. He also noted the lack of any men- tion of encounters with stray horses or mounted Indians in the accounts of Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains in the later years of the 16th and early years of the 17th century (Bolton, 1949, pp. 68-69, 400). Exploring the alternatives, Haines found that the early 17th-century Spanish stock-raising settlements of the Southwest, particularly those in the neighborhood of Santa Fe, furnished “just the items necessary Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 3 to encourage the adoption of horses by the Indians to the east— friendly contact through trade, ample supply of horses, and examples of the advantages of the new servants” (Haines, 1938 a, p. 117). DATING THE NORTHWARD SPREAD OF HORSES AMONG THE INDIANS Different concepts of the sources of the horses of the Plains Indians led to very different interpretations of the rate of their diffusion among these tribes. Wissler’s assumption that horses were available to the Plains Indians as early as 1541, caused him to consider it pos- sikle that they might have spread northward during the remainder of that century so rapidly that they could have reached the Crow and Blackfoot on the headwaters of the Missouri as early as 1600 (Wissler, 1914, p.10). Haines, however, found “the available evidence indicates that the Plains Indians began acquiring horses some time after 1600, the center of distribution being Santa Fe. This development pro- ceeded rather slowly ; none of the tribes becoming horse Indians before 1630, and probably not until 1650” (Haines, 1988 a, p. 117). The logical and historical soundness of Haines’ position has been acknowl- edged by more recent students of the problem (Wyman, 1945, pp. 538-55; Mishkin, 1940, pp. 5-6; Denhardt, 1947, p. 103. Acceptance of this position is also implied in Bolton, 1949, p. 400). In tracing the northward spread of horses from the Southwest to the Plains and Plateau tribes we must acknowledge the meagerness of the historical data bearing on this movement. Wissler logically assumed that “those to get them first would be the Ute, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa and Caddo” (Wissler, 1914, p. 2). If we exclude the Comanche, this assumption seems to be in accord with more recent findings. Horses were first diffused northward and eastward to those tribes on the periphery of the Spanish settlements of the Southwest. Marvin Opler found in Southern Ute traditions a sug- gestion that those Indians acquired horses from the Spanish “probably around 1640” (Linton, 1940, pp. 156-157, 171). Spanish records, dated 1659, reported Apache raids on the ranch stock of the settlements which continued into the next decade. The Apache carried off as many as 800 head of livestock in a single raid. At the same time the Apache engaged in an intermittent exchange of slaves for horses with the Pueblo Indians (Scholes, 1937, pp. 150, 163, 398-399). The French explorer La Salle heard that the Gattacka (Kiowa-Apache) and Manrhoat (Kiowa) were trading horses to the Wichita or Pawnee in 1682. He believed the animals had been stolen from the Spaniards of New Mexico (Margry, 1876-86, vol. 2, pp. 201-202). In 1690, Tonti found the Cadodaquis on Red River in possession of about 30 horses, which the Indians called cavalis, an apparent derivation from the 4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 Spanish “caballos.” While among the Naouadiché, another Caddoan tribe, farther south, he found horses “very common,” stating “there is not a cabin which has not four or five” (Cox, 1905, pp. 44-50). Data on the spread of the horse northward over the Plains in the late years of the 17th century are sparse. In 1680, Oto Indians who visited La Salle at Fort Crévecoeur (near present Peoria, Ill.) brought with them a piebald horse taken from some Spaniards they had killed (Pease and Werner, 1934 a, p.4). Deliette reported that prior to 1700 the Pawnee and Wichita obtained branded Spanish horses “of which they make use sometimes to pursue the buffalo in the hunt” (Pease and Werner, 1934 b, p. 388). In the summer of 1700, Father Gabriel Marest included Missouri, Kansa, and Ponca, along with the Pawnee and Wichita, as possessors of Spanish horses (Garraghan, 1927, p. 312). These brief references suggest that by the end of the century most and probably all Plains Indian tribes living south of the Platte River had gained some familiarity with horses. Nevertheless, testi- mony, of the French explorers La Harpe, Du Tisne, and Bourgmont (Marery, 1886, vol. 6) in the first quarter of the 18th century indicates that horses still were scarce among the tribes living eastward of the Apache and northward of the Caddo. In 1705, the Comanche, an offshoot of the Wyoming Shoshoni, first were seen on the New Mexican frontier. In company with lnquisti- cally related Ute, they came to beg for peace, but on their departure stole horses from the settlements (Thomas, 1935, p. 105). In succeed- ing years they launched repeated bold attacks upon New Mexico, riding off with horses and with goods intended by the Spanish for trade with the Apache living northeastward of the Rio Grande Pueblos. Comanche thefts were extended to the Apache villages as well. Specific mention was made in Spanish records of one raid in which 8 Comanche and Ute Indians ran off 20 horses and a colt from an Apache rancheria in 1719. At that very time Governor Valverde was leading a punitive expedition against the troublesome Comanche (ibid., pp. 105-109, 122). Plains tribes northeast of the Black Hills were met by white traders before they acquired horses. When La Vérendrye accompanied an Assiniboin trading party to the Mandan villages on the Missouri in 1738, those Assiniboin had no horses. La Vérendrye made no mention of any horses among the Mandan. However, he was told that the Arikara, northernmost of the Caddoan-speaking peoples, living south of the Mandan on the Missouri, owned horses, as did nomadic tribes living southwestward toward and beyond the Black Hills (La Véren- drye, 1927, pp. 108, 337). Two Frenchmen, left by La Vérendrye at the Mandan villages through the summer of 1739, witnessed the visit of horse-using tribes to the Mandan for trading purposes (ibid., pp. Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 5 366-368). These tribes cannot be identified with certainty. However, the two Frenchmen learned that they feared the “Snake” Indians. Therefore, it seems improbable these people were Shoshoni or their Comanche kinsmen. They may have been the Kiowa and Kiowa Apache, who were mentioned by La Salle as actively engaged in the northward diffusion of horses a half century earlier, and who were known to have traded horses to the horticultural peoples on the Missouri in later years. In 1741, La Vérendrye’s son took two horses with him on his return from the Mandan villages (ibid., p. 108, 387). This event seems to have marked the beginning of the trade in horses from nomadic tribes southwest of the Missouri, through the Mandan to the peoples north and east of them. Hendry (1907, pp. 334-335) traveled with an As- siniboin trading party in 1754, which employed horses for packing but not for riding. Twelve years later the elder Henry (1809, pp. 275- 289) saw horses in some numbers among the Assiniboin and mentioned their use in mounted warfare. Umfreville reported (in 1789) “it is but lately that they [horses] have become common among the Nehe- thawa [Cree] Indians” (Umfreville, 1790, p. 189). The French trader Jacques d’Eglise, in 1792, saw horses equipped with Mexican saddles and bridles among the Mandan in the first description of that tribe after the visits of the La Vérendryes a half century earlier (Nasitir, 1927, p. 58). It is most probable that a trickle of trade in Spanish horses through the Mandan to the Assiniboin and Plains Cree existed throughout the last half of the 18th century. The third quarter of the century witnessed a rapid expansion of the horse frontier among tribes living to the eastward of the Missouri. Tn 1768 Carver (1838, p. 188) found no horses among the Dakota of the Upper Mississippi, and placed the frontier of horse-using tribes some distance to the westward of them. Yet by 1773 Peter Pond saw Spanish horses among the Sauk on the Wisconsin River. ‘Two years later he observed that the Yankton Dakota had “a Grate Number of Horses” which they used for hunting buffalo and carrying baggage (Pond, 1908, pp. 335, 353). Since the Yankton probably obtained their horses from the Teton, Hyde’s 1760 estimate of the date of Teton Dakota acquisition of horses appears reasonable (Hyde, 1957, pp. 16, 18,68). According to Teton tradition, they acquired their first horses from the Arikara on the Missouri. It was probably during the third quarter of the 18th century that the Cheyenne began to acquire horses also (Jablow, 1951, p. 10). At the close of the 18th century the Red River marked the north- eastern boundary of Plains Indian horse culture. In 1798, David Thompson noted that the Ojibwa east of that river had no horses (Thompson, 1916, p. 246). Two years thereafter Alexander Henry 6 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY {Bull. 158 the younger purchased two horses from visiting Indians who lived on the Assiniboin River to the west, and commented significantly, “Those were the first and only two horses we had on Red river; the Saulteurs had none, but always used canoes” (Henry and Thompson, 1897, vol. 1,p.47). In January, 1806, Zebulon Pike observed that traders at the Northwest Company post on Lac de Sable, near the Mississippi, had “horses they procured from Red river of the Indians” (Pike, 1810, p. 60). In the summer of that year Henry encountered nine lodges of canoe-using Ojibwa at the forks of Scratching River in present south- eastern Manitoba, hunting buffalo. ‘They owned some horses and were planning to go to the Missouri to purchase more (Henry and Thomp- son, 1897, vol. 1, p. 286). These were the Plains Ojibwa in process of transition from woodland canoemen to Plains Indian horsemen. By 1805 horses