Blackfoot Lodge Tales: Story of a Prairie People

by George Bird Grinnell

These tales "bring alive the world of the Northern Plains buffalo hunters and warriors."-Western Folklore

Genres: Fiction, Native American, Historical, Folk Tales

311 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell is named after Grinnell.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book thirty years ago at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and hauled it to Taiwan ten years later. This year, I finally read it through. I'm glad I did.

Outsider accounts of any culture are suspect by provenance, and one wonders how malleable artifacts such as stories get altered between telling, translation and presentation, but Grinneth appears competent, sincere and faithful in his effort to represent a people he seems to have loved.

The book is not a page-turner, but neither is it dry. I happily recommend it if you are interested in First Nations, indigenous peoples, folklore and cosmology, outsider accounts, and that type of thing.

[J R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read using Libby, the 1892 book, Blackfoot Lodge Tales by George Bird Grinnell which has been on my Read List since April 28, 2016. I found this book to use as research for my novel I had began writing.

The author, George Bird Grinnell (September 20, 1849 – April 11, 1938) was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell in Glacier National Park in Montana is named after him.

Grinnell’s relationship with the Blackfeet had once been as intimate as the one he continued to enjoy with the Cheyennes. The Blackfeet agency, the center of the reservation, was 12 miles to the east at Browning, Montana, and Grinnell usually divided his trips to the region between the mountains and the Indians. His involvement went beyond the anthropological. He immersed himself not just in documenting the Blackfeet’s past, but also in promoting the well-being and betterment of the tribe as they ran a brutal gauntlet of starvation, disease, corrupt agents, invasive stock raisers, and a steady onslaught of ineffective and downright bad policies drawn up by spoilsmen and would-be reformers in faraway Washington, D.C. Though Grinnell carried no official credential, the Blackfeet came to count on him as their broker with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress, and the White House. He received no compensation, other than the satisfaction of helping friends through hard times toward “civilization”—a condescending term and a paternalistic role, to be sure, but Grinnell believed that, for the Blackfeet, theirs was a clear-cut case of adapt or perish. As an expression of their faith and appreciation, they adopted him into the tribe, an honor he prized above all others.

Good read indeed

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really good actually, at first I had my doubts and it took me a while to get hooked, but it definitely opened my eyes to the ways in which other people lived. Grinnell really did care about the wellbeing of the Blackfeet in a time when many others did not care at all about indigenous peoples. I almost would recommend reading the ending part of the book first when it talks about their ways of life before the stories so you get context and understanding behind a lot of the terms mentioned within the stories.

[Sierra Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative but outdated

I enjoyed this book very much. I loved reading the traditional Blackfoot stories. It doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, like the harm white colonialism has done to the Blackfoot society through disease, bison extermination, and culture loss. Due to when the book was written, much of the language is out of date. I would very much enjoy reading a 2022 version of this book if someone were to write one.

[Gabriel Galletta · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to learn about this culture. Just like Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales, I liked the second part of the book better (after the lodge tales) in which the author writes about Blackfoot life: in war, social classes, medicine, daily life, Blackfoot of today (1892), etc.

[Samantha McCann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was first published in 1892 by George Bird Grinnell. Most of the book contains stories from Blackfeet Indians, before covering various topics near the end of the book. Happy to have read another GBG book.

[Randal Licato · Rating 5 out of 5]

I own the 1962 printing by Bison Books. I found this in an old, used bookstore. This book is filled with 'camp fire' stories that were passed down generations. There are also stories more about myths and folklore type things of the Blackfoot culture. Plus additional information on what the author learned while visiting with them. There is a lot of information in this book and I found it very fascinating. I personally have Cherokee in my family line and really enjoy learning about any Native American culture.

The story's ranged from everyday life challenges to, exciting heroism and save-the-girl story's, moral choices(learned from or not) involving Mythical talking animals and objects, Spirit guides, medicine men, evil wives, brotherly feuds and misunderstandings. There are even some between life and death stories and myths.

All of them kept me hooked. I wanted to know how they were going to end. Some make you cheer for the hero, some are really sad and end depressing. Some had me laughing they were so amusing.

One thing I found very cool, was that they were written almost exactly how they were told: with broken English. It could be distracting or annoying for some people, but I found myself drawn into them even more because of it. I could picture myself sitting by the fire and listening to them tell the stories.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tales were very interesting. The commentary and history tells a half story that is rather depressing, coming into it after the buffalo have gone and their main ways of life have been subverted. Additionally, most of the traditions discussed are in regards to horses, which only arrived with Europeans, so the older traditions are represented only in the stories, not much in the history portion.

[Djorth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. Reads like fiction. As you read about different tribes, you see that most of the stories are the same with just a slight twist.

[Wanda Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of stories.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few authors who's information is mostly accurate.