Basic biography on crowfoot

ISAPO-MUXIKA (Crowfoot, occasionally known in French as Pied de Corbeau), Blackfoot chief; b. c. 1830 near the Belly River in what is now southern Alberta, son of Blood Indians Istowun-eh’pata (Packs a Knife) and Axkyahp-say-pi (Attacked Toward Home); d. 25 April 1890, near Blackfoot Crossing (Alta).

Crowfoot was born into the Blood tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which at the time also included the Blackfoot and Piegan tribes.

Crowfoot shared these concerns but kept the big picture in mind. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. Numbered treaties had already been signed to the north and east, and now the Blackfoot Confederacy and their neighbors in southern Alberta were to be engaged. He was in nineteen engagements with enemy tribes and was wounded six times.

Poundmaker surrendered in May and was tried for treason. Of his children, only four survived into adulthood. Some settlers feared Crowfoot was waiting to attack, and Governor General Lord Lansdowne sent Father Lacombe as an envoy. By the last decade of his life, most of his children had died of tuberculosis and he was almost constantly in mourning.

Crowfoot initially hoped the government would uphold the promises of Treaty 7, but he soon grew distrustful. In fact, the Bloods were a larger tribe than the Blackfeet and all three tribes in the confederacy had independent leadership, but the confusion between “Blackfoot tribe” and “Blackfoot nation” – which included the Blood, Piegan, and Blackfoot tribes and their allies the Sarcees and the Gros Ventres – as well as Crowfoot’s impressive role as diplomat and politician, often caused whites to place him in a position that he did not in fact occupy.

Observers noted that he frequently cut his hair short, the Blackfoot sign of mourning, because there was seemingly always a death in his lodge. Dempsey, Crowfoot, chief of the Blackfeet (Edmonton, 1972). If the Police had not come to the country, where would we be all now? He praised the North-West Mounted Police, whose arrival he credited with saving his nation.

By dawn, they indicated they would follow Crowfoot’s lead. In 1872, with the death of Akamih-kayi (Big Swan), the leadership was reduced to Crowfoot and Natosapi (Old Sun), an elderly warrior chief.

In 1873 Crowfoot’s eldest son was killed in a raid on a Cree camp, and the chief led a large revenge party which succeeded in killing an enemy warrior.

Without the Mounties around, the frontier returned to its lawless ways: American whiskey traders brought liquor to Blackfoot camps again, fights broke out, and old intertribal warfare resumed. Crowfoot also befriended the Catholic missionary Albert Lacombe in 1865 and later rescued him when he was in a camp that was attacked by a Cree war party.

In recognition, officials presented Crowfoot with a medal and a chief’s uniform. It was largely through their influence that white settlement in Blackfoot territory occurred without violence. Both sides looked to Crowfoot as a potentially decisive force.