Supernatural Powers

• The Blackfoot tribesmen believed in a connection between the natural environment and their lives. They sought the supernatural powers they believed were contained in the land and in the animals. An animal would appear to them in a dream, providing the dreamer with instructions to obtain a particular power. The dreamer had to assemble objects, place them in a rawhide pouch, called a medicine bundle, and engage in specified rituals and songs. The most powerful of these was the beaver medicine bundle that the tribe used to allure buffalo.
  
  

The Sun Dance

• The Blackfoot Indians held the Sun Dance every year, in the middle of the summer. The woman chosen to lead the dance, known as the "vow woman," was someone whose close family member had almost died that year. She would use the dance to show appreciation to the sun for saving the life of her family member. The tribe would erect a Sun Dance Lodge in the center of a circular camp, and the dance would last four days. Some dancers would have taken vows and would fast from food and water during the dance. They asked the sun to bestow them power, luck or success.
  
  

Sickness

• The Blackfoot Indians believed evil spirits were the cause of sickness. A professional medicine man was required to rid the infected body of the spirit, who had received healing powers through a vision. The medicine man sometimes removed an object from the sick person during the healing ceremony, to demonstrate the removal of the evil spirit.
  
  

Catholicism

• In 1859, the Catholic Jesuits erected a mission on the Teton River. Soon after their arrival, the Methodists tried to exert their influence on the spiritual beliefs of the Blackfoot tribesmen. During 1883 to 1884, John Young, a Methodist minister, succeeded in banning the Jesuits from the Blackfoot land, but the missionaries later returned to the South of the reservation. Although many of the Blackfoot Indians follow Christian beliefs in the modern day, they continue to uphold traditional customs.