had also been diffused far to the northwest in larger numbers. The Lewis and Clark Expedition established first recorded white contact with the Plateau tribes in 1805-06. On their return from the Pacific coast they were able to purchase four horses from Skilloot Indians at the Dalles, paying twice as much for them as they had paid for horses obtained from Shoshoni and Flathead on their outward journey (Coues, 1893, vol. 2, pp. 954-955). As they moved eastward they found horses more plentiful, indicating that the Dalles was near the northwestern limit of horse diffusion at that time. Lewis and Clark were impressed with the large numbers of horses owned by many Plateau tribes. Yet the Lemhi Shoshoni told them of related peoples living to the southwest of them (probably Ute) “where horses are much more abundant than they are here” (Coues, 1893, vol. 2, p. 569). The explorers found Spanish riding gear and branded mules among the Shoshoni. They believed these animals came from the Spanish settlements, which the Indians reported to be but 8 to 10 days’ journey southward (Coues, 1898, vol. 2, p. 559; Ordway, 1916, p. 268). Northern Shoshoni tradition claims that their kinsmen, the Co- manche, furnished them their first horses (Clark, 1885, p. 338; Shim- kin, 1938, p. 415). If we may credit this tradition, it seems possible these Shoshoni may have begun to acquire horses a few years after Comanche raids were launched on the New Mexican settlements in 1705. It is probable, too, that the Ute of western Colorado served as intermediaries through whom Spanish horses passed northward to the Shoshoni during the 18th century (Steward, 1938, p. 201). How- ever, these movements cannot be historically documented. Nevertheless, the sizable herds of horses seen among the Lemhi Shoshoni and their neighbors by Lewis and Clark in 1805, presuppose an extended period of horse diffusion on a considerable scale toward the Northwest prior to that date. Haines (1938 b, p. 486) has postu- lated a route of diffusion west of the Continental Divide from Santa Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE / Fe to the Snake River by way of the headwaters of the Colorado, the Grand, and Green Rivers. This was the most direct route to the Northwest from New Mexico. We may note, also, that it passed through the country of Shoshonean tribes offering a peaceful highway for Comanche and Ute such as was unavailable on the western Plains, infested as that region was with hostile Apache and Kiowa. There was little incentive to divert horses westward from that route, as the Great Basin afforded inadequate pasturage for horses. Through the Northern Shoshoni, horses were distributed to the Plateau tribes. Tribal traditions of the Flathead and Nez Percé credit the Shoshoni with furnishing them their first mounts (Turney- High, 1937, p. 106; Haines, 1939, p. 19). The Coeur d’Alene, Pend @Orielle, Kalispel, Spokan, Colville, and Cayuse tribes of the north- western Plateau obtained their first horses either directly from the Shoshoni or indirectly from tribes previously supplied by Shoshoni (Teit, 1930, p. 351). Although a Crow tradition recorded by Bradley (1928, p. 298) refers to their acquisition of horses from the Nez Percé, it seems more probable that the first horses obtained by the Crow came from the Comanche (Morgan, MS., bk. 9, p. 12). THE PROCESS OF DIFFUSION Previous writers have been more concerned with the historical prob- lem of when the Plains Indians obtained horses than with the cultural problem of how horses were diffused. Certainly the paucity of 18th century documentation sheds little light on the diffusion process. How- ever, when we add to this documentation the information in the litera- ture of the first decade of the 19th century, we find much that is helpful in seeking an explanation of this process. At the beginning of the 19th century two main routes for the diffu- sion of horses to the tribes of the northern Plains were observable. One route led from the Upper Yellowstone eastward to the Hidatsa and Mandan villages on the Missouri. The Crow Indians of the Middle Yellowstone served as intermediaries in a flourishing trade in horses and mules, securing large numbers of these animals from the Flathead, Shoshoni, and probably also the Nez Percé on the Upper Yellowstone in exchange for objects of Kuropean manufacture. At the Mandan and Hidatsa villages they disposed of some of these horses and mules, at double their purchase value, in exchange for the European-made objects desired for their own use and eagerly sought by the far-off Flathead and Shoshoni. Thus tribes of the Upper Yellowstone and Plateau began to receive supplies of knives, axes, brass kettles, metal awls, bracelets of iron and brass, a few but- tons worn as hair ornaments, some long metal lance heads, arrowheads of iron and brass, and a few fusils of Northwest Company trade type, 8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 before their first direct contacts with white traders in their own terri- tories. Thus also, horn bows and possibly other products of the western Indians reached the village tribes on the Missouri, and bridle bits and trade blankets of Spanish origin arrived at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages by a Jong and circuitous route. On their summer trading visits to the Mandan and Hidatsa the Crow also exchanged products of the chase (dried meat, robes, leggings, shirts, and skin lodges) for corn, pumpkins, and tobacco of the villagers. In 1805, the Northwest Company trader Larocque, the first white man to spend a season with the Crow, reported that this trade was well-organized (Larocque, 1910, pp. 22, 64, 66, 71-72). This trade was also noted by Lewis and Clark (Coues, 1893, vol. 1, pp. 198-199; vol. 2, pp. 498, 554, 563), Henry (Henry and Thompson, 1897, vol. 1, pp. 398-399), Mackenzie (1889, p. 346), and Tabeau (1939, pp. 160-161) 1 We cannot be sure how long this trade was in existence before the opening of the 19th century. However, the experienced fur trader Robert Meldrum, who probably knew the Crow Indians better than any other white man of his time, told Lewis Henry Morgan that when he first went among the Crow (1827) old people of that tribe told him they “saw the first horses ever brought into their country,” and that they obtained these horses from the Comanche. Morgan estimated, “This would make it about 100 years ago that they first obtained the horse,” 1. e. ca. 1762 (Morgan, MS., bk. 9, p. 12). Denig (1953, p. 19) and Bradley (1896, p. 179) independently dated the separation of the Crow from the Hidatsa about the year 1776 or a few years earlier. It is probable that the Crow Indians did not become actively engaged in this trade until they had acquired enough horses to make it practical for them to leave the Hidatsa and become nomadic hunters. The other major route by which horses were diffused northward to the tribes of the northern Plains at the beginning of the 19th century I assume to have been an older one, and probably the route followed by the Comanche themselves in supplying the Crow with their first horses. It led from the Spanish settlements of New Mexico and Texas to the vicinity of the Black Hills in South Dakota via the western High Plains, thence eastward and northeastward to the Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan villages on the Missouri. The important middle- men in this trade at the beginning of the 19th century were the nomadic Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. Antoine Tabeau, a French trader from St. Louis, who was among the Arikara in 1803-4, was told that prior to that time the Arikara were accustomed to transport tobacco, maize, and goods of European 1 Mackenzie (1889, p. 346), reported that 250 horses and 200 guns with 100 rounds of ammunition for each were exchanged in the Crow-Hidatsa trade of June, 1805. Twelve lodges of Shoshoni, comprising the remnant of a tribe that had been destroyed, accom- panied the Crow trading party that summer (Larocque, 1910, pp. 22, 73). Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 8) manufacture “to the foot of the Black Hills’ where they met the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne in a trading fair. There they secured dressed deerskins, porcupine-quill- decorated shirts of antelopeskin, moccasins, quantities of dried meat, and prairie turnip flour in exchange for their wares. Coincident with that trade was the barter of European firearms for horses, which Vabeau described : The horse is the most important article of their trade with the Ricaras. Most frequently it is given as a present: but, according to their manner, that is to say, it is recalled when the tender in exchange does not please. This is an understood restriction. This present is paid ordinarily with a gun, a hundred charges of powder and balls, a knife and other trifles. [Tabeau, 1939, p. 158.] Tabeau was told that the nomadic traders obtained their horses directly from the Spaniards at “St. Antonio or Santa Fe,” either buy- ing them at low prices or stealing them, at their discretion (ibid., pp. 154-158). Lewis and Clark made brief mention of Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, and possibly some Comanche as wandering tribes who “raise a great num- ber of horses, which they barter to the Ricaras, Mandans &c. for articles of European manufactory” (Coues, 1893, vol. 1, pp. 58-59). In the summer of 1806, Henry accompanied the Hidatsa on a visit to the Cheyenne to trade guns and ammunition (then scarce among the Cheyenne) for fine horses (Henry and Thompson, 1897, vol. 1, pp. 567-393). : Although this north-south trade route may have been employed for the northward diffusion of horses for several decades before the west- east trade route (previously described) was opened, it is most probable that the Arapaho and Cheyenne were not involved in it as inter- mediaries before their abandonment of the sedentary horticultural life in favor of a nomadic existence. Cheyenne conversion to nomad- ism probably began no earlier than 1750, and some villages of that tribe clung to the horticultural life until after 1790 (Strong, 1940, pp. 359, 371; Trudeau, 1921, pp. 165-167). According to Arapaho tradition that tribe also made the transition from sedentary to nomadic life (Elkin zm Linton, 1940, p. 207). Presumably Arapaho conversion to nomadism did not long antedate that of the Cheyenne. Of the nomadic tribes actively engaged in supplying horses to the village tribes on the Missouri by the northward route in 1804, this leaves only the Kiowa-Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche as probable initiators of this trade. Since the Comanche are credited with supplying horses to their kinsmen, the Northern Shoshoni, in the 18th century, it is most probable that the Kiowa-Apache and Kiowa played more im- portant roles in the early trade in horses with the village tribes of the Missouri. 