blackfoot-valley

Not much is definitively known about the movements of the specific na- tive peoples in this region before the first contacts with Eurpoeans and white Americans. Certainly there was an ebb and flow over many centuries, indeed millennia, between various groups. The human population was sparse in this northern region. At the time of European contact, much of the northern Mon- tana Plains east of the Rockies was occupied by nomadic Blackfeet (the name refers to their “black moccasins”), a warlike tribe of hunters who had previ- ously invaded the area from the north. South of the Blackfeet, were a similar hunting society, the Crow. West of the Continental Divide, Native Americans have been classed as the “Plateau Culture,” whose people lived more settled lives than did the Plains hunting tribes. They depended much more on fish, roots, and berries for food, although hunting provided a welcome supplement. In the moun- tains and valleys just west of the Divide, including the Blackfoot River / Ne- vada Creek area, lived a people called the Flatheads by whites. This name refered to the custom of binding a flat piece of wood to the head of a child for cosmetic reasons, until the forehead flattened into a straight profile sloping back to the top of the skull. Curiously, the so-called Flatheads encountered by early European explorers all had normal craniums - this notion regarding them seems to have originated from “clumsy European translations of the sign - language gestures for the tribes” (David Lavender in Land of the “Three Blackfoot Cheifs” 1882, descendants of the earliest nomadic peoples Known Native Peoples in the Region 50