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

David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

by Ryan Hall

For the better part of two centuries, between 1720 and 1877, the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people controlled a vast region of what is now the U.S. and Canadian Great Plains. As one of the most expansive and powerful Indigenous groups on the continent, they dominated the northern imperial borderlands of North America. The Blackfoot maintained their control even as their homeland became the site of intense competition between white fur traders, frequent warfare between Indigenous nations, and profound ecological transformation. In an era of violent and wrenching change, Blackfoot people relied on their mastery of their homelands' unique geography to maintain their way of life. With extensive archival research from both the United States and Canada, Ryan Hall shows for the first time how the Blackfoot used their borderlands position to create one of North America's most vibrant and lasting Indigenous homelands. This book sheds light on a phase of Native and settler relations that is often elided in conventional interpretations of Western history, and demonstrates how the Blackfoot exercised significant power, resiliency, and persistence in the face of colonial change.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, Indigenous, Native American History

262 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 20, 2020

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

This narrative of Native American prosperity and agency in a time of disruption joins a body of scholarship on Indigenous power that includes works by Michael Witgen, Michael McDonnell, and Pekka Hamalainen. Ryan Hall’s history of the Blackfoot (or Niitsitapi) people begins with their integration into the Euro-American trade network in the 1720s. Firearms and horses, obtained initially through Cree intermediaries, became the basis of Blackfoot men’s military power, while metal axes, kettles, and riding horses increased the productivity and individual wealth of Blackfoot women. (The nation was more egalitarian in its wealth distribution than the contemporary Lakotas.) The 1781 smallpox epidemic hurt all of the northern Plains nations but hit the Crees and Assiniboines particularly hard; in the aftermath of the outbreak Niitsitapi men opened direct trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and women married HBC traders. By the early nineteenth century Blackfoot warriors were strong enough to exclude the Shoshones from the fur trade and to plunder American mountain men in the northern Rockies. Subsequently the nation’s leaders decided to pursue friendlier relations with the United States. American traders gave the Niitsitapi an alternative to the HBC’s commercial monopoly, and officials helped negotiate a peace treaty with the Salish Kootenai that gave Blackfoot hunters access to prime bison-hunting territories. Tribal power declined somewhat in the late 1860s, due to another smallpox epidemic (1869) and the Marias Massacre (1870), but after 150 years of Euro-American contact the Niitsitapi still remained in control of their destinies.

Interesting things learned along the way: the Blackfoot referred to horses as “elk-dogs,” much as the distant Choctaws called horses “deer-resemblers” (though without the suggestion of domesticity). Blackfoot hunters had religious objections to hunting beaver, and preferred to trade food or wolf pelts to the British - or to take beaver from American trappers. The bison-robe trade on the upper Plains remained unprofitable until the 1830s, when American traders began bringing steamboats up the Missouri - bison pelts were otherwise too heavy, relative to their value, to justify their transport cost.

[Dan Cluchey · Rating 5 out of 5]

An immersive journey through the most fateful years of Blackfoot history, Beneath the Backbone of the World provides a poignant perspective on how our continent was shaped across eras, who shaped it, and why. There is no barrier to entry for readers with limited knowledge of the subject matter; Professor Hall provides room for all with an engaging authorial voice that converts obviously deep research into an easily accessible narrative.

The story surfaces through recreated moments of Blackfoot life, the bulk of which are surprisingly intimate and richly detailed given our distance from the source material—they cover both the sacred and the mundane, the profound twists of fate and the everyday glimpses into people and their motivations. The result lands far beyond a mere thread of moments, thanks largely to the author's empathic pen and eye for how both internal and external forces exerted themselves across time. It is a heartbreaking story, but also one of glory and dignity—a story every American ought to take some time to understand. Unlike most treatments to which non-native Americans are usually exposed, this book animates its subjects not merely as victims of circumstance and colonization, but as willful agents of change—shapers of history, of borders, of American life. Though I'm sure it will be incredibly valuable to scholars and students of Indian and First Nations histories, I especially recommend it for readers like me, who come into it with little background in the field.

[Dan Cluchey · Rating 5 out of 5]

An immersive journey through the most fateful years of Blackfoot history, Beneath the Backbone of the World provides a poignant perspective on how our continent was shaped across eras, who shaped it, and why. There is no barrier to entry for readers with limited knowledge of the subject matter; Professor Hall provides room for all with an engaging authorial voice that converts obviously deep research into an easily accessible narrative.

The story surfaces through recreated moments of Blackfoot life, the bulk of which are surprisingly intimate and richly detailed given our distance from the source material—they cover both the sacred and the mundane, the profound twists of fate and the everyday glimpses into people and their motivations. The result lands far beyond a mere thread of moments, thanks largely to the author's empathic pen and eye for how both internal and external forces exerted themselves across time. It is a heartbreaking story, but also one of glory and dignity—a story every American ought to take some time to understand. Unlike most treatments to which non-native Americans are usually exposed, this book animates its subjects not merely as victims of circumstance and colonization, but as willful agents of change—shapers of history, of borders, of American life. Though I'm sure it will be incredibly valuable to scholars and students of Indian and First Nations histories, I especially recommend it for readers like me, who come into it with little background in the field.

[Anthony Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A straightforward, informative anthropological history of the dominance of the Blackfoot people and the control of the northern plains. With an in depth look at the ways the Black feet interacted with fur traders, the author captures the many strategies employed to leverage resources and new technologies to their benefit and maintain their preeminent position. As I discovered while reading about the "Opium War", in China, traders are never satisfied with a good deal, even while making enormous sums, foreign traders always seem to desire more. That today Blackfeet nations remain on the land that has always been their land, is a profound testament to their resiliency in the face of colonial change.

[Nicholas Ackerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well - organized narrative, conveying a lot of information in a brisk and efficient manner to set the scene for how the Blackfoot navigated their changing political environments over the time period.

[Trice]

Rec: 12/17/2025 listening to the Acknowledgements at the end of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

[Perry Hasson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a history of the Blackfoot tribe and their dealings with the Canadian and American white people. It is well written, and I highly recommend it.