Introduction

Abstract A few years ago, I attended a slide-illustrated lecture on “Blackfeet Sacred Geography” presented by a member of the Blackfeet tribe. As lights lowered in the room and views of magnificent Montana and Alberta landscapes lit up the screen, Curly Bear Wagner described the events that made these places sacred. He explained where and how the Beaver Bundle came to the Blackfeet. He talked about Scarface and the Sun Dance. While Wagner displayed pictures of the sacred places, seemingly unchanged over the years, and related his peoples’ connection to them, my mind drifted to Walter McClintock who, exactly one hundred years before Wagner’s lecture, walked into a Blackfeet camp and found his life’s calling. McClintock was one of those turn-of-the-century types who concluded the Blackfeet, and other Indians, could not survive in the twentieth century. So, he set about filling notebooks with Indian stories, legends, and descriptions of ceremonies. He spent several years photographing the Blackfeet of Montana and Canada in various poses. In time, McClintock put together his own lantern-slide-illustrated lectures and went on the road, regaling audiences with stories of how the Blackfeet acquired the Beaver Bundle and tales of Scarface and the Sun Dance. He believed that without such efforts as his, all traces of Blackfeet culture would disappear forever.