10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 The Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa villages served as foci for the further diffusion of horses to the tribes dwelling east and north of that river at the beginning of the 19th century. In late summer the nomadic Teton Dakota obtained horses, mules, corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco from the Arikara in exchange for products and byproducts of the hunt and European trade goods. Each spring the Teton met their Dakota relatives, the Yankton, Yanktonai, and Eastern Dakota at a great trading fair on the James River in present South Dakota, where they bartered some of the horses received from the Arikara, to- gether with buffaloskin lodges, buffalo robes, and shirts and leggings of antelopeskin, with other Dakota tribes for the materials of the lat- ter’s country (walnut bows and red stone pipes are specifically men- tioned), and European manufactured goods (guns and kettles are named) which those tribes obtained from white traders on the St. Peters (Minnesota) and Des Moines Rivers. Tabeau (1939, pp. 121, 131) reported that this Sioux trading fair sometimes attracted as many as 1,000 to 1,200 tents, housing about 3,000 men bearing arms. Lewis and Clark made repeated mention of this trade (Coues, 1893, vol. 1, pp. 95, 99, 100, 144, 217). They regarded it of special significance because it made the powerful Teton Dakota independent of white traders on the Missouri and hostile to the extension of the trade from St. Louis up the Missouri which would serve only to place deadly fire- arms in the hands of their enemies. From the Mandan and Hidatsa villages horses passed to the Assini- boin, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa of northern North Dakota and southern Canada. The actual trading took place at the villages of the horticultural tribes, during periodic visits from the nomadic ones. Trudeau, in 1796, told of the Assiniboin obtaining horses, corn, and tobacco from the Mandan and Hidatsa for guns and other merchandise (Trudeau, 1921, p. 173). Tabeau (1939, p. 161) and Lewis and Clark (Coues, 1893, vol. 1, p. 195) referred to the exchange of horses and agricultural products of the Mandan and Hidatsa for the “merchan- dise” (arms and ammunition were named) of the Assiniboin and Plains Cree. The Mandan and Hidatsa also served as bases for the horse supply of white traders operating in the country north and east of them. Lewis and Clark’s statement that Mr. Henderson of the Hudson’s Bay Company came to the Hidatsa villages in December 1804, with tobacco, beads, and other merchandise to trade for furs, and ‘“‘a few guns which are to be exchanged for horses” is significant of the preferred position given to both guns and horses in this trade (Coues, 1898, vol. 1, p. 207). On the map (fig. 1) T have summarized graphically the foregoing data on trade routes employed in the diffusion of horses northward to the majority of the Plains Indian tribes dwelling north of the Platte River at the beginning of the 19th century. Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 11 A study of this map in conjunction with the preceding text seems to justify some conclusions relative to the pattern of this diffusion. First, I am impressed with the fact that the trade in horses on the northern Plains at that time was almost without exception a trade be- peo OnEIRLES i an ‘ eo, AX aN at KIOWA-APACHE ae KIOWA rss | TRADE “HORSES TO THE NORTHERN PLAINS BEFORE 1805 enema =DOCUMENTED ROUTES wee HYPOTHETICAL ROUTES OIFFUSION CENTERS FiecurRE 1.—Map showing trade in horses to the northern Plains before 1805. SAN, ANTONIO tween nomadic and horticultural peoples, and that this horse trade was coincident with the exchange of products of the hunt for agri- cultural produce on the part of these same tribes. This barter between hunting and gardening peoples enabled each group to supple- ment its own economy with the products of the other’s labors. There 12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 was little incentive for trade between two horticultural tribes or be- tween two hunting peoples, as neither possessed an abundance of desirable products which the other did not have. However, the natural environment of the western Plateau yielded wild foods and other natural resources which were not found on the Plains. Therefore, the nomadic Plateau tribes stood in much the same desirable trading rela- tionship to the Plains Indian nomads as did the gardening peoples of -he Plains. So we find that horses were diffused from the Flathead to the nomadic Crow, to the horticultural Hidatsa and Mandan, to the nomadic Assiniboin, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa, with the same alternate rhythm as occurred in the northward progression of horses from the Spanish settlements to the nomadic Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, to the horticultural Arikara, to the nomadic Teton Dakota, to the horticultural Eastern Dakota. There is good evidence that the pattern of trade in the respective products of their different economies between gardening and nomadic tribes was an old one in the Plains, and that it antedated the introduc- tion of the horse into the area. Definite references to the trade of Plains Indians in pre-horse days reveal the pattern. The Coronado expedition in 1541 observed that the nomadic Querechos and Teyas of the southwestern Plains— . . . follow the cows, hunting them and tanning the skins to take to the settle- ments in the winter to sell, since they go there to pass the winter, each company going to those which are nearest, some to the settlement of Cicuye, others toward Quivera, and others to the settlements situated in the direction of Florida . . They have no other settlement or location than comes from travelling around with the cows ... They exchange some cloaks with the natives of the river for corn. [Winship, 1896, pp. 527-528.] In the fall of 1599, Vicente de Saldivar Mendoca met a roving band of Plains Indians not far from the Canadian River— . . coming from trading with the Picuries and Taos, populous pueblos of this New Mexico. where they sell meat, hides, tallow, suet, and sait in exchange for cotton blankets, pottery, maize, and some small green stones which they use. [Bolton, 1916, p. 226.] The two Frenchmen left at the Mandan villages by La Vérendrye in 1739, reported the existence of a similar trade in words suggesting that it had been active for a period of years: . every year, in the beginning of June, there arrive at the great fort on the bank of the river of the Mandan, several savage tribes which use horses and carry on trade with them; that they bring dressed skins trimmed and orna- mented with plumage and porcupine quills, painted in various colors, also white buffalo skins, and that the Mandan give them in exchange grain and beans, of which they have ample supply. Last spring two hundred lodges of them came; sometimes even more come; they are not all of the same tribe but some of them are only allies. [La Vérendrye, 1927, pp. 366-367.] Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 13 Undoubtedly some of the articles received by the Mandan in this trade were passed along to the Assiniboin. In 1738, La Vérendrye himself had found that the Mandan offered not only grains and tobacco, but also colored buffalo robes, deerskins and buckskins care- fully dressed and ornamented with fur and feathers, painted feathers and furs, worked garters, headbands, and girdles to the Assiniboin in return for guns, powder, balls, axes, knives, kettles, and awls of European manufacture (ibid., pp. 325, 832). Horses do not appear to have been articles of trade at the Mandan villages at that time, but it is clear that the Assiniboin middlemen, operating far in advance of white traders, were offering to the Mandan firearms and ammuni- tion as well as other trade goods obtained from Whites. It is necessary to consider the diffusion of firearms to the Plains Indians as a factor related to and influencing the routes of trade fol- lowed in the northward diffusion of horses. If there was any pos- session as keenly sought by the historic Plains Indians as was the horse, it was the gun. As much as these Indians wanted the rapid mobility afforded by the horse, they sought the deadly firepower pro- vided by the gun. Any tribe possessing either without the other was at a distinct disadvantage in opposition to an enemy owning both. British and French traders approaching the Plains from the north and east supplied guns to Indians. However, Spanish policy strictly prohibited the trading of firearms and ammunition to the natives. This placed those tribes in early contact with the British and French traders in an advantageous trading position. Having obtained fire- arms and ammunition directly from Europeans they were able to act as middlemen in bartering some of these highly desirable weapons with distant tribes that had as yet no direct contacts with white traders. In the middle of the 18th century the village tribes of the Upper Missouri (Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa) were situated in a most admirable position for trading both to the