This is a book of stories collected from the Blackfeet Tribe from the Glacier National Park written by a man who had married a Blackfeet, lived among the people from the tribe for many years, and was considered one of them. It gives many places names in Glacier, such as just who was Running Eagle or Pitamakin, familiar to all people who visited this wonderful area. These stories are captured from oral Blackfoot tradition and tell about ancient indigenous cultures, which carry their outstanding actions to our times.

Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park by James Willard Schultz.

The Blackfeet were hunters, travelling from place to place on foot. They used implements of stone, wood, or bone, wore clothing made of skins, and lived in tents covered by hides. Dogs, their only tame animals, were used as beasts of burden to carry small packs and drag light loads. The stories here told come down to us from very ancient times. Grandfathers have told them to their grandchildren, and these again to their grandchildren, and so from mouth to mouth, through many generations, they have reached our time. Those who wish to know something about how the people lived who told these stories will find their described in the last chapter of this book. Contents: Two Fast Runners The Wolf Man Kŭt-o-yĭs ́, the Blood Boy The Dog and the Root Digger The Camp of the Ghosts The Buffalo Stone How the Thunder Pipe Came Cold Maker's Medicine The All Comrades Societies The Bulls Society The Other Societies The First Medicine Lodge The Buffalo-painted Lodges Mīka ́pi—red Old Man Red Robe's Dream The Blackfeet Creation Old Man Stories The Wonderful Bird The Rabbits' Medicine The Lost Elk Meat The Rolling Rock Bear and Bullberries The Theft From the Sun The Smart Woman Chief Bobcat and Birch Tree The Red-eyed Duck The Ancient Blackfeet

In 1886 Walter McClintock went to northwestern Montana as a member of a U.S. Forest Service expedition. He was adopted as a son by Chief Mad Dog, the high priest of the Sun Dance, and spent the next four years living on the Blackfoot Reservation. The Old North Trail, originally published in 1910, is a record of his experiences among the Blackfeet.

People Before the Park shares the rich cultural traditions of the Kootenai and Blackfeet tribes, in and around the area that is now Glacier National Park.

The Blackfeet were people of the buffalo. They originated on the plains of today’s southern Alberta, western Saskatchewan, and central Montana. In the 1830s famed artist and explorer George Catlin called the Blackfeet “the most powerful tribe of Indians on the continent.” Fur trader, hunting guide, and later, acclaimed chronicler of Native American culture, James Willard Schultz lived with the Blackfeet for many years from the 1870s to the 1930s. The tribe named him “Apikuni” (Spotted Robe). Schultz said the purpose of writing this book was “to integrate the activities of the life of the Blackfeet tribes, in the days of the buffalo, and including certain of their ceremonials of the present time.” The Sun God’s Children describes the Blackfeet as they lived before the coming of the fur traders and their customs, traditions, and religious beliefs, as told to Schultz by the Blackfeet themselves.

At the age of sixty-seven, Percy Bullchild (1915?1986), a Blackfeet Indian from Browning, Montana, with little formal education in English, set out to put the oral traditions and history of his people into a permanent written record. He regarded this undertaking?to ?write the Indian version of our own true ways in our history and legends,? as he puts it?as both a corrective and an instructive tool. Bullchild culled this remarkable collection of historical legends from his memory of the oral history as it was passed down to him by his elders and by seeking out the oral traditions of other tribes. These stories, like all legends, Bullchild reminds us, ?may sound a little foolish, but they are very true. And they have much influence over all of the people of this world, even now as we all live.? Woody Kipp provides a preface for this Bison Books edition.

Memories of life among the Indians, ed. and with an introduction by K. C. Seele.