Abundance and Bison Wealth

Abundance can be characterized as the product of three interrelated processes associated with supply and demand. First, abundance may result from securing direct and dependable access to quantities of a desired resource and to the requisite means of extraction. Second, abundance may also derive from the capacity to transform accessible resources into valuables, where a resource’s value is measured by its capacity to bring economic gain, social prestige, or spiritual power. And third, abundance may arise from the possession of knowledge or resources that others want badly. Value, in contrast, hinges on people’s ability to manipulate perception about an object or resource.

Among the ancestral Blackfoot hunters of the northwestern Plains (Old Women’s phase, AD 1000–1750), abundance resulted not only from access to bison but also from the ability to process enormous quantities of meat into lightweight, nutritious, and durable pemmican that could be transported over long distances (Brink 2008; Verbicky-Todd 1984).

Social networks with close and distant groups were key to Blackfoot prosperity, not only during the Prehistoric period but also, perhaps even more so, during the Historic period. For decades, North American archaeologists have followed Braun and Plog’s (1980) seminal argument that tribal social networks evolved to buffer uncertainty and scarcity (e.g., Borck et al. 2015). We have paid far less attention to the role of social networks during times of abundance. The mobile Blackfoot maintained contact with people from the Northwest as well as those living downstream on the Missouri River and south along the Rocky Mountains; they could mobilize bison by-products as well as other valuables across this vast area. These networks were furthermore a key to the success of the trade in European goods, notably horses (Mitchell 2013; Wood and Thiessen 1985). In times when fresh bison meat was scarce, the Blackfoot could fall back on stored pemmican and dried meat as well as on the trade in durable goods, such as feathers, paint, and bison hides, that brought in starchy foods. Beyond commodity trade, their ritual system allowed for the distribution of resources among the less prosperous, thus providing temporary relief during hard times. The ritual system was effective in generating valuables well beyond staples as well as promoting or relieving social scarcity.

To procure large quantities of meat, hunters built numerous driveline systems in strategic localities to kill dozens of animals at once. For instance, driveline systems dating to the Old Women’s phase in the Two Medicine River Valley, north-central Montana, were built in clusters at evenly spaced locations and facing one another across the valley to maximize the opportunity for success. Hunting sites often had more than one terminus (a “jump”), each with a pair of drivelines; the resulting investment can be measured in square kilometers containing thousands of individual stone features (Zedeño, Ballenger, and Murray 2014). Carcass processing had to be addressed quickly because bisons’ body temperature is high and the hide is very thick; thus, there was a risk of losing the hunt to decomposition even in winter. Given the size and number of bison killed in communal hunts and the weight of meat and fresh hides, a large labor pool composed of men, women, and able children was needed to clean the carcasses, dry and pound or roast the meat, break long bones and boil them to render fat, gather berries for pemmican, and clean and dress hides (Brink 2008; Quigg 1997). A magnetic survey performed on the Kutoyis processing site in Montana revealed a dense distribution of heat features covering the floodplain below the kill site; excavations uncovered extensive evidence of bone processing, meat roasting, pounding, and fat rendering (Bethke et al. 2016).

Campsites dating to this period are commensurately large. Along the Rocky Mountain Front, where wintering grounds were located, it is not uncommon to find campsites containing hundreds of structures. From contact period accounts (e.g., Haig 1991), it is possible to estimate an average of 6–8 people per structure. Surely, some of these structures were not strictly contemporaneous; however, even a small occupation (30–40 tipis) could have housed a minimum of 150–200 people. These estimates accord well with demographic data from early ethnographers that reported the size of historic Blackfoot bands at 100–500 people each, with the Pikani, or Missouri River Blackfoot, the most numerous (Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934). An important ceremony, such as the Okan or Blackfoot Sun Dance, or a very large hunt could bring various bands together in gatherings of more than 100 pitched tipis and, in Schultz’s (1962:30) personal experience, as many as 400.