northeast and the south- west. It was at those villages that the northeastward-moving frontier of the horse met the southwestward-moving frontier of the gun. Indians learned to equate guns and horses as standards of value, and a mutually profitable trade ensued by which the armed tribes of the Northeast secured mounts and the mounted tribes of the South and West secured firearms. Undoubtedly the demand for both firearms and horses far exceeded the supply. The need on the part of those indians who received firearms for ammunition, which they could not make themselves, also helped to perpetuate this trade. At the be- ginning of the 19th century (as indicated by the data quoted from Tabeau) firearms still were the most desired articles sought in ex- change for horses by those tribes which had access to considerable 14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 numbers of the latter, although canny horse traders then insisted that ammunition and some other articles be thrown into the scale to seal the bargain. So it was that during the 18th century a trade in Spanish horses for French and British firearms grew up alongside the earlier pat- tern of exchange of products between horticultural and nomadic hunting tribes of the region. The trade in horses, therefore, appears to have been an historic elaboration of a prehistoric trade pattern among the Plains Indians. Another aspect of this trade is worthy of note as a factor determin- ing the direction of flow in the diffusion of horses. All other factors being equal, the nomadic tribes preferred to trade with horticultural peoples with whom they were closely related linguistically, if not bio- logically as well. Thus Crow traded primarily with Hidatsa, Teton with other Dakota groups, and Comanche and Ute with the North- ern Shoshoni. It may well have been the attraction of European fire- arms that caused the Comanche to divert their trade to the unrelated horticultural peoples of the Missouri several decades after they had be- gun supplying horses to the Shoshoni. Recently Denhardt has made a further significant observation : ... that the natives obtained their original horses, and always by far the greatest number, from the Spaniards or neighboring tribes and not from the wild herds. The Indians had mounts by the time the wild herds dotted the plains, and always preferred domesticated animals to the mestenos. Mustangs were hard to catch, and once caught, harder to tame. [Denhardt, 1947, pp. 103- 104.] Certainly the lack of references to the capture of wild horses by the Indians of the northern Plains in the literature prior to 1800, serves to support this observation and to suggest that the wild herds furnished a negligible source of horses for those tribes prior to that time. But what of theft as a factor in the northward spread of horses? Certainly a considerable number of the horses that reached the north- ern tribes prior to 1800 were animals stolen from Spanish, Pueblo, or Apache settlements by intermediary nomads. It is also true that in- tertribal theft of horses among the northern tribes occurred prior to that time. Nevertheless, and some native traditions to the contrary, it is hardly credible that any northern tribes obtained their first horses by stealing the mounts of neighboring tribes who had acquired horses at a somewhat earlier date. I believe peaceful contact was a neces- sary condition of initial horse diffusion, in order that some members of the pedestrian tribe might learn to overcome their initial fear of horses and learn to ride and manage those lively animals. The pre- existing pattern of trade furnished the most important medium of peaceful contacts and of initial diffusion of horses. The fact that such trade supplied inadequate numbers of horses to meet the needs Lwers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 15 of Indians who had gained some knowledge of handling them and a realization of the superiority of their use over foot travel and trans- port of camp equipment, encouraged intertribal theft. Actually there need not have been any prolonged interval between a tribe’s first acquisition of horses and its initiation of horse-raiding operations. Some tribes may have begun raiding for horses within a decade after they acquired their first animals by peaceful means. ACQUISITION OF HORSES BY THE BLACKFOOT With this background let us consider the acquisition of the horse by the Blackfoot tribes. I have omitted these tribes from the previous discussion in order to point out the unique factors involved in Black- foot acquisition in greater detail. Prior to the publication of “David Thompson’s Narrative” in 1916, it was the practice for students to estimate the date of Blackfoot horse acquisition. These estimates ranged from Wissler’s previously men- tioned and impossibly early “1600” to Grinnell’s impossibly late “about the year 1800” (Hodge, 1907, pt. 1, p. 570). Burpee split the dif- ference in his estimate of “probably the earliest years of the eighteenth century” (Hendry, 1907, p. 318). This approximated another esti- mate by Wissler in 1910, of “about two hundred years ago” (Wissler, 19105). )19))). More recent estimates have been based upon interpretations of a most remarkable account of some important events in the history of the Blackfoot during the lifetime of an aged Cree Indian, Saukamaupee (Boy) by name, who had been living with the Piegan for many years before David Thompson, Hudson’s Bay Company trader, spent the winter of 1787-88 in his lodge. Thompson (1916, pp. 3828-334) reckoned the old man’s age at that time at “at least 75 to 80 years.” Using Thompson’s conservative estimate, we may consider that Saukamaupee was born no later than between 1707 and 1712. In dating the first episode of his story the old man pointed to a “lad of about sixteen years” in the camp and said that he had been about that boy’s age when he went with a small group of Cree to aid the Piegan in a battle with the Snakes in which neither of the opposing forces used either guns or horses. On the basis of the above computa- tion this must have been no later than 1723-28. Saukamaupee re- turned to his own people, “grew to be a man, became a skillful and fortunate hunter, and... procured . . . a wife.” Thompson noted that Piegan “young men seldom married before they are full grown, about the age of 22 years or more.” If the Cree, more than half a century earlier, followed that same custom, we may estimate that Saukamaupee was married no later than 1729-34. Saukamaupee ex- plained that during the interval between his assistance to the Piegan 16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 and his marriage the Snakes had made use of a few horses in battle with the Piegan, “on which they dashed at the Peeagans, and with their stone Pukamoggin knocked them on the head.” After his mar- riage he again went to the aid of the Piegan. Another battle was fought with the Snakes, but this time the enemy used no horses while the Piegan and their Cree and Assiniboin allies were armed with 10 guns. Terrified by the noise and deadly effect of this new secret weapon, the closely formed Snake battle line broke and its members fled in confusion. Saukamaupee said that after that battle: We pitched away in large camps with the women and children on the frontier of the Snake Indian country, hunting bison and red deer which were numerous, and we were anxious to see a horse of which we had heard so much. At last, as the leaves were falling we heard that one was killed by an arrow shot into his belly, but the Snake Indian that rode him, got away; numbers of us went to see him, and we all admired him, he put us in mind of a stag that had lost his horns; and we did not know what name to give him. But as he was a slave to Man, like the dog, which carried our things, he was named the Big Dog. [Thompson, 1916, p. 334.] In spite of the indefiniteness of the dating of the incidents of Sauka- maupee’s recollections, I see no adequate reason to doubt the facts he cited. Fragments of this story have been preserved in the tradi- tions of the Blackfoot tribes to the present time.? However, I do ques- tion the conclusions that have been drawn from this account by historians and ethnologists as to the date of acquisition of horses by the Blackfoot tribes. Although Saukamaupee’s description of his first sight of a dead horse is clear enough, nowhere in his account does he tell of the first acquisition of Zéve horses by the Blackfoot. Yet J. B. Tyrrell, editor of Thompson’s “Narrative,” draws from the dead horse episode the unwarranted conclusion that the Blackfoot obtained their first horses from the Snake Indians in 1730. Lewis (1942, pp. 11, 60) followed * Wissler (1910, p. 17) reported the Blackfoot tradition that before white men domi- nated the region the Shoshoni occupied much of the later Blackfoot country as far north as Two Medicine River. My informants of the 1940's claimed that the area of the present Blackfeet Reservation in Montana was formerly occupied by Shoshoni. Wissler (1912 a, p. 286) recorded the Piegan tradition that they received their first guns from the Cree, who taught them how to use them, and that ‘while some Piegan were out on the warpath they were attacked by a large number of Snake Indians. The Piegan fired on them and as they had never before seen guns they retreated.’ Weasel Tail, who seems to have possessed a strong interest in the historical traditions of his people, told me he under- stood that the Blackfoot obtained their first guns from the Cree; that the Cree joined them in a war party against the Shoshoni and Crow (?) in which the noise of the Black- foot guns frightened the enemy so that they fled southward from their location at that time, which was near present Calgary, Alberta. Weasel Tail volunteered that his grandfather, Talks Around, had told him the Blackfoot called the first horses they saw “big dogs.’’ Later, because horses were about the size of elks, they began to call them ‘elk dogs.’’ The change in name must have taken place before 1790, as Umfreville (1790, p. 202) recorded ‘‘Pin-ne-cho-me-tar,”’ as the name for the horse in the first published Blackfoot vocabulary. ‘This was certainly an attempt to render “ponokomita”’ (elk dog), the name still given the horse by the Blackfoot tribes. Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE ALA suit with the statement “the Blackfoot received their first horses from the Shoshone in 1730.” Haines (1938 b, p. 435) interpreted the Sauka- maupee testimony as proof that the Blackfoot acquired their first horses between 1732 and 1737. His error in interpretation may be the more serious because he employed these Blackfoot dates as bases for backdating the prior acquisition of horses by Shoshoni and Flathead. It seems to me that literal acceptance of Thompson’s dating will justify only two proper conclusions from the Saukamaupee story : (1) that ca. 1729-34 the Northern Shoshoni, who were in conflict with the Piegan on the Canadian Plains, possessed some horses; (2) that the Piegan had no horses at that time. If we choose to be more critical of Thompson’s dating, probably the most we can conclude is that the Blackfoot possessed no horses in the first quarter of the 18th century. Wissler (1914, pp. 3-4) attributed to Saint-Pierre (1751) the first historic mention of horses among the Blackfoot. The Saint-Pierre testimony is tantalizingly indefinite. He does mention horses received in trade from Europeans (whom he termed French, but who probably were Spanish) by Indians living on the Plains beyond the French posts on the lower Saskatchewan. He did not identify these Indians by tribe (Saint-Pierre, 1886, p. clxiii.) As Roe (1939, pp. 241-242) has pointed out, it is impossible to identify these horse Indians as Blackfoot on the basis of Saint-Pierre’s confused statement. In the fall of 1754, Anthony Hendry (or Henday) of the Hudson’s Bay Company journeyed westward with Cree and Assiniboin guides to seek to open trade with Indians west of those tribes, known to the Cree as “Archithinue.” On the Saskatchewan Plains in October of that year he visited a camp of 200 lodges of Archithinue, and again in spring met several small bands of these Indians during his return east- ward. Hendry was impressed with the fact that these Indians pos- sessed horses and employed them skillfully in hunting buffalo. Al- though he gave no estimate of the number of horses owned by the Archithinue, he left the definite impression that they were better sup- plied than his Cree and Assiniboin companions who used horses only as pack animals. Hendry did not identify the “Archithinue natives” whom he met by any other name (Hendry, 1907, pp. 307-354). How- ever, Mathew Cocking, sent by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1772 to try again to open trade with the Archithinue was more specific. AI- though he met only one small band of 22 lodges at a buffalo pound west of the Eagle Hills in present Saskatchewan, he definitely identi- fied that band as “Waterfall Indians” (the Gros Ventres), and he stated that the general term “Archithinue” also included the Blood, Piegan, and Blackfoot (the three Blackfoot tribes) as well as the Sarsi. Furthermore, he stated that these tribes were “all Equestrian 287944—55 -3 18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 Indians” (Cocking, 1908, pp. 110-111). This is the earliest definite statement to the effect that the Blackfoot tribes possessed horses. Who, then, were the Archithinue Indians met by Hendry 18 years earlier? Wissler (1936, p. 5) was reasonably certain that they also were Gros Ventres. I believe we may infer with reason that the Black- foot tribes, allies of the Gros Ventres, also possessed some horses in 1754, although they may not have been as well supplied with them as were the Gros Ventres. On the basis of the information now available, the most definite conclusion that can be drawn in dating Blackfoot horse acquisition, places this event in the interval between Sauka- maupee’s first sight of a dead horse and Hendry’s contact with the Archithinue in 1754, or within the second quarter of the 18th century. So it would appear that horses were acquired by the Blackfoot of the northwestern Plains at about the same time these animals reached the Mandan villages on the Missouri or very shortly thereafter. Con- sequently it was possible for horses to have been diffused from the Blackfoot and Gros Ventres to the Assiniboin and Plains Cree during the latter half of the 18th century. Certainly the nomadic Apache, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Ute, Comanche, Shoshoni, and Flathead re- ceived horses before they reached the Blackfoot. Probably the Arikara and all of the horticultural Plains Indians south of them possessed horses before the Blackfoot obtained them. It seems most probable that the Crow, Cheyenne, and Teton Dakota obtained their first horses after the Blackfoot began to acquire them. We know so little of the early history of the Arapaho that it is impossible to estimate the period of their acquisition of horses other than to suggest that since their kinsmen the Gros Ventres possessed horses before 1754, it is most probable the Arapaho did also. Since Blackfoot horse acquisition preceded first white contacts with these three tribes, we must rely rather heavily upon an evaluation of traditional data in determining the source of their horses. Wissler (1910, p. 19) heard Blackfoot traditions to the effect that their first horses were received from the Shoshoni and Flathead. One tradition told me stated that a Blackfoot, Shaved Head by name, went west and obtained the first horses known to his people from the Nez Percé, who told him they had taken them out of the water. Another tradition told of Sits-in-the-Night, who lived a generation later, having led a war party southward to about the location of the present Blackfeet Reservation, Mont., where they stole a number of horses from a Shoshoni or Crow camp. When the warriors mounted these horses and the animals began to walk, the riders became frightened and jumped off. They led the horses home. The people surrounded the new animals and gazed at them in wonder. If the horses began to jump about, they became frightened. After a time a woman said, Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 19 “Let’s put a travois on one of these big dogs just like we do on our small dogs.” They made a large travois and attached it to one of the horses. The horse did not jump or kick as it was led around camp. It seemed gentle. Later a woman mounted the horse and rode it with travois attached. According to this tradition the Blackfoot did not employ horses for riding, to hunt buffalo, or to war until after they were adapted to transport use with the travois.* Interesting as this second story may be, I doubt its historicity. As previously stated, I doubt that any Plains Indian tribe learned to ride and care for horses without the advantage of the example and instruction of other Indians who had some knowledge of horses. It is improbable that the Blackfoot obtained their first horses from the Shoshoni, with whom they were at war. It is more probable that they received these animals as gifts from or in trade with the Flat- head, Kutenai, Nez Pereé, or Gros Ventres. Teit has reported Flat- head traditions of early, peaceful trade with the Blackfoot (Teit, 1930, p. 358). However, we can be certain that by the late years of the 18th century, theft, not trade, was the primary medium of horse acquisi- tion exploited by the Blackfoot. Contemporary accounts of the Blackfoot during that period indicate that they were at war with their neighbors to the south and west. David Thompson observed that the Blackfoot tribes raided the Shoshoni, Flathead, and Kutenai for horses in 1787 (Thompson, 1916, p. 367). Umfreville briefly char- acterized the Blackfoot tribes in 1790, as “the most numerous and powerful nation we are acquainted with. War is more familiar to them than to other nations ... In their inroads into the enemies country, they frequently bring off a number of horses, which is their principal inducement in going to war” (Umfreville, 1790, p. 200). Thus, during the 18th century the Blackfoot developed the pattern of acquisition through capture which remained their primary method of obtaining horses from neighboring tribes throughout the first 86 years of the 19th century and until the buffalo were exterminated from their country. 3 The majority of my aged Blackfoot informants when questioned regarding Blackfoot acquisition of the horse either frankly admitted they were not informed on the subject or offered a legendary explanation in reply. These mythological interpretations of a his- toric event which must have taken place little more than 200 years ago are given on pages 291-298. WEALTH IN HORSES Contemporary observers of the Plains Indians in buffalo days noted that these people reckoned their wealth in horses. Some tribes ap- peared to be rich in horses. Others were obviously poor. Within each tribe there were individuals who were relatively wealthy in horses. Others were desperately poor. The individual’s status as an owner of horses conditioned his use of these animals and helped to determine both the nature and degree of his participation in many aspects of the life of the people of his tribe. Before proceeding with detailed consideration of the functions of horses in Blackfoot cul- ture, it is desirable to determine as precisely as possible not only the tribal horse holdings but also the range of individual wealth in horses among the Blackfoot, and to compare Blackfoot wealth in horses with that of other horse-using tribes of the Great Plains and Plateau in order to indicate their relative standing as horse-owning people. BLACKFOOT TRIBAL WEALTH IN HORSES I have found no statistics on the total number of horses owned by the Blackfoot tribes prior to 1830. Three quarters of a century ago, Lt. James Bradley, who obtained much of his information on the Blackfoot from the trader, Alexander Culbertson, and other white men who had known these Indians since the 1830’s, stated that “the Blackfeet had possessed horses as far back as their traditions extended but never in considerable numbers in early times, and even as late as 1833 they were poorly mounted.” He estimated that “about the year 1830” the Piegan owned an average of 10 horses per lodge, while the Blood and North Blackfoot averaged but 5 horses per lodge (Bradley, 1923, pp. 256, 288). In 1856 Blackfoot Agent Hatch estimated that the Piegan and Blood owned at least 10 horses per lodge, but the North Blackfoot had fewer horses owing to frequent raids on their herds by Cree and Assiniboin (U.S. Comm. Ind. Affairs, 1856, p. 627). Four years later, Agent Vaughan made a more detailed estimate of Blackfoot horse ownership. ‘The ratios in the last two columns of table 1 are compiled on the basis of Vaughan’s figures in the first three columns (U. S. Comm. Ind. Affairs, 1860, p. 308). 