317 
the Blackfoot and Sarcee. The iiitrodiietioii of horses and firearms 
induced other bands of Cree to join them, and their numbers swelled 
until they became a serious menace to all the tribes along what is 
now tlie International Boundary. They spread ovei' northern Alberta 
to the Peace river, raided through the country of the Blackfoot to 
the Pocky mountains, and southward to tlie posts of the fur-traders 
on the Missouri river. Smallpox decimated them in the eighteenth 
century, as it did many other tribes in the United States and Canada, 
and between 1835 and 1858 diseases and wars reduced their number 
from about 4,000 to barely 1,000.^ When the disappearance of the 
buffalo, about 1878, deprived the remnants of the tribe of their 
means of livelihood tlie government distributed them among various 
reserves in the three Prairie Provinces, combining them in one or 
two places with Assiniboine. 
The Plains’ Cree claim that they w'ere formerly divided into 
twelve bands, each of which had its own chief. Possessing only a 
weak culture of their own, they quickly assimilated many of the 
customs of their neighbours, particularly of the Assiniboine, their 
allies, and of the Ojibwa who mingled with tliem on the east. They 
had one military society only, to which entrance w^as gained by some 
valorous deed. From the Assiniboine they probably derived the 
ceremony of the sun-dance;- perhaps also some of their dancing 
societies, although most of the Cree societies were more definitely 
religious than the Assiniboine, three at least aiming to increase 
the success of the luinters. There were two ceremonies that they 
probably borrowed from the Ojibwa, an annual smoke-offering and 
prayer to the Great Spirit, and an annual feast to the dead. On 
the whole, their customs were similar to those of the Assiniboine, 
although every plains’ tribe, of course, differed in many ways from 
every other. 
BLACKFOOT 
The strongest and most aggressive nation on the Canadian 
prairies in the middle of the eighteenth century w'as the Blackfoot, 
whose territory stretched from the Rocky mountains well into 
Saskatchewan, and from the North Saskatchewan river almost to the 
upper Missouri in the United States. On their southeastern flank 
1 Hind. H, Y. r Xortli We.st Territory, Reports of Progress; together with a preliminary and 
general report on the Assiniboine and Sa.skatchewan exploring expedition, p, 46 (Toronto, 1859). 
“ The Cree sun-dance, strictly speaking, was a dance to the thunder, not to the sun -god. 