How did Old Women’s phase hunters manage to feed their numbers and produce a surplus for storage and exchange? In the northwestern Plains, the environmental conditions of the period known as the Little Ice Age (ca. AD 1250–1850) promoted grassland expansion that attracted bison herds toward the Rocky Mountain foothills (Cooper 2008; Peck 2004). Nature was aided to an extent by human grassland management. It has long been accepted that bison hunters used fire on the prairie to both enhance the growth of nutritious grasses and manipulate game (Boyd 2002; Oetelaar 2014). Yet direct evidence of anthropogenic fires is difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, the geomorphology and radiocarbon columns of paleofires along the Two Medicine River Valley clearly show that a regular fire regime and concomitant post-fire erosion episodes began at the time the valley was colonized by specialized bison hunters (~AD 1200), were especially pronounced during the height of valley-wide occupation (~AD 1350–1650), and ended with the decommissioning of communal hunting facilities (~AD 1850) (Roos, Zedeño, and Hollenback 2014).

Management by fire strongly suggests that people expected to return to areas they had previously burned. Through the construction of permanent hunting facilities and implementation of fire regimes, hunters structured opportunities for future success. Contact period fur trader Peter Fidler, who traveled with Blackfoot hunters in 1796 (Haig 1991), noted that the Blackfoot knew where bison jumps were located all across their territory so they could hunt anywhere while traveling alone or during seasonal moves. However, he also noted that bison hunting implied, at least to the untrained eyes of the fur trader, a regimen of feast or famine (cf. Varien, Potter, and Naranjo, this volume). Bison move very fast, and there were days when none could be located or successfully driven to their deaths. But the brief historical observations do not represent as accurately as does archaeology the longevity and significance of bison procurement by increasingly large groups.

As Gremillion (2011:93) notes, controlling access to staple resources by a sector of the group promotes social differentiation and differential wealth accumulation; this was not the case among bison hunters. Communal hunting complexes, located in bison wintering grounds, were owned by the band. Tools and weapons were individually owned. However, access to bison products was not socially restricted; hunters each took a share of meat, hides, and fat to feed their families, and the elderly or weak also received their share in times of abundance or scarcity (Verbicky-Todd 1984). Yet from contact period accounts it is known that among the Blackfoot, control over ritual means of production was a source of upward social mobility (Tyrell 1916). Within the hunters’ ritual system, valuables could be created and manipulated not only to propitiate the group’s success and well-being but also to achieve prestige, which could potentially translate into economic wealth.

Value and Ritual Wealth

The performance of rituals aimed at propitiating game fertility, predicting the location of herds, and ensuring hunting success is a central part of aboriginal societies worldwide. In North America, value systems anchored in the animal world of temperate latitudes are clearly visible in Late Archaic societies 3,000 years ago, although components of these systems date as far back as the Paleoindian period (Bement 1999; Claassen 2010). In the northwestern Plains these developments are characterized by stone architecture (monuments or “medicine wheels”), as well as the use of red ocher, pipes, tobacco, and possibly of sacred bundles containing animal bodies and parts. The Beaver Bundle, which contains the essential components of the Blackfoot landscape (Lokensgaard 2010), may date as early as the Archaic period, but this date has not been confirmed. This bundle is at the core of Blackfoot identity and territory and thus may relate to the group’s ethnogenesis.

Other than red ochre used to consecrate objects and people, a singular manifestation of bison-specific rituals in the northern Plains is the use of ammonites and novaculites that the Blackfoot call Iniskim, or buffalo stones (Peck 2002; Reeves 1993). Iniskim, most commonly associated with Old Women’s phase sites (Peck 2002), are imbued with diverse forms of power. Oral traditions and practices recorded by early ethnographers, most notably Duvall (1908), indicate that these fossils had the power to charm bison, to call in a favorable wind speed when needed, and to aid in divination. Iniskim are an indispensable component of the Beaver Bundle and, in turn, the Beaver Bundle is indispensable to the bison-calling rituals (McClintock 1999; Wissler and Duvall 1912).

Iniskim are commonly found in the upper Cretaceous formations that extend across the northern Plains; among the Blackfoot, individuals keep them as amulets even though their owners might not be familiar with all the rituals associated with them. But in the past the possession and use of Iniskim was mostly restricted to certain individuals who owned ceremonial bundles or who had the right to carry them in their personal war bundles and medicine bundles. People were instructed to turn in Iniskim they found to the appropriate bundle holder. For Iniskim to achieve their true power, they had to be animated with red ocher, and this was also done by a bundle holder. Painted Iniskim could also be given as gifts (Duvall 1908; Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934; Wissler and Duvall 1912).

