ABSTRACT
The landscape of the Niitsitapi1 is a series of named locales linked by paths, movements and narratives. The places are often outstanding natural features, river crossings or resource patches perceived as focal points of spiritual energy. Myths and oral traditions explain how these landmarks were created, primarily through the actions of Napi, or Old Man, who left behind songs, sacred objects and practices to commemorate his creative acts on earth. Throughout the year, social groups re-enact the wanderings of their mythological hero by following the same paths and stopping at specied places-mountains, hills, rocks, river crossings and isolated aspen groves-to perform activities and ceremonies in a prescribed order. As the people move over this landscape, the prominent features serve as mnemonic devices that elicit the appropriate narratives. In addition to the stories of creation, these narratives describe the history of the group, individual and group responsibilities toward the environment, codes of ethical conduct within the community and interesting anecdotes of historical events. In this fashion, the landscape becomes the archive or repository for the history and oral traditions of the group. That is, the Niitsitapi anchor specic components of their collective memory to prominent landmarks and use these mnemonic devices to recall the relevant sectors of their oral traditions during their annual pilgrimage across the landscape. The landscape of the Niitsitapi is also created by people through their day-to-day activities and movements on the ground. As reections of this habitual behaviour, paths and trails represent the accumulated imprint of countless journeys as people move from place to place conducting their everyday business (sensu Ingold 1993). Through their daily activities, beliefs and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. Yet, movement along the trails is more than a patterned movement in search of economic resources; it is also an excursion through the mythology and history of the group. Given a cyclical conception of time, the activities and movement occur in the eternal present and are periodically regenerated through ceremonies such as the Sun Dance to restore the mythical moment of creation (Wissler
1918). Thus, the past becomes a referent for the present (sensu Morphy 1995). In fact, the landscape is there today because the ancestors visited the focal points of spiritual energy, performed the appropriate ceremonies and rituals, sang the songs and told the stories. In the world of the Niitsitapi, then, movement over the landscape becomes a ritual pilgrimage designed to renew ties with the spirits, the ancestors and living communities as well as ensure the regeneration of the resources and the land for future generations. In the cosmology of the Niitsitapi, the world was created through the actions of Napi as he travelled across the Northern Plains. The very presence of rocks, springs, trees and animals on the landscape is evidence of this living connection between the Creator and the creation. These resources, which are viewed as animate, sustain both body and spirit; they were placed on the Northern Plains to maintain the health and harmony of the Niitsitapi way of life. Yet, the relationship between the Niitsitapi and the landscape is one based on reciprocity. For their part, the Niitsitapi must continue to visit the focal points of spiritual energy, perform the ceremonies, sing the songs and tell the stories to ensure the continued vitality of the rocks, springs, trees and animals and, by extension, the physical and spiritual health of the entire community, both living and dead. Thus, travel across the landscape is much more than an annual pilgrimage; it is a spiritual, social and educational journey through the archive of the group. Signicantly, the total landscape is necessary to tell the entire story, to complete the annual ritual cycle, to establish the social and ideological continuity of the group and to ensure the renewal of resources. In effect, movement across the landscape becomes a strategy designed to preserve and transmit faithfully the language, culture and oral traditions of the group. To understand and interpret the structured world of the Niitsitapi, archaeologists must be willing to accept alternative perspectives of the ecophysical environment and its relationship to human groups. They must move away from the constructed world of ecologists, where the patterned movement of human groups is predicated by the location, abundance and seasonal availability of resources toward the structured world of the Niitsitapi where human groups move from place to place following well-dened trails to renew their spiritual and physical relationship with the land, the people and the resources. The network of paths and named places created by the day-to-day activities of the groups constitutes a concrete representation of the Niitsitapi landscape, a structured world which includes myths, oral traditions, social relationships and ceremonial obligations as well as material resources. Just as the past becomes a referent for the present in Niitsitapi communities, the network of trails and place names becomes a passage into the structured world of the Niitsitapi for the anthropologist, archaeologist and historian. The Homeland of the Niitsitapi
Dening the homeland of the Niitsitapi presents difculties, due in part to potential overlap along the margins of contiguous groups and in part to the inconsistencies between historical accounts. According to the Elders,2 the traditional homeland of the Niitsitapi extended from omaka-ty3 (the North Saskatchewan) in the north to ponokasis-’ughty (the Yellowstone River) in the south, and from mis-tõkis (the Rocky Mountains) in the west to the omaxi-spatchikway (the Great Sand Hills) in the east. The extent of this traditional homeland is supported, in whole or in part, by rst-hand accounts4 (Catlin 1965 [1841]:42; Henry and Thompson 1965:524; Mackenzie 1971:lxx, 723; Palliser 1863:204; Thompson 1968 [1916]:345-346; Wied-Neuwied 1906:96), as well as government reports and ofcial proceedings (Butler
1871:13; Doty 1855:443; Robertson-Ross 1872:11, 29), and the treaties of Fort Laramie (1851) and of the Blackfeet (1855), all of which relied upon the Niitsitapi for information. To take but one example, in the report on his 1872 reconnaissance of Western Canada, Col. Patrick Robertson-Ross, Adjt.-General of the Militia, praised the well-known guide William “Piskaan” Monroe, whom he relied upon to get him safely from Rocky Mountain House to the North Kootanie Pass, “about 300 miles through the country of the Blackfeet Indians…” (Robertson-Ross 1872:18). Not only was Monroe a very experienced individual-he and his brother Felix were employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and were members of Palliser’s expedition-but, as the son of HBC employee Hugh Monroe and Sinopah, daughter of Piegan chief Lone Walker, he knew the Niitsitapi and their landscape intimately.