20 Eiwers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 21 TasuE 1.—Agent Vaughan’s estimate of Blackfoot horse ownership in 1860 | Total Horse- Horse- Tribe Lodges | popula- | Horses lodge person tion ratio ratio IESG CES ook ee eS ee ee eee | 460 3, 700 3, 980 8.6 1.1 Blood Naw Ss Gil) «iF bay ti yy as | 150 1, 200 1, 200 8.0 1.0 INOntneBIACkioo beets see ne seen ee eee eee | 300 2, 400 2, 400 8.0 1.0 The Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1874 (pp. 104, 126) estimated 5,450 Blackfoot in the United States, owning 6,000 horses. This is a ratio of 1.1 horses per person. Certainly these round-number estimates of both human and horse populations are not exact. Nevertheless, they are roughly indicative of Blackfoot wealth in horses at intervals during the last half century of buffalo days. Although made by different individuals they are quite consistent. These estimates suggest that prior to 1875, the Piegan averaged about 8 to 10 horses per lodge, or a fraction over one horse per person. Majority testimony indicates that the North Blackfoot and Blood owned fewer horses than the Piegan in proportion to popu- lation. My elderly informants were in general agreement in stating that in their youth the Piegan possessed more horses than either the North Blackfoot or Blood Indians. After the buffalo were gone and the Blackfoot tribes settled down to a more sedentary life on reservations their horse numbers grew rapidly. In 1885 the Blackfoot in Montana, whose herds had been decreased by a serious epidemic, averaged but 0.55 horses per person. By 1895 the Piegan of Montana averaged 3.8 horses per person, and by the turn of the century the proportion grew to 10.5 (U.S. Comm. Ind. Affairs, 1885, pp. 888-389 ; 1895, pp. 568, 585; 1900, pp. 644, 663). This growth in horse population followed the discontinuance of inter- tribal horse raiding and reflected also the encouragement of horse breeding by the United States Government. It is obvious that no cor- rect judgment of the relative wealth in horses of the Blackfoot during buffalo days can be inferred from their much larger herds of the early Reservation Period. In recent years the number of Indian-owned horses on the Black- feet Reservation in Montana has decreased. ‘The agricultural exten- sion agent, in his report of May 31, 1942, estimated that Indian-owned horses on the reservation then numbered 3,934, of which nearly half (1,822) were not work horses but unbroken range animals. He con- sidered the large number of unbroken horses an economic liability, stating: “Grass consumed by range horses on the Blackfeet Reserva- 22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 tion should support approximately 6,000 more cattle or 24,000 more sheep than are now grazed. Very few horses have been sold from this jurisdiction during the past three years although some changes in ownership have taken place.” WEALTH IN HORSES OF OTHER PLAINS AND PLATEAU TRIBES I have searched the literature for comparable estimates of the num- ber of horses owned by other Plains and Plateau Indian tribes in buffalo days. These estimates are summarized in table 2.4 In table 3 I have summarized the information on populations and horse numbers appearing in the annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1874, the first year for which adequate comparative figures are available. This was a full decade before the buffalo were extermi- nated from the Blackfoot Country and prior to the time the majority of other tribes listed had settled down to a sedentary, Reservation existence. In spite of the fact that the estimates appearing in tables 2 and 3 are rough calculations made by many individuals under varied cir- cumstances, they appear, on the whole, to present remarkably con- sistent figures within each tribal grouping. The listing of as many estimates as could be found for each group enables us to discount some erroneous ones.° Furthermore, the relative wealth in horses indicated in table 2, appears to be confirmed by the data in table 3 for nearly every tribe. These data appear to justify the conclusion that in the last half- century of buffalo days those tribes richest in horses occupied geo- graphically marginal areas. One group of wealthy tribes (the Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, and Osage) lived on the southern Plains, where winters were relatively mild, in close proximity to Mexican, Texan, and later American settlements from which they could re- plenish their horse stock through periodic raiding. The other group of relatively wealthy tribes (Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Nez Percé, Yakima, Paloos, Flathead, Pend d’Oreille, Northern Shoshoni and some Ute) lived west of the Rockies where they were relatively immune from the horse raids of the Plains Indians and where winters were milder and forage more plentiful than on the northern Plains. Some of this last group were noted for their attention to and skill m breeding horses. ‘Such statements as “have many horses” frequently occur in early accounts of some of the Plains Indians. However, I judge these statements are not sufficiently definite to be meaningful to this study. 5 Obviously erroneous is Catlin’s claim that the Cheyenne were “richest in horses of any tribe on the Continent,” Maximilian’s statement that the Blackfoot had more horses than Shoshoni, and the 1871 estimate of Osage horse wealth. Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 23 The only wealthy Upper Missouri tribe was the Crow, southern neighbors of the Blackfoot, who carried on extensive trade for horses with the wealthier Plateau tribes. On the other hand, the nomadic and horticultural tribes on or near the Missouri eastward of the Black- foot were all relatively poor in horses. The nomadic Assiniboin and Cree were so poor they were compelled to make extensive use of dogs in transporting camp equipment. The horticultural Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara were noted horse traders, but apparently kept few of the horses that passed through their hands for their own use. The meager evidence on the Teton Dakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho sug- gests that those tribes ranked with the Blackfoot as owners of horses. In terms of 19th century wealth in horses those tribes, as well as the Blackfoot, must be considered as middle-class people. They were less well provided with horses than the nomadic southern Plainsmen and the Plateau Indians, but they were better supplied than any of the horticultural tribes (except the Osage) and all of the tribes east and northeast of the Missouri River.® The information in tables 2 and 3 shows no evidence of any tribe of the Plains or Plateau having passed from poverty to wealth in horses during 19th century buffalo days. Conversely no relatively wealthy tribe was reduced to poverty during that period. It is noteworthy that the earliest estimates for the wealthy tribes (even that of 1786 for the Comanche) portrays them as owners of many horses, while the poorer tribes remained so throughout the period covered by the estimates. The assembled data suggest the probability that many if not most tribes approached their maximum numbers of horses at a relatively early date, at least as early as 1825, and possibly, in some instances, before 1800. Throughout the remainder of buffalo days tribal horse-person ratios showed few marked changes. This suggests that the increase in the number of horses owned by tribal members as the results of breeding of their own herds, capture of enemy or wild horses, gift and barter, was offset and approximately balanced by the loss of horses through capture by enemy raiding parties, gift and barter, killing of horses as grave escorts on the death of important men, killings by animal predators, and death of horses from old age, sickness, battle wounds, hunting accidents, disease, and inability to survive severe winters. In the active and dangerous life of the Plains Indians horses were expendible assets. 6The testimony of my elderly Piegan and Blood informants, who had participated in horse-stealing raids in their youth, corroborated the data in the tables regarding the horse wealth of neighboring tribes, with one exception. They claimed the Flathead and Crow had ‘more horses than the Piegan, the Piegan more horses than the Gros Ventres, Blood, or North Blackfoot, the Assiniboin fewer horses, and the Plains Cree still smaller numbers. Table 2 credits the Gros Ventres with a higher ranking than that given them by my informants. 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IPTZSE -ulQ pue ‘edmex) 9 a8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 TABLE 3.—Comparative data on tribal wealth in horses, 1874 | Horse- Tribe Agency Population! Horses person ratio Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla__.-.----------- Wimatiiges 2s os-= 682 8, 000 THe 7 INezpPercé: 220 4 = ee a ee eee INeziPerce=- 2-5. =2 2, 807 12, 000 4.3 Osage) (Greatiand Little) === ee Osaress2- See 2, 872 12, 000 4,2 Rakinis se aloOSnOLC sesso te ee ee Wakimgessss= ae 3, 500 13, 000 3.7 Wichita, Caddo, Waco, Tawaconi, Kichai, Pena- | Wichita____-.