ll invaders,
fighting with the Crees on the north, the Assinaboines on the east, the
Crows on the south, and the Snakes, Kalispels, and Kutenais on the
southwest and west. In those days the Blackfeet were rich and powerful.
The buffalo fed and clothed them, and they needed nothing beyond what
nature supplied. This was their time of success and happiness.

Crowded into a little corner of the great territory which they once
dominated, and holding this corner by an uncertain tenure, a few Blackfeet
still exist, the pitiful remnant of a once mighty people. Huddled together
about their agencies, they are facing the problem before them, striving,
helplessly but bravely, to accommodate themselves to the new order of
things; trying in the face of adverse surroundings to wrench themselves
loose from their accustomed ways of life; to give up inherited habits and
form new ones; to break away from all that is natural to them, from all
that they have been taught--to reverse their whole mode of existence. They
are striving to earn their living, as the white man earns his, by toil. The
struggle is hard and slow, and in carrying it on they are wasting away and
growing fewer in numbers. But though unused to labor, ignorant of
agriculture, unacquainted with tools or seeds or soils, knowing nothing of
the ways of life in permanent houses or of the laws of health, scantily
fed, often utterly discouraged by failure, they are still making a noble
fight for existence.

Only within a few years--since the buffalo disappeared--has this change
been going on; so recently has it come that the old order and the new meet
face to face. In the trees along the river valleys, still quietly resting
on their aerial sepulchres, sleep the forms of the ancient hunter-warrior
who conquered and held this broad land; while, not far away, Blackfoot
farmers now rudely cultivate their little crops, and gather scanty harvests
from narrow fields.

It is the meeting of the past and the present, of savagery and
civilization. The issue cannot be doubtful. Old methods must pass away. The
Blackfeet will become civilized, but at a terrible cost. To me there is an
interest, profound and pathetic, in watching the progress of the struggle.

DAILY LIFE AND CUSTOMS

Indians are usually represented as being a silent, sullen race, seldom
speaking, and never laughing nor joking. However true this may be in regard
to some tribes, it certainly was not the case with most of