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Chewing Black Bones: The Last Great Blackfeet Warrior
This is the story of my great grandfather -- Chewing Black Bones -- one of the last of the great warriors of the Blackfeet Nation.
Chewing Black Bones was born in the year 1855 along the Teton River in the north-central part of Montana. (The rest stop along the freeway to Great Falls, Montana, is now located there.) The Blackfeet had a winter camp there at that time. Chewing Black Bones' father was away on a delegation on the Lame Bull Treaty which was taking place in the Judith Basin of central Montana.
Chewing Black Bones was born to a woman by the name of Otter Woman -- the sister of Mountain Chief. He was only three years old when he was captured, along with his mother, by the Crow Indians of southern Montana and was taken to the Crow camp along the Yellowstone River.
Otter Woman died in childbirth when Chewing Black Bones was only five years old. He then wandered from foster family to foster family until he was eleven years old, at which time he was rescued by a Blackfeet war party and taken home to the Blackfeet Nation.
At the early age of fifteen, Chewing Black Bones went on his first war party against the Sioux in South Dakota. He was successful. He brought back many...