__-_- 1, 897 6, 099 3.2 teka Comanche, and Pawnee. Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Delaware-----_---- KMaowars.-=<-s2=22 4,975 14, 090 2.8 U LossPinos= === 2, 763 6, 500 2.3 Crow. es 4, 200 8,000 1.9 White River----_- 1,000 1, 500 1.5 Cheyenne and 4, 024 5, 475 1.4 Arapaho. Flathead, Pend d’Oreille, and Kutenai-__-----_-_-_- Flathead_--------- 1, 829 2, 590 1.4 Wind River Shoshoni___.__------------- Shoshone===-——== == 1, 800 2, 500 1.4 Bannock and Shoshoni_----------- Hortseemhiowsses 600 716 1.2 Colville, Okanagon, ete_------------ Colville__- 3, 120 3, 900 1,2 Piegan, Blood, and Blackfoot_-_------------- t 5, 450 6, 000 ik ti Lower Yanktonai and Lower Brule 3, 000 3, 275 Tal Uc ees ee ee ae eee 575 600 1.0 IN a VahOte ss 28 nee See Se Bees eae ese 11, 068 10, 000 -9 OtorandsMiissourics soo ae ae oes eee eae Seema 453 400 .9 Oglalla and Miniconjou Sioux, North Cheyenne, 12, 103 10, 000 8 and North Arapaho. IB SHTNOC KAAS OSE nee eee ere orisha ess== 1, 500 1, 200 .8 Brille Sioux2 = 2 oe ee ee ee Spotted Tail______ | 7, 000 5, 000 Mt hanktom Sioux 2220s eso fa eo ake ee eee Wanktonerese aos 2, 000 1, 500 all Omahasss ese a ee eae Boke eee Omshae eee 951 700 ne TO Wan SAC andHho xtewan aan. > ce eee ee ee Great Nemaha____ 323 236 ol picarillawApachenelCssesst ee as ee eee ee ANDIg (ieee =e 1, 750 1, 200 aC ewe Kettle, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, and Blackfeet | Cheyenne River -- 4, 982 3, 100 .6 ioux. Upper and Lower Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, and | Grand River_____- 6, 440 3, 000 ait Blackfeet Sioux. ar Sa See et te st rare Sees ote eh ee ee oe Osage sees as 523 280 5 Moache and Jicarilla Apache_.-_.____--_---________ Cimarron a2 750 400 an Assiniboin, and Santee, Sisseton, Yanktonai, | Fort Peck_.-_____- 7, 307 3, 000 .4 Hunkpapa, and Hunepatina Sioux. SAM LCOS OU Xe eee re ee ee ae eae Santeei ==) = see 791 300 4 Assiniboinjand (Gros Ventres--_- == 2-2-2 2--=2-22-_ == Fort Belknap____- 3, 700 1, 100 ac} IPAawnee= sien oe. 222 Se EE en ss ee Soe eee ee de nse iIPawnees22- = =e -* 1, 788 600 .3 IWMescalerorAmachemer re Rees eee a ees es Mescalero Apache 1, 800 500 #33 Sisseton, Wahpeton, and Upper Yanktonai Sioux__| Devil’s Lake______ 1, 677 383 AP} Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux__________-___________ Sissetoneeees eee 1, 677 383 a4 ‘Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan2=22 "2222-2. ee Fort Berthold_____ 2,015 200 ail It required ingenuity and effort on the part of men of these tribes to replace frequent losses once herds had been acquired. In a later section (pp. 188-139) I shall consider the minimum numn- ber of horses needed by the average family of a nomadic Plains Indian tribe in buffalo days. Let us consider here whether there might not have been a maximum number of horses a nomadic tribe could main- tain. The highest average estimate given for any Plains Indian tribe in the tables reveals a ratio of 4 horses per person in the tribal popula- tion. It seems probable that this figure approached the upper limit of the proportion of horses to tribal members that could have been cared for adequately and protected from theft by enemy raiders under the conditions of frequent camp movement and intertribal warfare prevailing among these tribes in buffalo days. HORSE WEALTH OF INDIVIDUAL BLACKFOOT INDIANS In the three Blackfoot tribes horses were individually owned prop- erty. Although most of the great herds of unbroken horses and the Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 29 specially trained war, hunting, and race horses were the property of men, women generally owned the animals they used for riding and transport duty. Women received gifts of horses, inherited them from relatives, or obtained them in barter. These horses belonged to them, and they were free to give them away, trade them, or loan them as they saw fit. Children also owned riding horses or colts which were not disposed of without their consent. As early as 1809, a few individuals owned large herds of horses. Alexander Henry reported that “some of the Blackfeet own 40 or 50 horses. But the Piegans have by far the greatest numbers; I heard of one man who had 300” (Henry and Thompson, 1897, p. 526). How- ever, Maximilian’s reference (1833) to a chief who owned between 4,000 and 5,000 horses appears to have been exaggerated. (See Ewers, 1948.) Indian Agent Hatch told of the visit of a Blood chief, “Chief Bird,” who owned 100 horses, to Fort Benton in the fall of 1856 (Hatch MS.). Bradley described the Blood head chief, “Seen From Afar,” who died in 1870, aged about 60: “He was the greatest chief Major Culbertson ever saw amongst the Blackfeet—having 10 wives and 100 horses” (Bradley, 1900, p. 258). Culbertson’s appraisal of this man may have been influenced by the fact that Seen From Afar (or Far Seeing) was his brother-in-law. Nevertheless, some of my Blood informants remembered this head chief of their tribe as the wealthiest Blood Indian of his period. The trader Charles Larpenteur, wrote of the period 1860: “It is a fine sight to see one of those big men among the Blackfeet, who has two or three lodges, five or six wives, twenty or thirty children, and fifty to a hundred horses; for his trade amounts to upward of $2,000 a year” (Larpenteur, 1898, vol. 2, p. 401). Obviously that trader was describing an important headman or chief. Schultz (1907, p. 152) told of the Piegan in the late 1870’s: “Horses were the tribal wealth, and one who owned a large herd of them held a position only to be compared to that of our multi-millionaires. There were indi- viduals who owned from one hundred to three and four hundred.” My informants agreed that the wealthiest Blackfoot Indian in buffalo days was Many Horses (Heavy Shield, Middle Sitter), prin- cipal chief of the Piegan for a short time before his death in 1866. Although my eldest informants were mere children when Many Horses died, several of them were related to him, and all had heard of him through their parents and other older Indians. Their esti- mates of the number of his horses ranged from “about 500” to “less than 1,000.” I believe the lower figure is the more accurate one. Three Calf claimed Many Horses tried to prevent other Indians from counting his horses. If he saw someone trying to count them he brought out his medicine bag filled with deer hoofs and rattled the 30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 hoofs, causing his horses to mill around so as to make further enumer- ation impossible. Yet Many Horses is credited with knowing every animal in his herd. He is said to have employed 10 or more boys to care for them. When camp was moved those of his horses that were not loaned to less fortunate individuals to transport their belong- ings were driven in three to five large herds. Bull Shoe (Lone Man) was the wealthiest Piegan after the death of Many Horses. He may have owned nearly 500 horses in late buffalo days. Stingy, a blind Piegan, who died in 1918, aged about 78 years, then owned between 200 and 300 horses. Many-White- Horses (ca. 1834-1905) also owned more than 100 horses at that time. Informants claimed that a man who possessed 40 or 50 horses in buffalo days was considered wealthy by his fellow tribesmen.” It is probable that less than a score of Piegan were entitled to that distinction at any period during buffalo days. Certainly less than 5 percent of Piegan men were wealthy in horses in buffalo days. Probably the proportion of rich men to the total adult male populations was smaller among the Blood and North Black- foot. The majority of the Blackfoot had a difficult time meeting the needs of their nomadic existence with a limited number of horses. A fairly large proportion of Blackfoot families, possibly as many as 25 percent, owned less than a half dozen horses in buffalo days. The traditional belief that wealth should be reckoned in horses was difficult for these Indians to forget even after horses became so plenti- ful in the Northwest that they could be purchased for from $2 to $5 a head (Denny, 1939, pp. 259-260). Frank Sherburne recalled with amusement that some 50 years ago, Owl Child, a Piegan who owned about 500 head of fine cattle and a great many horses, liked to brag about the size of his horse herd. His cattle had many times the monetary value of his horses, but he never mentioned them in his boasting. During the period of my residence on the Blackfeet Reser- vation in Montana (1941-44) there were still several older fullbloods who owned sizable horse herds. Although most of these animals were unbroken and unused, their owners had no desire to sell them. Pos- session of horses made those Indians feel both wealthy and important. 7 Piegan remembered as wealthy horse owners in buffalo days were Water-Bull-Mountain- Chief, Big Nose (also known as Three Suns, who died in 1896, a prominent chief), Crow Feathers, Big Plume (born ea. 1826), Wolf Calf (noted leader of the horse medicine cult, born before 1800), Wolf-Comes-Over-the-Hill, Many Strikes, Wolf Tail (born ca. 1853), Middle Calf, Owl Child (born ca. 1855), Horn, Tearing Lodge (born ca. 1834), and Curlew Woman (born ca. 1823). The last named was a woman. 