Piikani

The Piikani, sometimes glossed as the splotchy robe people, were the westernmost of the three Niitsitapi nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Their hunting grounds reached from the Rocky Mountains along the upper Missouri, and they divided into northern and southern groups.

Before horses arrived around 1730 they hunted on foot with buffalo jumps and dog travois; mounted and armed through the fur trade, they helped drive the Shoshone from the northwestern plains. They clashed with peoples beyond the mountain passes and guarded beaver streams coveted by the Hudson's Bay Company.

The American Fur Company opened Fort Piegan on their Missouri lands in 1831. The German prince Maximilian of Wied and painter Karl Bodmer visited in 1833, leaving portraits of their life. In 1837 a steamboat-borne smallpox epidemic swept through the upper Missouri camps and killed thousands.