The Blackfeet were people of the buffalo. They originated on the plains of today’s southern Alberta, western Saskatchewan, and central Montana. In the 1830s famed artist and explorer George Catlin called the Blackfeet “the most powerful tribe of Indians on the continent.”
Fur trader, hunting guide, and later, acclaimed chronicler of Native American culture, James Willard Schultz lived with the Blackfeet for many years from the 1870s to the 1930s. The tribe named him “Apikuni” (Spotted Robe). Schultz said the purpose of writing this book was “to integrate the activities of the life of the Blackfeet tribes, in the days of the buffalo, and including certain of their ceremonials of the present time.” The Sun God’s Children describes the Blackfeet as they lived before the coming of the fur traders and their customs, traditions, and religious beliefs, as told to Schultz by the Blackfeet themselves.