8It is important to qualify these statements with the phrase “in buffalo days,’’ because horses became much more plentiful among the Blackfoot tribes after they settled down on reservations following the extermination of the buffalo. Not only did Stingy, Bull Shoe, Many-White-Horses, Owl Child, and other former owners of many horses greatly increase the sizes of their herds, but a number of other Indians, who had previously owned smaller herds, became rich in horses. By 1900 there were several Piegan owners of 500 to 1,000 or more horses on the Montana Reservation. Ewers] THE HORSE IN BLACKFOOT INDIAN CULTURE 3l HORSE WEALTH OF INDIVIDUALS IN OTHER TRIBES Among other horse-using tribes of the Plains and Plateau, indi- vidual ownership of horses also seems to have been the rule. Definite statements to that effect have been made regarding the Crow (Denig, 1958, p. 34) and Omaha (Fletcher and La Flesche, 1911, p. 363). In table 4 I have summarized comparative data on individual horse ownership among other Plains and Plateau tribes gleaned from the literature. Except for Henry’s claim that many Hidatsa owned 20 to 30 horses, the data in table 4 correlates closely with those in tables 2and8. Inthe poorer tribes individual wealth in horses was reckoned in terms of relatively few horses, while among the wealthy tribes some owners possessed horses in hundreds. Compared with the Teton Dakota, another middle-class tribe, the Blackfoot exhibited greater extremes in horse ownership. These data show that unequal distribution of horses among tribal members was the rule in the Great Plains and Plateau in buffalo days. The conception of wealth in horses differed among the tribes. While a Plains Cree owner of five horses would have been considered wealthy by his fellow tribesmen, a Crow, Nez Percé, or Comanche owner of five times that number of animals would merit no such distinction among his people. Yet even the wealthy tribes, such as the Kiowa, had members who owned very few or no horses. There must have been a greater proportion of wealthy owners among the Plateau and southern Plains tribes than among the Blackfoot. On the other hand, there were Piegan individuals who possessed more horses than the entire Hidatsa or Mandan tribes. TaBLe 4.—Data on individual horse ownership in other Plains and Plateau tribes Tribe Date Statement References Assiniboin___-___._- 1851 In a large Assiniboin camp ‘‘at least one third of | Denig, 1930, p. 456. the men have no horses they can catch.’’ Cheyenne____-___-_- 1806 « _.. some families had twenty or thirty horses.’’ | Henry in Henry and Thompson, 1897, vol. 1, p. 377. Comanche_-_---..-- 1819 ‘« |. , industrious and enterprising individuals | Burnet, 1851, p. 232. will sometimes own from one to three hundred head of horses and mules.” 1852 Most successful Comanche horse thieves owned | Marcy, 1937, p. 158. 50 to 200 horses. Blainsi@reoeeso-2- = 1840-60 | ‘ ee it was only an occasional Cree who had a Mandelbaim, 1940, orse.’” p. 195. Ca. 1880 | It was rare for a Cree to own more than a half dozen | Schultz, 1907, p. 385. orses. Ca. 1880 | ‘“Most of the Cree and Assiniboin who came to | Informant, Richard visit the Piegan ca. 1880 owned no horses.”’ 2c rela (Pie- gan). Crow ace eee ae 1805 “He is reckoned a poor man who has not 10 horses | Larocque, 1910, p. 64. in the spring before the trade at the Missouri takes place and many have 30 or 40, everybody rides, men, women & children.”’ 1856 “Tt is not uncommon for a single family to be the | Denig, 1953, p. 25. owners of an hundred animals. Most middle aged men have from thirty to sixty, and an indi- vidual is said to be poor when he does not possess at least twenty.” o2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 TasBLE 4.—Data on individual horse ownership in other Plains and Plateau tribes—Continued Tribe Flathead and Pend d’ Oreille. Tab to tice ies Sie ee Ke OW Peeeeoee =< eaeee Wiantaneeeesenen= Teton Dakota_-_.__- Yankton Dakota ___ 1803 1833 Ca. 1875 Ca. 1875 Statement Many warriors and hunters of those tribes who camped with Capt. Bonneville owned ‘30 to 40 horses each.”’ Many Hidatsa owned from 20 to 30 horses_-______- A few rich Kiowa counted their horses in hundreds; well-to-do owners had 20 to 50 horses; many Kiowa had 6 to 10 horses; ‘‘not a few’’ owned no horses at all. Big White Man, the chief with whom Thompson lodged, owned but 3 horses. Sih-Chida, son of a prominent chief, ‘did not even possess a horse,’’ although some Mandan owned several horses at that time. Some Nez Percé ‘‘have as many as 500 or 600” horses. Some Nez Pereé and Cayuse families possessed “1,500 horses.’’ “Those affluent chiefs and warriors who are owners of many horses, are enabled to mount their families on horseback, but the greater portion of the young men and squaws are necessarily pedestrians.”’ Some Grand Pawnee individuals possessed ‘‘20 to 60 horses.”’ (Capt. Bell.) The ‘‘poorest families had two or three horses, many braves and chiefs had eight to twelve, one chief had 30.” About 5 men among Skidi owned 9 to 10 horses; a larger group 4 to 6; 1 to 2 fairly common; half the people no horses at all. (Weltfish data.) Black Bull, principal Brule chief, lost all his herd when Ponca raiders stole 7 horses from him. ‘“‘Many possess from 30 to 40 horses and are then reckoned to be rich.” Oglala—‘‘In my youth any man who owned 30 horses was considered well-to-do.”’ Oglala—‘“‘I can recall no member of my tribe who owned more than 100 horses in buffalo days.’’ Those who hung around the Agency “rarely pos- sessed more than two horses.’’ (Inference that other Yankton had larger herds.) References Irving, 1851, p. 117. Henry in Henry and Thompson, 1897, vol. 1, p. 353. Mishkin, 1940, p. 19. Thompson, 1916, p. 230. Maximilian, 1906, vol. 23, p. 272; vol. 24, p. 16. De Smet, 1905, vol. 3, p. 991. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 480. James, 1823, vol. 1, p. 205. Bell in Morse, 1822, Pp. 237. Murray, 1839, p. 353. Quoted in Mishkin, 1940, p. 14. Tabeau, 1939, p. 110. Maximilian, 1906, vol. 22, p. 327. Eagle Bird, inform- ant. Maggie-No-Fat, in- formant. Maximilian, 1906, vol, 22, p. 306. CARE OF HORSES The horses owned by the Blackfoot Indians in buffalo days were of smaller size and different type from those commonly seen on the several Blackfoot Reservations today. If, as Vernon (1941, p. 512) avers, any horse under 14.2 hands high at the withers is a pony, Black- foot horses were properly ponies. Today the Indian pony is nearing extinction along with the traits of culture typical of the Blackfoot in buffalo days. THE INDIAN PONY No scientific study of the Indian pony based upon observation of the living animal or of skeletal materials has been made by a com- petent zoologist. Angel Cabrera’s chapter on the Indian pony in his work “Caballos de America” (1945), is based primarily on earlier observations of that animal by 19th century traders, travelers, and Army personnel stationed in the Indian Country. These are still our best sources of information on this subject. (See Clark, 1885, p. 396; Remington, 1889, pp. 339-840; Wyman, 1945, p. 287.) The Indian pony was close to being a type. Anthony Hendry, first to describe the horses of the Indians of the northwestern Plains in 1754, called them “fine tractible animals, about 14 hands high; lively and clean made” (Hendry, 1907, p. 338). Mathew Cocking, 18 years later, termed them “lively and clean made, generally about 14 hands high and of different colors” (Cocking, 1908, p. 106). From descrip- tions of contemporary observers, corroborated by the testimony of elderly informants, we gain a composite picture of the type. The adult male Indian pony averaged a little under 14 hands in height, weighed about 700 pounds, possessed a large head in proportion to its body, good eyes, “neck and head joined like the two parts of a hammer,” large, round barrel, relatively heavy shoulders and hips; small, fine, strong limbs and small feet. Indian ponies exhibited a wide range of solid and mixed colors. (See photograph of Indian pony in frontispiece. ) Robert Denhardt (1947, pp. 20-22) has traced the ancestry of the Indian pony to Barb horses introduced into Spain in the invasion of the Moors from North Africa in the 8th century. In Spain these horses were crossed with native stock. The first horses brought to America were animals collected in the southern Spanish provinces of Cordoba and Andalusia which retained the primary characteristics of the Barb horse. Introduced into the New World by Columbus in 287944554 33 34 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 159 1493, and first carried to the mainland by Cortez’s expedition to Mex- ico in 1519, they spread northward in succeeding centuries to furnish the basic stock of the herds of the Indians of the Southwest, the Great Plains, and the northwestern Plateau. Capt. W. P. Clark, as a cavalry officer stationed at various posts on the western frontier, had an ample opportunity to observe Indian horses. He was of the opinion that through hard usage, close inbreed- ing, and change in climate the Indian pony had become somewhat reduced in size from that of its Barb ancestors of North Africa (Clark, 1885, p. 306). The Indian pony was no beautiful animal, but it was a tough, sturdy, long-winded beast that possessed great powers of endurance. My older informants stressed these qualities of Blackfoot horses in buffalo days. They were sure those small horses were fleeter of foot than the large “white man’s horses” entered in the races in Browning in recent years. Frank Sherburne’s statement that the fastest horse he had owned was an Indian cayuse that had been successful in com- petition with larger horses on the local race tracks supports the Indian contention. The horses of the Blackfoot were of the same type as those owned by other tribes of the Great Plains and the majority of the Plateau tribes. These horses were sometimes termed “cayuses” or “squaw horses” by white residents of the Indian Country. Colonel de Tro- briand, in 1867, was impressed by the superiority of the Indian pony over the horses used by the United States Army on the Plains. “The Indian pony without stopping can cover a distance of from sixty to eighty miles between sunrise and sunset, while most of our horses are tired out at the end of thirty or forty miles.” He found that “the movement of Indian horsemen is lighter, swifter and longer range than that of our cavalry, which means that they always get away from us” (De Trobriand, 1951, p. 64). The Nez Percé Appaloosa, is a larger, heavier, characteristically spotted-rump animal (Denhardt, 1947, pp. 191-193). Elderly Black- foot informants said their people obtained a very few Appaloosa horses before the end of the Nez Percé war of 1877. FATE OF THE INDIAN PONY After the Blackfoot settled on reservations, Indian Service authori- ties recognized that their small Indian ponies would be of limited use as farm animals.