The Blackfeet believe that the Sun made the earth--that he is the
creator. One of the names by which they call the Sun is Napi--Old
Man. This is how they tell of the creation:
In the beginning there was water everywhere; nothing else was to be
seen. There was something floating on the water, and on this raft
were Old Man and all the animals.
Old Man wished to make land, and he told the beaver to dive down to
the bottom of the water and to try to bring up a little mud. The
beaver dived and was under water for a long time, but he could not
reach the bottom. Then the loon tried, and after him the otter, but
the water was too deep for them. At last the muskrat was sent down,
and he was gone for a long time; so long that they thought he must
be drowned, but at last he came up and floated almost dead on the
water, and when they pulled him up on the raft and looked at his
paws, they found a little mud in them. When Old Man had dried this
mud, he scattered it over the water and land was formed. This is the
story told by the Blackfeet. It is very much like one told by some
Eastern Indians, who are related to the Blackfeet.
After the land had been made, Old Man travelled about on it, making
things and fixing up the earth so as to suit him. First, he marked
out places where he wished the rivers to run, sometimes making them
run smoothly, and again, in some places, putting falls on them. He
made the mountains and the prairie, the timber and the small trees
and bushes, and sometimes he carried along with him a lot of rocks,
from which he built some of the mountains--as the Sweet Grass
Hills--which stand out on the prairie by themselves.
Old Man caused grass to grow on the plains, so that the animals
might have something to feed on. He marked off certain pieces of
land, where he caused different kinds of roots and berries to
grow--a place for camas; and one for wild carrots; one for wild
turnips, sweet root and bitter root; one for service berries,
bullberries, cherries, plums, and rosebuds.
He made all kinds of animals that travel on the ground. When he made
the big-horn with its great horns, he put it out on the prairie. It
did not seem to travel easily there; it was awkward and could not go
fast, so he took it by one of its horns and led it up into the rough
hills and among the rocks, and let it go there, and it skipped about
among the cliffs and easily went up fearful places. So Old Man said
to the big-horn, "This is the place for you; this is what you are
fitted for; the rough country and the mountains." While he was in
the mountains he made the antelope, and turned it loose to see how
it travelled. The antelope ran so fast that it fell over some rocks
and hurt itself. He saw that this would not do, and took the
antelope down on the prairie and set it free there, and it ran away
fast and gracefully, and he said to it, "This is the place that
suits you."
At last, one day, Old Man decided that he would make a woman and a
child, and he modelled some clay in human shape, and after he had
made these shapes and put them on the ground, he said to the clay,
"You shall be people." He spread his robe over the clay figures and
went away. The next morning he went back to the place and lifted up
the robe, and saw that the clay shapes had changed a little. When he
looked at them the next morning, they had changed still more; and
when on the fourth day he went to the place and took off the
covering, he said to the images, "Stand up and walk," and they did
so. They walked down to the river with him who had made them, and he
told them his name.
As they were standing there looking at the water as it flowed by,
the woman asked Old Man, saying, "How is it; shall we live always?
Will there be no end to us?"
Old Man said, "I have not thought of that. We must decide it. I will
take this buffalo chip and throw it in the river. If it floats,
people will become alive again four days after they have died; they
will die for four days only. But if it sinks, there will be an end
to them." He threw the chip into the river, and it floated.
The woman turned and picked up a stone and said, "No, I will throw
this stone in the river. If it floats, we shall live always; if it
sinks, people must die, so that their friends who are left alive may
always remember them." The woman threw the stone in the water, and
it sank.
"Well," said Old Man, "you have chosen; there will be an end to
them."
Not many nights after that the woman's child died, and she cried a
great deal for it. She said to Old Man, "Let us change this. The law
that you first made, let that be the law."
He said, "Not so; what is made law must be law. We will undo nothing
that we have done. The child is dead, but it cannot be changed.
People will have to die."
These first people did not have hands like a person; they had hands
like a bear with long claws. They were poor and naked and did not
know how to get a living. Old Man showed them the roots and the
berries, and showed them how to gather these, and told them how at
certain times of the year they should peel the bark off some trees
and eat it; that the little animals that live in the ground--rats,
squirrels, skunks, and beavers--were good to eat. He also taught
them something about the roots that were good for medicine to cure
sickness.
In those days there were buffalo, and these black animals were
armed, for they had long horns. Once, as the people were moving
about, the buffalo saw them and rushed upon them and hooked them and
killed them, and then ate them. One day, as the creator was
travelling about, he came upon some of his children that he had made
lying there dead, torn to pieces and partly eaten by the buffalo.
