Indians were wild nomads, who lived in skin tents, hunted the buffalo, and had probably never seen a plow or an axe.
The Blackfeet have been known to the whites for about a century, and during that period have dwelt in or near their present abode. There is evidence, however, that they once lived farther east than at present. Mackenzie, in 1789, found the three Blackfoot tribes, with their allies, the Fall Indians (or Atsinas), holding the South Branch of the Saskatchewan, from its source to its junction with the North Branch—a region of which the eastern portion was at a later day possessed by the Crees. Of the Blackfoot tribes, he says: "They are a distinct people, speak a language of their own, and I have reason to think are traveling northwest, as well as the others just mentioned (the Atsinas); nor have I heard of any Indians with whose language that which they speak has any affinity."
The result of Mr. McLean's inquiries confirms this opinion of the westward movement of these Indians in comparatively recent times. "The former home of these Indians," he writes, "was in the Red River country, where, from the nature of the soil which blackened their moccasins, they were called Blackfeet." This, it should be stated, is the exact meaning of Siksika, from siksinam, black, and ka, the root of ohkatsh, foot. The westward movement of the Blackfeet has probably been due to the pressure of the Crees upon them. The Crees, according to their own tradition, originally dwelt far east of the Red River, in Labrador and about Hudson Bay. They have gradually advanced westward to the inviting plains along the Red River, pushing the prior occupants before them by the sheer force of numbers. This will explain the deadly hostility which has always existed between the Crees and the Blackfeet.
Father Lacombe, it should be stated, is disposed to question the fact of the former residence of the Blackfeet in the Red River country, on the ground that their own tradition seems to bring them from the opposite direction. "They affirm," he writes, "that they came from the southwest, across the mountains; that is, from the direction of Oregon and Washington Territory. There were bloody conflicts between the Blackfeet and the Nez Percés, as Bancroft relates, for the right of hunting on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains." Mr. McLean, who mentions the former residence of the Blackfeet in the Red River region as an undoubted fact, also says, "It is supposed that the great ancestor of the Blackfeet came across the mountains." Here are two distinct and apparently conflicting traditions which call for further inquiry. One of the best tests of the truth of tradition is to be found in language. Applying this test in the present instance, we are led to some interesting conclusions. It has been seen that Mackenzie, to whom we owe our first knowledge of the Blackfoot tribes, declared that their language had no affinity with that of any other Indians whom he knew. He was well acquainted with the Crees
