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BLACKFOOT - BLACKFEET INDIANS - NATIVE AMERICANS
STORIES, FOLKLORE, FOLKTALES, FAIRY TALES,
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• SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info - Blackfoot - Blackfeet
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers,
Teachers and Librarians

SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT BLACKFOOT - BLACKFEET INDIANS - NATIVE AMERICANS
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)

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1) There are two excellent compilations of Blackfeet traditional stories: Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians (Sources of American Indian Oral Literature), compiled and translated by Clark Wissler (the earliest anthro to work with Blackft materials) and D.C. Duvall (his Blackft informant). The introduction is by Alice Beck Kehoe. It's a U of Nebraska Press paperback, 1995.

A big section in Walter McClintock's The Old North Trail: Life, Legends, and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. Also a U of Nebraska Press paperback. McClintock was also on the reservation very early. He was a Forest Service scientist sent to survey Glacier National Park and he brought along his camera.

There are other anthologies of the stories. Probably the most notable is Percy Bullchild's The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It. Some people complain that, like Black Elk, Percy had a tendency to pull Christian elements into the story.

Also, Adolph Hungry Wolf, Legends Told by the Old People, a Good Medicine Book, reports many stories. The tip-off that he is actually Austrian rather than indigenous is that things in stories happen in threes (the Christian trinity) rather than fours (the four directions). Outside of that, Adolph is pretty well-informed.

One of the Blackfeet bear stories is about a family of "grizzlies" who come to live with the people. They are rude, dangerous, greedy, and altogether objectionable but everyone is too afraid of them to do anything about it. Finally three young men pledge to get rid of them and succeed in killing them all, for which they are made heroes. But occasionally there are still families of "grizzlies" who make a lot of trouble.

Created 2003; last update 7/112/09