When he saw this, he felt badly. He said, "I have not made these
people right. I will change this; from now on the people shall eat
the buffalo."
He went to some of the people who were still alive, and said to
them, "How is it that you people do nothing to these animals that
are killing you?" The people replied, "What can we do? These animals
are armed and can kill us, and we have no way to kill them."
The creator said, "That is not hard. I will make you something that
will kill these animals."
He went out and cut some straight service-berry shoots, and brought
them in, and peeled the bark from them. He took a larger piece of
wood and flattened it, and tied a string to it, and made a bow. Now
he was the master of all birds and he went out and caught one, and
took feathers from its wings and tied them to the shaft of wood. He
tied four feathers along the shaft and tried the arrow at a mark and
found that it did not fly well. He took off these feathers and put
on three, and when he again tried it at the mark he found that it
went straight. He picked up some hard stones, and broke sharp pieces
from them. When he tried them he found that the black flint stones
made the best arrow points. He showed them how to use these things.
Then he spoke to the people, and said, "The next time you go out,
take these things with you, and use them as I tell you. Do not run
from these animals. When they rush at you, and have come pretty
close, shoot the arrows at them as I have taught you, and you will
see that they will run from you or will run around you in a circle."
He also broke off pieces of stone, and fixed them in a handle, and
told them that when they killed the buffalo they should cut up the
flesh with these stone knives.
One day after this, some people went on a little hill to look about,
and the buffalo saw them and called out to each other, "Ah, there is
some more of our food," and rushed upon them. The people did not
run. They began to shoot at the buffalo with the bows and arrows
that had been given them, and the buffalo began to fall. They say
that when the first buffalo hit with an arrow felt it prick him, he
called out to his fellows, "Oh, my friends, a great fly is biting
me."
With the flint knives that had been given them they cut up the
bodies of the dead buffalo. About this time Old Man came up and said
to them, "It is not healthful to eat raw flesh. I will show you
something better than that." He gathered soft, dry rotten wood and
made punk of it, and took a piece of wood and drilled a hole in it
with an arrow point, and gave them a pointed piece of hard wood, and
showed them how to make a fire with fire sticks, and to cook the
flesh of animals.
After this the people found a certain sort of stone in the land, and
took another harder stone, and worked one upon the other and
hollowed out the softer one, so as to make of it a kettle.
It is told also that the creator made people and animals at another
place, and in another way. At the Porcupine Mountains he made other
earthen images of people, and blew breath on the images, and they
became people. They were men and women. After a time they asked him,
"What are we to eat?" Then he took more earth and made many images
in the form of buffalo, and when he had blown on them they stood up,
and he made signs to them and they started to run. He said to the
people, "There is your food."
"Well, now," they replied; "we have those animals, how are we to
kill them?"
"I will show you," he said.
He took them to the edge of a cliff and showed them how to heap up
piles of stone, running back from the cliff like this [Illustration:
two lines of diverging dots in a narrow < shape], with the point of
the V toward the cliff. He said to the people, "Now, do you hide
behind these piles of stones, and when I lead the buffalo this way,
as they get opposite to you, stand up."
Then he went on toward a herd of buffalo and began to call them, and
the buffalo started toward him and followed him, until they were
inside the arms of the V. Then he ran to one side and hid, and as
the people rose up the buffalo ran on in a straight line and jumped
over the cliff and some of them were killed by the fall.
"There," he said, "go and take the flesh of those animals." Then the
people tried to do so. They tried to tear the limbs apart, but they
could not. They tried to bite pieces out of the bodies, but they
could not do that. Old Man went to the edge of the cliff and broke
some pieces of stone with sharp edges, and showed them how to cut
the flesh with these. Of the buffalo that went over the cliff, some
were not dead, but were hurt, so they could not run away. The
people cut strips of green hide and tied stones in the middle, and
with these hammers broke in the skulls of the buffalo and killed
them.
When they had taken the skins from these animals, they set up poles
and put the hides over them, and so made a shelter to sleep under.
In later times the creator marked off a piece of land for the five
tribes, Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Gros Ventres, and Sarsis, and
said to these tribes, "When people come to cross this line at the
border of your land, take your bows and arrows, your lances and your
war clubs and give them battle, and keep them out. If they gain a
footing here, trouble for you will follow."