BLACKFOOT

city, seat (1885) of Bingham county, southeastern Idaho, U.S., near the confluence of the Snake and Blackfoot rivers. Founded on the Utah Northern Railroad in 1878, at the northern edge of Fort Hall Indian Reservation (1869), it evolved as the centre of an irrigated agricultural (chiefly potato-growing) area. Development was stimulated by the establishment in 1949 of the National Reactor Testing Station (now Idaho National Engineering Laboratory), 32 miles (51 km) northwest. Nearby is the site of the original Ft. Hall trading post built in 1834 by the Hudson's Bay Company. Inc. 1907. Pop. (1990) 9,646. group of three closely related Algonkian-speaking Indian tribes in Alberta and Montana, comprising the Pikuni, or Piegan, the Kainah, or Blood, and the Siksika, or Blackfoot proper (often referred to as the Northern Blackfoot). They were among the first Algonkians in the westward movement from timberland to open grassland and probably migrated on foot using wooden travois drawn by dogs to transport their goods. In the early 18th century these tribes were pedestrian buffalo hunters living in the Saskatchewan Valley about 400 miles east of the Rockies. They acquired horses and firearms before 1750. Driving weaker tribes before them, they pushed westward to the Rockies and southward into present Montana. At the height of their power, in the first half of the 19th century, the Blackfoot held a vast territory extending from northern Saskatchewan to the southernmost headwaters of the Missouri. The Blackfoot were known as the strongest and most aggressive military power on the northwestern plains. For a quarter of a century after 1806, they prevented white men, whom they regarded as poachers on Indian land, from trapping in the rich beaver country of the upper tributaries of the Missouri. At the same time they warred upon neighbouring tribes, capturing horses and taking scalps. Each Blackfoot tribe was divided into several hunting bands led by one or more chiefs. These bands wintered separately in sheltered river valleys. In summer the scattered bands gathered in a great encampment to observe the Sun Dance, the principal tribal religious ceremony. Many individuals owned elaborate medicine bundles, which they believed would bring success in war and hunting and protection against sickness and misfortune. For three decades after their first treaty with the United States in 1855, the Blackfoot declined to forsake hunting in favour of farming. When the buffalo were almost exterminated in the early 1880s, nearly one-quarter of the Piegan died of starvation. Thereafter the Blackfoot made some progress as farmers and cattlemen. In the late 20th century more than 6,000 Indians (mostly of Piegan descent) lived on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. Fewer than 20 percent of them were full bloods. In addition, there were more than 9,000 Indians on the Blackfoot, Blood, and Piegan reserves in Alberta.