Another critical aspect of the hunt—rights to bow-and-arrow making—was also imbued with sacred origins and ritual and belonged in certain bundles (Duvall 1908). The origins of the bow and arrow belong in the Star Stories complex; these stories tell how the culture hero Scarface received the gift of a bow and arrow during his journey to the Sun. Star Stories are closely associated with Blackfoot ethnogenesis and contain ancient social mores held by the group. The special significance of the bow and arrow carried on into modern times, as a set was kept in the Thunder Medicine Pipe Bundle that belonged to the late Blackfeet elder Iron Pipe (J. R. Murray, personal communication, 2013).

Rights to use Iniskim for magical purposes, to hold bundles, to possess and paint tipis, and to paint objects and people in ceremonial contexts were achieved, first and foremost, through individual dreams and visions in which the visionaries made an alliance with the spirits and obtained their instructions. It was through these individual visions that certain institutions, including bundles, painted lodges, group ceremonies, and secret societies, originally emerged (Duvall 1908; Wissler and Duvall 1912). Through the suffering individuals undertook in their quests, they also acquired rights to particular objects and liturgical orders and practices. Sanctions against emulators were severe, and transgression could cause illness, disgrace, and even death (McClintock 1999:217). Thus, the social pressures to respect the rights of others kept ritual knowledge in the hands of the few; however, there was some opportunity to obtain such rights through formal transfers.

An individual made a vow to a bundle holder or any other owner of ritual knowledge and objects to care for these valuables and to abide by the rules that accompanied them (McClintock 1999). He or she brought gifts to demonstrate the seriousness of the vow; if this was accepted, then a date was set for the transfer and a method of payment. Depending on the antiquity and power of what was being transferred, payment was made in horses, guns, blankets, feathers, hides, money, or anything the holder desired. Today, the transfer of a powerful pipe can fetch as much as $5,000, and the new holders must also acquire many other objects that go into the pipe bundle. For his or her part, the holder was enriched not only by the gifts and payment but also by the spiritual power and prestige acquired from this transfer. Valuable liturgical and practical knowledge about rituals associated with the transferred bundle was retained, even though the specific bundle ceremonies could no longer be performed. The holder could then obtain new rights to sacred things through visions or transfers, thus expanding his or her ability to accumulate ritual wealth.

In Lokensgaard’s (2010) view, Blackfoot bundles circulated as gifts in the classic anthropological sense of the term; they only became commodities in the eyes of white men. I think the value system associated with formal transfers is more reminiscent of Weiner’s (1992) “inalienable possession.” Inalienable possessions circulate in a paradoxical context, in which the holder simultaneously keeps at least a portion of this wealth and gives it away. I use the term wealth because this system enriches the original holder in three ways: through spiritual power accumulated while holding rights to the bundle, the social prestige incurred through the transfer, and the economic wealth collected as payment. To be sure, bundle holders and powerful individuals also had numerous obligations toward the community; but they had a privileged place in society.

Yet another important aspect of the Blackfoot value system was the possibility to participate in multiple facets of ceremonialism at once. In addition to bundles, notably the Beaver Bundle and several pipe bundles, individuals could own the rights to painted lodges. The designs on painted tipis were exclusive to the owner and could not be copied. Further, they could not be painted without the owner having first acquired the design from the spirits or through a formal transfer (McClintock 1999:217). These tipis could also be inherited within the family. Some designs were so powerful that they could be found repeated through generations—there was no stipulation as to the uniqueness of a vision or a spirit helper. Thunder lodges, for example, recurred through time, but each design was unique.

Among the myriad tipi designs recorded over the centuries, the most closely associated with the bison hunt were the Crow, Black Buffalo, and Yellow Buffalo Lodges. Duvall (1908) and Hellson (n.d.) recorded the most detailed information about their origin and role in bison hunting. Two men obtained the designs from the underwater people. The Black Buffalo Lodge owner also possessed the Iniskim bundle, and members of the community generally returned the Iniskim they came across to this person. Each lodge had its special altar and bundle. The Black and Yellow Buffalo Lodges were pitched near the bison drivelines to perform bison-calling rituals.

McClintock (1999) once recorded that only 35 painted lodges could be found in an Okan camp of 350 tipis; thus, only about 10 percent of the aggregated Blackfoot population actually owned them. Painted lodges advertised their owners’ spiritual power. They were generally associated with chiefs and medicine men who, in turn, could hold other bundles or take membership in esoteric societies. Bundle owners, too, advertised their power by exhibiting their bundles to the Sun. An outsider, such as Schultz (1962:30), could easily recognize who the chiefs were by looking at the painted tipis or the bundles hanging from tripods outside the tipis (figure 2.3). I suggest that this outward expression of connection with the spirits was a form of aggrandizing and securing a prominent place in society. Archaeological expressions of aggrandizing included the “death lodge” monuments, which were built on the lodge of a prominent individual after death by erecting radiating stone lines from the ring, each line pointing to a great deed. Individuals who thought highly of themselves were also known to have built their own monuments (Dempsey 1956; Kehoe 1954).

