Akinaa

The Akinaa, or Kainai, called Blood, are one of the three Niitsitapi nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, speaking an Algonquian Blackfoot dialect. Their name Akáínaa means many chiefs; their Plains Cree neighbours called them the blood-stained people, whence comes Blood.

Nomadic bison hunters of the northern Great Plains, the Kainai used dog travois until they adopted horses around 1730, becoming among the plains' most powerful mounted peoples. In summer the bands gathered for the Okan sun dance and buffalo drives over jumps such as Head-Smashed-In; winter scattered them to wooded valleys.

With guns obtained through Cree and Assiniboine middlemen, they pushed the Shoshone and Arapaho off the northwestern plains; by the 1780s the confederacy ranged from the North Saskatchewan to the Missouri. The fur trade brought smallpox in 1837 by steamboat: some six thousand Niitsitapi died, ending their plains dominance.