Niitoy-yiss -Blackfoot  Mobile Homes   

I have tried to imagine what it was like for the early Blackfoot Nation’s people to live and move about on the prairies.  Today (Tuesday Feb 4th) it is -26c with a wind chill making it -37c.  This kind of weather on the prairies would have been pretty dam harsh for them but they obviously knew how to manage it.  But still, it must have been some very hard times. 

Of course their principal shelter was the tipi and a little research into these amazing structures took me down a road of discovery.  The use of tipis likely goes back almost 5,000 years ago and its design has only had minimal modifications up to the present.  Early historical records indicate that nomadic people in places like Siberia and Lapland used conical-shaped, animal skin tents as dwellings. 

The early typical design of the tipis of the Blackfoot Confederacy- (Piikani, Siksika and Kainai) may have looked symmetrical but they were not.  They tilt more steeply towards the back which usually faces west, into the nasty westerly winds on the prairie. The eastern doorway faces the sun (natosi) which they regard as spiritually renewing.  Prayers were said from the eastern doorway, towards the rising sun every day.

The shallower pitching eastern entrance acts like a brace for stability and of course has adjustable flaps on either side and a smoke flap up high.  Its construction is made possible by using lodgepole pine, long and straight.  Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine) was so named because of the First Nations practice of using them.  Finding the right tipi poles on the grasslands was not easy so naturally they kept and used the ones they had until they wore out. In the winter, camps were moved to the foothills of the Porcupines or Cypress Hills where new lodgepole could be harvested. 

There were usually four main structural poles and with that there were between 15 and 25 smaller poles used , depending on the tipi size. Two of the poles are for the smoke flaps and a typical tipi stood 5.2m (17’) high.  That usually translated into about  4.5 meters ( 15’) in diameter. Each tipi held as many as 9 individuals and this size of tipi was wrapped in no less than 24 bison hides which usually had to be replaced every year or two.  To contemplate the logistics of this is a bit mind boggling.  

If an average camp consisted of say a dozen tipis, that is a lot of hides (288).  These were hides that had to be stretched, tanned and stitched together which took hundreds of hours. Cutting and sewing these hides was the charge of the Blackfoot women who also erected and dismantled the dwellings.  It has been suggested that bison hunting was likely as much about for hides as it was for meat. 

Once again the logistics of all this leaves me gobsmacked. To move a camp meant dismantling the tipis which were about 400 pounds of poles and 100-150 pounds of hides.  Before the introduction of horses they used dogs to help with this work.  Tipi poles were used to make an A-shaped sledge or “travois” on which about 34 kilograms (75 pounds) was loaded per dog.  Six dogs could usually move the cover, liner and poles.   The Blackfoot word for the contraption of poles that were dragged along the ground and that held suspended bundles was “manistisi- stann”.   Dogs (Imitaa) were also loaded with pack saddles and the view of a camp moving on, 5 or 7 miles or so, following the bison must have been some sight. 

Each indigenous family could have between 10 to 12 dogs so there was a lot of dogs around camp. Imagine, if you will,  a serene encampment of 12 or more tipis, say down along the edge of the Oldman River, all arranged to face east.  It presents quite a picture , with all those dogs and the interaction of all those in the camp. It must have been an amazing sight. 

A lot of research has been done into how the physical arrangement worked inside tipis.  When we (white man/Napikowann) first showed up on the prairies there were hundreds of thousands of tipi rings; smooth rocks used to hold down their tipis.  Entrance ways are obvious to researchers by the lack of stones in that area. 

Most rings have been obliterated by farming and other developments. The rings have been meticulously studied and measured and put into databases (the few that have survived) , so as to be able to understand typical size and arrangement.  A side note on tipi rings is that according to Blackfoot tradition, when everyone in the tipi died, the entrance was sewn shut and the stone circle was made complete. “That happened all too often during the 1837 smallpox epidemic at the Akáíí’nisskoo or Many Dead Káínai (Blackfoot or Siksikáítapiiksi) campsite near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta. Collections of stone circles without door openings such as those at Many Dead are thus memorials of the devastation of epidemics on Siksikáítapiiksi people.”

Also, archaeological examination of the insides of  the rings were conducted to interpret how life was carried on in them.  Where the charcoal ash was, the stone flakes, pottery shards and bits of bone, all tell stories of how the arrangement worked.  Where artifacts were not found suggested to them where bedding and blankets were laid.  The typical layout was an entrance area with storage immediately to the left and right, a hearth in the very middle, then mid-left was food preparation (women’s space) and mid-right was tool maintenance (men’s space). To the back was deemed to be a sacred or power space.  People slept around the outer perimeter.  

Inside the tipi one would find a liner that reached part way up from the ground.  It provided an extra layer of protection from the weather, ensured privacy, and helped keep the tipi warm in winter and cool in summer.  The arrangement of the liner and the tipi cover was such that it helped air flow into the tipi.  The liners made up 8 of the 24 bison skins used in the typical sized tipi.  

The Blackfeet are renowned for their painted tipis which are decorated before the tipis are erected. The designs can be geometric shapes, sacred animals important to the one designing it, legends and battle scenes. The overall design was exclusive to the men who also chose the camp sites.  Tipi designs connected the Blackfeet with Spirit Beings around them. Elements like spiritually important landscapes and animals were drawn closer to the base. Sky spirits or celestial beings were depicted nearer to the top. The designs were owned by men and could be handed down. According to Deliah Twig (Kainai), “they all originate from dreams. They’re transferred. There’s a ceremony you go through to get the right to have that design… An Elder will conduct the ceremony. There’s a lot to the transfer”.

In later years ,after all the bison had been wiped out, canvas became the principal outer covering of the Niitsitapi (neet-seet-tdaa-pbee or the real people) which is what the Blackfoot peoples call themselves.