Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720–1877

Abstract

Prior to the publication of Ryan Hall’s Beneath the Backbone of the World, scholars and students interested in the history of the Blackfoot and the fur trade between 1720 and 1870 needed to consult the important works of many authors: John Ewers, Hugh Dempsey, David Wishart, John Milloy, Lesley Wischmann, and Ted Binnema. Employing crisp prose and engaging vignettes, Hall crafts a coherent and interesting story of how the Blackfoot “survived, suffered, and prospered” on the northwestern plains (10). All the while, he does so by emphasizing the centrality of place in Blackfoot culture and identity. Beneath the Backbone of the World refers to where the trickster and creator Náápi fashioned the world—leaving it replete with landmarks and sites possessing spiritual and pedagogical power—before retreating to the lofty peaks again to watch over his people for the rest of time.Hall’s main argument is that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Blackfoot were able to build one of the most vigorous and enduring Indigenous homelands in North America, dominating a region nearly the size of Germany. Commencing in the 1720s, the Blackfoot creatively dealt with the enormous changes that struck the northwestern plains in the form of the horse and manufactured goods from Europe. They quickly adopted their potential in domestic and martial life, then built trade relationships that gave them privileged access to markets. Blackfoot wealth and power grew beyond that of their Indigenous neighbors because of their homeland’s strategic location between two empires: British and American. The Blackfoot used shrewd diplomacy, intimidation, and occasional violence to play colonial powers off against each other and limit the spread of new technologies to their Indigenous competitors. The Blackfoot effectively cleared traditional enemies from their homeland while putting limits on colonial exploration and resource extraction, granting them near ironclad security until the mass migration of white Americans into Montana during the 1860s.Hall’s story consists of three parts (“Homelands,” “Boundaries,” and “Collisions”), each of which has two chapters. The first chapter focuses on the pedestrian Blackfoot and how the movement of horses and trade goods through Indigenous trade routes and middleman Cree traders transformed their culture. Chapter 2 illustrates how the great smallpox epidemic of 1781 prompted the Blackfoot to establish trade relations with the Hudson’s Bay Company based on traditional plains modes of diplomacy. Chapter 3 shows how the Blackfoot enacted a “scorched earth” policy against American fur traders in response to their declaration of opening trade with all regional Indigenous peoples, stymieing American exploration and resource extraction for decades. In 1831 the Blackfoot invited American traders to come to their territory—the subject of chapter 4—because the 1821 merger of the Hudson’s Bay Company and other fur trading outfits in Canada reduced Blackfoot wealth through lower trade prices and declining numbers of gifts. Blackfoot leaders employed their new American trade ties to regain what had been lost. Chapter 5 looks at the 1855 treaty between the Blackfoot and the US government. Hall’s last chapter examines the collapse of Blackfoot prosperity and security with the arrival of tens of thousands of white Americans who were more interested in mining and agriculture than the fur trade.Hall primarily uses written sources to reconstruct Blackfoot history—fur trade correspondence and journals, government records, traveler and explorer reports, and newspaper articles—which he refers to as the “colonial archive” because it is material written or mediated by outsiders. But where possible, he utilizes sources that privilege the Blackfoot perspective: winter counts, interviews, memoirs, and the insights of present-day Indigenous scholars. While the monograph will mostly interest specialists and nonspecialists alike who study Indigenous peoples, the fur trade, and the history of the West, those who teach both American and Canadian history will find a gold mine of useful content as well.