Figure 2.3. Blackfoot painted tipi with bundles exposed to the sun. Courtesy, Glenbow Museum, na-668-11, Calgary, AB.

Esoteric societies with exclusive and expensive membership contributed their own elements to the value system. These corporate institutions, common across the Great Plains, had unique expressions among the Blackfoot. Of interest here are those societies that had a direct impact on communal bison hunting: the Matoki, or Buffalo Women, Society, and the Old Bull, or Bull Chaser, Society (Duvall 1908; Wissler 1916). The origin of these societies, particularly the Matoki, has not been revealed to outsiders. The Bull Chaser Society, according to Duvall (1908), was established soon after a Blackfoot woman received the revelation of the Iniskim. Regardless of their origins, societies were already in place by first contact (Tyrell 1916). These institutions controlled the hunt insofar as they co-opted ritual knowledge associated with bison fertility and calling rituals, driveline construction, use of fire in the hunt, and corral construction, among many other aspects of social life (Zedeño, Ballenger, and Murray 2014).

The societies regulated large-scale communal hunts that took place in the cold months of the year, as well as the seasonal moves to and from wintering grounds. I further suggest that societies likely neutralized the political power of individual aggrandizers by focusing on organizational areas that served the common good. As Friesen (2007) notes, dynamic tensions among individuals and corporate organizations are common in junctures of emerging complexity where the society as a whole struggles to maintain an appearance of equality in the face of conditions that favor differentiation and unequal accumulation of wealth. Blackfoot esoteric societies were geopolitically integrative, in that their membership crosscut bands and divisions scattered across a huge territory while at the same time fostering and perpetuating social and economic differences within bands. Society members could also accumulate wealth and prestige by individually procuring ritual and healing “services” or transferring their membership to another.

Thus, it becomes clear how each element of the value system played a given role in a given context but was not necessarily limited to a single role; the Iniskim and Beaver Bundles were also significant in the tobacco-planting ceremony, as were the pipe bundles (Duvall 1908). The pipe bundles, in turn, were brought into society ceremonies. Each of these bundles interacted with painted lodges and their own bundles. Yet it was the communal bison hunt that brought all valuables into the center of society, illustrating the dialectical relationship of socially induced scarcity to natural abundance.

Wealth and Trade

People around the world regard trade and exchange of goods as the glue that binds society together. Good is an inclusive term that denotes tangible and intangible things, such as natural resources, manufactured objects, knowledge, and services. Just as goods are diverse, so are the mechanisms and rationales that circulate them. Throughout the twentieth century, anthropologists dwelled on the differences between gift and commodity exchange. They divided goods according to two general mechanisms of circulation: gift and commodity (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Bird-David 1990; Godelier 1999; Gregory 1982). Gifts are typically circulated in social trade networks, in which the social capital associated with reciprocal good exchange is more valuable than the good itself. Commodities, in contrast, circulate in a market economy where the main goal is not to attain prestige or fulfill a social obligation but to incur economic gain.

Clearly, gift and commodity are essentialized categories that mask a huge range of circulation mechanisms. These categories also obscure the various roles certain goods may play in any given trade community. There are fundamental differences between gifts and commodities, on the one hand, and inalienable possessions, on the other. The most significant difference is that gifts and commodities are consumed as they change hands (in other words, they are lost to the giver), whereas inalienable possessions are conserved or even multiplied in the act of exchange (kept by the giver). Furthermore, inalienable possessions, such as esoteric knowledge associated with craft production, are transferred within closed learning systems (Hollenback 2012). Gifts, commodities, and inalienables often coexist and can be circulated simultaneously within a single network. Research on the cultural significance of birds, bird parts, and bird knowledge among several Missouri River tribes, for example, suggests that these categories are not mutually exclusive (Zedeño, Murray, and Chandler 2014).

