Carrying fire the Pikunii way.
The Pikunii people, also called the Blackfeet, have lived in the northern Great Plains
of the United States for hundreds and hundreds of years.
In the time before railroads, before European-American settlement,
and before reservations, they were a migratory people.
Every year, they moved from one place to another so they could hunt the buffalo
and harvest other foods and medicines.
As the Pikunii travelled, they took fire with them.
How did they do that, and why?
Listen to the stories of Marvin Weatherwax, an elder of the Pikunii people.
He will explain about the Pikunii way to carry fire throughout the year,
as the people followed the buffalo.
Fire is, you know, very important to us.
It was very important to us in many areas.
One of the most important areas was conservation.
Pikunii people were very, very conscious of making sure that, when they left an area,
it was clean, and that it was going to come back just the way they found it.
So when they left camp, they would burn the area
so that the things they left there was all burned.
Everything was burned, all the grounds and all.
And what that did was, it left it to renew.
And it would grow back and renew.
The fire was very important in another aspect.
That was how they built their pharmacies.
After a fire, the first thing that comes up is the weeds.
Many of them are the medicines that we use for various ailments and the things that we need.
We will make a fire, deliberately burn an area where we know that certain plants are.
It will burn them down and then they'll grow back.
Why was it important to carry fire from one camp to the next?
When we talk about the longevity and the continuity of our people,
the fire played a very important part in that.
When we moved from one camp to the other, it was very important
that they took fire from the main fire.
They took some of that and brought it to the next camp, and started that fire with it.
In this sense, we had the same fire that went on and on and on.
In doing so, they had to have some way to transport it
because sometimes the camps were 20, 30, 40 miles apart.
And they had to have a way to transport that flame from that fire to the new fire.
It would be very easy to go and start a new fire, just to send someone to start a new fire.
But the meaning -- the importance of taking the fire from one camp to the other --
the continuity was very important.
It was very spiritual meaning.
The vessel that they used, it was very important, and that was a fire carrier.
This is a fire carrier here that is a completed one.
This is the outer covering -- which is mud, clay -- that goes on the outside.
Then the covering, which is made out of wood or stone, and that covers the top of it.
Sometimes they carried two or three of them, depending on how far they were going to travel.
And they'd begin with one of them that had fire in it.
And then if they got to the point where this was getting hot down here on the end,
they would know it's coming to the end of this.
And then they would change, stop, and take that and put that fire into another one.
And then they would start out again.
A slit on the sides and down on the bottom -- Not only ventilation to get air --
oxygen in there to keep it going, but the bottom one was
to let you know that it was time to change it.
The ingenuity that was used in building these is absolutely phenomenal.
We'll go through one here that's built.
This is the horn.
And down on the bottom of here we have moss, and it was usually kind of damp.
And that was pushed all the way down to the bottom.
And then they would put the wood on the top of it, going around a circle.
But they would have softwoods in the middle.
There's a flat stone here, where they would put the original piece of coal on there.
And they used the softwoods because the softwoods are easier to ignite.
So from the coal, the softwood would ignite.
And then outside of that was the hardwood, right on the outside.
And then after this burned, then the hardwood would burn.
And the thing that is good about the hardwoods is that the hardwood,
such as when they used the cottonwood or the aspen, it does not go out.
It'll burn until there is no more wood.
But the heat from the softwood is what would get the hardwood going,
because that was a little harder to get started burning.
But once that got going, it went on and on.
The moss was not only on the bottom.
It was also around the outer edge, and this was to keep it from flaming.
It would not flame; it would just stay a coal.
And then the top part was the cover, which is very important -- a very important part of it.
It was a stone.
And most of the time it was wrapped with something that would burn away,
like a piece of rawhide sometimes.
But it would be wet, soaked in water, so that when it was put down on there, it made a seal.
It covered it up, and then it was tied down.
The bottom inside of that normally would burn from the heat.
This would get very, very hot.
How long do you think fire would last in a fire carrier?
Really, it depended on how big the fire carrier was, because that would depend
on what the length of the hardwood would be, that you put in there.
Who carried fire for the people?
There were special people that were chosen.
And it was normally the long-distant runners, because they ran not only to find
out where the buffalo were, but they ran to get new camps, to where the camp was.
And they didn't walk.
They literally ran, you know, sometimes for 40, 50 miles nonstop.
The people that put it together were someone that had done it for a long time.
And he would teach someone else how to do it.
And just my sense, you know, I would think that the runners that carried it were the ones --
that the knowledge of knowing how to make it was passed on to them.
In my readings and in talking with people, most all the tribes had their own way
of continuing -- even the Indians in Alaska.
They used whale bones, and they did something similar to this,
and they transported their fires the same way, and for the same reasons.
So the continuity of the fire was important amongst all the Native people.
All of us are so conscious about carrying things on and making sure that things are continued.
The Pikunii travelled hundreds of miles each year carrying fire.
This was "the Cycle of the Buffalo."
Right around the Choteau area, that's where our main camps always were.
In the spring of the year, this is where buffalo were.
Here, and down toward towards -- right above Great Falls --
there was usually herd of female buffalo calving.
This area down here by Great Falls, there's a pishkun down there now.
They called it the Ulm Pishkun, and it was used primarily for the elders.
What they would do is some warriors would go down and they would take part
of a herd -- not a real large part of it.
And then they would run them off of that pishkun.
They did it in the spring of the year before the cows gave birth.
Previous to us being on the reservation, we travelled pretty much
through the whole half of the state.
And they came around over by Shelby along the Marias River there,
and they hunted the Sweetgrass Hills and brought that back to Shelby, and then they camped there
for a while, and then they continued on over into Canada by the Cypress Hills.
Normally when they hit the Cypress Hills, it was around July.
Then they'd come up from there toward Calgary.
They turned down along the mountains.
And then about this time of the year, they were probably right in this area along the mountains,
right in the mountains by Pincher Creek -- right above Pincher Creek.
And then they would move down into their winter camp area.
Do the Pikunii still carry fire?
What my grandfather told me about the fires --
he was told probably about the middle of the 1800s was when they say the last fires went out.
It was probably just previous to the buffalo being gone.
And the reason for that was that they moved their camps to follow the buffalo.
And then when the buffalo were gone, then it was not necessary for them
to move their camps anymore and follow the buffalo.
They could stay stationary.
And then they had to begin to depend on the wildlife that was there,
or the cattle that the government was going to provide them,
the rations that the government was going to provide them.
That's when they all had to start living on reservations,
so there was no more going -- so that's when the fire ended.
Sharing knowledge about the Pikunii way: One of my responsibilities in my life is to pass
on things that I have learned from my grandparents and from other elders.
Because I have finally become -- I believe I have become an elder.
And I can pass this on.