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The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi (meaning "original people"; c.f. Ojibwe: Anishinaabeg and...

The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi (meaning "original people"; c.f. Ojibwe: Anishinaabeg and Quinnipiac: Eansketambawg) is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana. The Blackfoot Confederacy consists of the North Peigan (Aapátohsipikáni), the Blackfeet or South Piegan (Aamsskáápipikani), the Kainai Nation (Káínaa: "Blood"), and the Siksika Nation ("Blackfoot") or more correctly Siksikáwa ("Blackfoot people"). The South Peigan are located in Montana, and the other three are located in Alberta. Together they call themselves the Niitsítapi (the "Original People"). These groups shared a common language and culture, had treaties of mutual defense, and freely intermarried. The independent and very successful warriors whose territory stretched from the North Saskatchewan River along what is now Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, to the Yellowstone River of Montana, and from the Rocky Mountains and along the South Saskatchewan River, east past the Cypress Hills. The basic social unit of the Niitsitapi (all the Niitsitapi were erroneously referred to as Blackfoot when only one nation was called Siksika or Blackfoot), above the family, was