Bundles, as Lokensgaard (2010) and I (Zedeño 2008) explain, are regarded as non-human persons, capable of social interaction and able to exert influence on their holders and other people. As persons, bundles are inalienable possessions in one sense, although they also circulate as gifts, albeit within very strict rules. Yet a deeper analysis of all the components of bundles reveals that these, too, are complex things whose parts have different biographies, roles, and exchangeable potential. For example, the Blackfoot regard ritual knowledge (songs, protocols, origin stories, and social sanctions associated with a bundle) as inalienable; as long as people retain this knowledge, tangible things that are lost, destroyed, gifted, or exchanged can always be replaced.

Particular objects have more or less value depending on their origin and life histories; for example, the Long Time Pipe has been passed on for untold generations (McClintock 1999:427). But others could be acquired, if needed, and then consecrated. Components in a bundle (e.g., certain animal skins and woven bags) could be purchased without ceremony. Other items had to be collected by the bundle holder; sometimes they, too, could be purchased. Thus, there is a continuum between inalienable possession and commodity that essentialized categories cannot fully encompass. Inomata (2013) suggests that true inalienable possessions are so difficult to demonstrate that only through a close examination of the roles and life histories of tangible and intangible things can they be truly identified. A discussion of interregional trade in the prehistoric and historic periods may further clarify this point within the context of abundance.

Specialized bison hunters and farmers were involved in the systematic extraction, modification, and exchange of knowledge and goods, interacting under comparable valuation systems and mechanisms of social control (Mitchell 2013; Wood and Thiessen 1985). Running from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi, the Missouri River was an avenue of movement that played a pivotal role in the peopling of the Plains and in the evolution of economic and social networks across and beyond the Plains. Long-distance connections between Plains and eastern societies are insinuated in the archaeological record of the Middle Precontact, or Plains Woodland, period (Brink and Dawe 1989), flourishing during the last millennium before present.

In addition to the expansion of bison in the northwestern Plains during the Little Ice Age, one major event marked the expansion of Late Prehistoric economic networks in the region: the abandonment of Cahokia after AD 1300. It is difficult not to see the domino effect of this event, as the resultant diaspora altered the demographic structure of prairie societies linked directly or indirectly to the Mississippian polity and stimulated the formation of ancestral Mandan farming communities on the Middle Missouri River (Fenn 2014; Mitchell 2013). Given the subsequent close contact between Middle Missouri and northwestern Plains populations (Binnema 2004; Walde 2006), Blackfoot ancestors colonized and occupied valleys previously occupied only sporadically. As noted earlier, this colonization can be seen in the impact of anthropogenic fires on valleys where intensive hunting took place.

By the fifteenth century, Mandan and Blackfoot ancestors had developed successful means to manage the production of staples: the Mandan by nucleating near the best farmland and the Blackfoot by building large-scale communal hunting complexes in bison wintering grounds located on the same upper tributaries of the Missouri River as the ones just described. Both the Mandan and Blackfoot were cultivating corn and harvesting bison above their subsistence needs. With abundance came challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities (see also Twiss and Bogaard, this volume). Middle Missouri enclaves were living among the Blackfoot in the Protohistoric period, indicating a close relationship between the two groups (Peck 2011). Unfortunately, the Blackfoot are often left out of the reconstructed trade networks across the northern Plains (e.g., Wood and Thiessen 1985).

In addition to staples, other goods circulated in different realms of exchange. Historical accounts and early ethnographies explain that people went to great lengths to obtain paints, animals and animal parts, medicinal plants, and certain minerals and rocks to restock their bundles and manufacture prestige items. When items could not be procured directly, people recurred to additional ceremonial transfers or trade. Paints, pipestone, and birds, in particular, could be obtained through established trade networks, as they could through ceremonial transfers. These items were purchased from specialists in the procurement of minerals and birds. McClintock (1999:214) noted that given the abundant use of paint among the Blackfoot, collecting and preparing paints was “a business in itself.”

The Missouri River is a major bird migration pathway, as well as the habitat of myriad resident birds. Raptors, waterfowl, passerines, and gallinaceous birds are everywhere and, with few exceptions, were also available in the past. Dozens of these bird species were used by the Missouri River tribes in bundles, ritual paraphernalia, and personal adornment or were incorporated into their traditional stories. Both the Blackfoot and the Mandan had extensive ornithological knowledge (Bowers 2004; Chandler et al. 2017; Schaeffer 1950) and harvested a great variety of birds. At the Mandan site known as Scattered Village, Falk (2002) identified bones representing 34 bird species, 10 orders, and at least 15 families. There is no comparable bone assemblage from Blackfoot sites, but their Beaver Bundles reveal a range of valuable birds rivaling Scattered Village’s inventory (Scriver 1990).

