Challenges that faced the Pikuni’s Way of Life

“Either their world is shrinking or that other world, the one the white man brought 1 with him, is expanding. Either way, the Pikuni loses” : Challenges that faced the Pikuni’s Way of Life and how Spiritually impacts Personal and Tribal DecisionsFools in Crow Allison Brown History of North American Indians Dr. Means 5 November, 2020 1 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.254) 1 Throughout James Welch’s Fools Crow, American Indians known as the Lone Eaters, a group derived from the Blackfeet Indians live in the Two Medicine Territory of Montana. The novel follows not only the struggle of the protagonist, Fools Crow, but the struggles of the Lone Eaters and American Indian tribes throughout the American West. The story is one of conflicts, changes, and the unmistakable factor of spirituality. Fools In Crow, the three most pressing issues that face the Lone Eaters and Fools Crow are: their neighboring American Indian tribes, their physical and tangible conflict with the United States, and the ever-present battle to preserve their traditions and livelihoods amidst a changing continent. Afterwards, an examination of how spirituality for Fools Crow and the Lone Eaters impacts their decisions both individually and in a collective group. Throughout the text, tensions between the Lone Eaters and both the Napikwans and Crow are apparent. Within the Lone Eater, also known as Pikuni, society warring holds a great significance in their culture and provides warriors with both wealth in forms such as horses and firearms and authority in their tribe. An example of why war is such an important social factor is clear in the first introduction of White Man’s Dog, as a man with only “three horses and no wives” 2. That is why he joins the party to raid the Crow with Yellow Kidney. However, this conflict, and many others described in the text with neighboring tribes, only leads to violence, death, and the capture of Yellow Kidney. This conflict then leads to further loss of life for the Pikuni and Crow alike when the Lone Eaters seek revenge and retribution for his capture. Warring and conflicts with neighboring tribes like the Napikwans and Crow only lead to loss of life in the Pikuni and other tribes, a problem which will become apparent as the United States army and settlers diverge into Montana. Even as the book progresses, Fools Crow himself and 2 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.1) 2 other aging warriors grow a distaste for conflict. After the raid on the Crow camp where Fools Crow has to kill a young Crow scout in order to avoid being found out, Fools Crow remains haunted by the murder. Fools Crow’s discomfort with conflict only increases when his marriage to Red Paint, also Yellow Kidney’s daughter, is pregnant with their child. Fools Crow, having achieved some cultural standing from conflicts and while starting a family, no longer wants to risk his life for wealth and victory. With their child on the way, Fools Crow feels as though “I have never had such responsibility .. and it makes me cry to think of you 3alone” . At the start of the novel, war with neighboring issues seems to be the Lone Eaters’ largest threat to survival and life, however, with the notion of Manifest Destiny and the arrival of U.S. settlers came new fears. Unlike their enemies the Crow and Napikwans, the new-comers did not understand their culture and rules of combat. With the end of the Civil War, the white presence in the Two Medicine Territory of Montana was to increase. Ranging from diseases such as smallpox to alcohol which would be coined “white man’s water”, the U.S. would bring devastation to the Pikunis and other American Indian tribes in Montana in unprecedented ways. The United States military didn’t wage conflict in the ways Fools Crow and his tribe imagined, they were violent and seldom took prisoners with the intention of letting them live. The Blue-Coats, as they come to be known, who seize Pikunis are not interested in gaining horses or the honor of war-fare, and instead are interested in the ancestral lands of the Pikunis, and their violent desire only grows as the text goes on. In the physical, war-driven sense it is undeniable that the United States is the largest threat that the Pikunis, the Blackfoot Nation, and neighboring tribes have faced in their existence. Attitudes towards the Blue-Coats are of fear, “We do not want trouble with the 3 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.154) 3 whites ... we will all suffer. The seizers will kill us, and the Pikuni people will be the shadows on the land”4 and an understanding of the United States’ intentions is clear even early in the text. The resistance of Owl Child and Fast Horse doing little besides worsening the violence of the white settlers. As the text progresses, Fools Crow and the Pikunis alike understand the ramifications of the United States past their immediate, lethal threat. A new challenge to their culture and lives presents itself in the form of assimilation. “We will lose our grandchildren … they will be wiped out or they will turn into Napikwans. Already some of our children attend their school at the agency. Our men wear trousers and the women prefer the trade-cloth to skins. We wear their blankets, cook in their 5 kettles, and kill the blackhorns with their bullets. Soon our young women will marry them . …” Assimilation is the largest threat to the Pikunis’ way of life, their native ways being replaced by those of the settlers, threatening to erase their spiritual culture. An example of the erasure of both their customs and beliefs was the U.S. settlers' desire for the Pikuni to stop hunting blackhorn, also known as bision, and instead survive off of their cattle. The Bison holds both a cultural and spiritual role for the Pikuni, and this microaggression is one of many in the ways that the settlers assimilated members of the Blackfoot Nation. The Napikwans also present a threat for assimilation, their pushing out of bison with their “whitehorns” and conflicts over brokentreaties. The text closes on this idea with an understanding of what assimilation means for their people in the future and its effects on their own lives, “I do not fear for my people now. As you say, we will go to a happier place, far from the Napikwans, this disease and starvation. But I grieve for our children and their children, who will not know the life their people once lived. I 4 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.321) 5 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.253) 4 see them on the yellow skin and they are dressed like Napikwans, they watch the Napikwans and learn much from them, but they are not happy. They lose their own6.way” The threat of, and eventual assimilation of, the Pikuni with both the Napikwans and the U.S. settlers at the close of the text remains the most significant challenge to their way of life and existence in an everchanging continent. Throughout the text, and the challenges that Fools Crow and the Pikuni face, the theme of spirituality in the natural world and its role in decision making is interwoven. Fools Crow's spirituality leads him both literally and metaphorically through the challenges him and his people face. At the start of the text, we see Fools Crow portrayed as an individual without “good medicine”, or spiritual guidance. His transformation while looking to his spirit animal for power and courage is essential to his life and the story, one that is tiresome for him and a path in his life he strives to follow. A simple example of their cosmological beliefs throughout the text is the continual references to the constellations and the “above ones”. These beliefs are presented when Fools Crow and the other Pukuni warriors paint the “Seven Persons” or the big dipper on their faces before entering conflict against the Crow. Another example is when each summer the Pikuni tribes of the Blackfeet Indians meet in the plains at Four Persons Butte and worship those above them with the sacred Sun Ceremony. Or how Fools Crow’s vision quests and dreams lead him to help guide his tribe to make decision. The most clear example of their spirituality and cosmological beliefs is always present in clashes with the United States, their connection to nature and life in harmony with it opposes that of the settlers who seek to conquer and live not alongside nature, but set aside from it. This is shown in the U.S settlers' disregard for their ancestral lands, and it is ultimately what motivates 6 Welch, James. 1986. Fools Crow. (pg.360) 5 Fools Crow and the Pukuni the most in order to preserve their tribal history and cultures. When the Napikwans force the Pukuni to grow crops that are unsuitable and force them to excavate large sections of Pikuni land to search for gold, they are harming their most valued asset and part of life. That violation from both the U.S. and the Napikwans is what drives the decisions that the Pikuni make to fight and resist instead of lay dormant while their lands and livelihoods are trying to be taken from them. In summary, it is evident that throughout the text, the most significant issue that the Pikuni faced changed and developed with both the changing world around them and their own spiritual and tribal understandings. Throughout the novel, Fools Crow acts as a lens in which to view the divergence of the U.S. settlers and Napikwans on the Pikuni way of life, the way which is continuously threatened and attempted to be assimilated. 6