324 
tionally owed their origin, and the songs, in a large bundle numbering 
perha])s half a liundred, that established their validity. 
Painted tents, special war-shirts, amulets, everything in fact that 
originated from a vision, the Blackfoot regarded in the same light 
as the medicine-bundles. Each was a symbol of some blessing 
bestowed on its original owner by the powers of the supernatural 
world, and that blessing could be retained for mankind by handing 
down the symbol with the original vision-story and songs. The 
symbol alone, the medicine-bundle or the painted tent, was worthless 
without the vision-story and the songs, for only through a perfect 
knowledge of these “ formulae ” could each successive owner I'esur- 
rect, in his imagination, the spiritual experience of the first. It was 
this necessity of obtaining, as far as possible, the same spiritual 
experience that differentiated the Blackfoot cult of “ medicine- 
bundles ” from the almost world-wide belief in an amulet, a religious 
statue, or a grave relic conveying good or ill luck from one genera- 
tion to another. 
An epidemic of smallpox in the eigliteenth century, and epi- 
demics of smallpox and measles about the middle of the nineteenth, 
greatly diminished the numbers and strength of the Blackfoot along 
with the other plains’ tribes. Mackenzie estimated that there were 
from 2,250 to 2,500 warriors in the three tribes of the confetleracy 
in 1801, which would give a population of about 9,000,^ Hind in 
1858 estimated 300 tents in the Blackfoot tribe, 400 in the Piegan, 
and 250 in the Blood; reckoning eight jiersons to a tent, this gives 
a total population of 7,600.- Six hundred died of starvation just 
after the disappearance of the buffalo twenty-five years later. The 
remainder then settled on reserves in Montana and in Alberta. To- 
day there are about 2,200 living in the former state, and slightly 
more than this number in Alberta. 
SARCEE 
The Athapaskan dialect spoken by the Sarcee (“Not Good”) 
Indians of Alberta seems most closely related to the dialect of the 
Beaver Indians dwelling on the Peace river, and the traditions of the 
1 Mackenzie: Op. eil., p. Ixx. 
2 Hind: Op. cit.. p. 115. An estimate in 1835, just before the worst epidemics, gave the 'niackfoot 
300 tents, the Piegan 500, the Blond 400, the Gros Ventre 250, and the Sarcee 100; Private Papers of 
Sir .Tames Douglas, 1st ser., ser. C, No. 12, Bancroft Collection of Pacific Coast MSS., University of 
California. 
