Blackfeet and Buffalo

The panel ends with the hole plugged, and the Blackfeet have been opening it again. Out of meetings among the Blackfoot Confederacy's nations around 2010 came the Iinnii Initiative, iinnii being the word for buffalo, and on September 23, 2014, tribes from both sides of the border signed the Buffalo Treaty on the Blackfeet Nation, the first treaty among them in more than a century. In April 2016, 88 bison came home from Alberta's Elk Island National Park, descended from animals captured on Blackfeet land, and were received with a Beaver Bundle ceremony.

What the plaque says

Blackfeet and Buffalo In the days of the fur traders and trappers, immediately following the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), all of this country bordering the Rocky Mountains from here north into Canada and south to the three forks of the Missouri and to the Yellowstone River was buffalo range and the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet Nation. These Indians were fierce and willing fighters who jealously guarded their territory from invasion. Like all of the plains Indians, they were dependent upon the buffalo for their existence. The herds meant meat, moccasins, robes, leggings and teepees. Board and room on the hoof. Some Indian legends say that the first buffalo came out of a hole in the ground. When the seemingly impossible happened and the buffalo were wiped out, there were Indians who claimed the whites found the spot, hazed the herds back into it, and plugged the hole.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Shaw Indian School — 32 mi
  An Army post turned boarding school, whose Native girls went to the 1904 World's Fair as an exhibit and came home champions.

More markers nearby

• Old Agency on the Teton — 1.4 mi
• Egg Mountain — 10 mi
• Augusta and Gilman — 25 mi
• Dupuyer — 26 mi