While individuals handled birds that were personal spirit helpers, the handling of the most sacred birds, specifically eagles, was restricted to specialists who owned the rituals and the technology to catch eagles and preserve their skins and parts. Eagles and eagle parts were conduits of Thunderbird power and as such were required for individual and group ceremonies and valued as insignias of bravery and social power. Eagle trapping stands out as the most specialized and highly ritualized resource extraction activity (Murray 2011). And yet, eagle feathers were a trade good, too, so commonly circulated in Native markets and rendezvous that they could be easily considered a kind of currency. According to Grinnell (1962:236), “Before the Whites came to Blackfoot country, the Indian standard of value was the eagle tail-feathers.”

Eagle trapping among the Mandan and Hidatsa has been thoroughly documented by Wilson (1928), Bowers (1992, 2004), and most recently Murray (2011). Transfer of eagle-trapping rights is a long-term process of exchange between owner and apprentice; over a period of many years, the apprentice provides gifts and commodities to the owner in exchange for portions of the collective rights until the transfer is complete. Cultural protocols dictate that eagle-trapping rights can only be transferred four times over the course of a lifetime, after which the owner loses the authority to make such transfers. In this example, the transfer of an inalienable possession can bring a great deal of wealth to the giver and social capital to both giver and receiver. The inalienable qualities that characterize bird parts in this context, however, do not preclude the same types of objects from being treated as gifts or commodities in another context (Zedeño, Murray, and Chandler 2014).

Although both bald and golden eagles were trapped, the latter was more valuable. Not all tribes trapped eagles, so the Blackfoot and the Mandan were well positioned to profit from this trade. In 1738, Pierre Varennes de la Verendrye visited the Mandan towns and described in detail their bustling trade activity (Wood 1980). He noted that the Mandan traded eagle feathers and headdresses (among many other feathered items) to the Assiniboine. For their part, the Blackfoot lived in golden eagle country; possible eagle-trapping pits are scattered around the river bluffs, ridges, and mountain slopes, particularly in the northern portion of their territory (Kennedy and Reeves 2013). Although there are detailed descriptions of Blackfoot trapping practices (Grinnell 1962; McClintock 1999), their transfer protocols have not been documented, as have those of the Mandan and Hidatsa.

In the past, entire family lineages supported themselves through eagle procurement, manufacture of war bonnets and other objects, and trade of feathers. Eagle war bonnets were bestowed only on the bravest warriors and the holy people; they required large numbers of tail feathers and thus were highly expensive goods. Golden eagles were more abundant in the north than in the southern portion of Blackfoot country. Brings-down-the-Sun, “a celebrated medicine man of the north,” supported his family through eagle trapping and feather trading with the Pikani in the south, who used the items for regalia and ceremonial objects (McClintock 1999:428).

With the introduction of horses and objects of European manufacture, trade in Native valuable and staple goods took a new turn. Horses were acquired by the Blackfoot in the early 1700s, and though they were never as horse-wealthy as the Crow or the Cheyenne, they nonetheless kept large herds that they obtained mainly through raiding but also through trade (Ewers 1955). Because of their value, golden eagle feathers played a significant role in the Blackfoot horse trade. Under given circumstances, this special eagle feather could purchase a horse; three to five tail feathers were usually required for this trade (Chandler et al. 2017). Horses were also a currency and the preferred payment for the acquisition of sacred objects and bundle transfers. Catlin (1989) related an incident when the Blackfoot found out that the Mandan had a white buffalo robe in their possession. The well-to-do Blackfoot pulled together 150 horses to purchase the robe. Their emissaries were to bargain 50 horses at a time, but the Mandan would not part with the robe because it was destined for Lone Man’s shrine.

Horses brought an element of change to abundance, value, and wealth among the Blackfoot. Although a detailed discussion of the impact of the horse is outside the scope of this chapter, it is important that horses, as personal property, deeply increased the ability to accumulate considerable economic wealth among individuals who could purchase them, for instance, eagle trappers (Ewers 1955; Hämäläinen 2003; Nugent 1993). The horse, and the acquisitive power afforded by participation in the American bison hide trade in the nineteenth century, led to the development of a network organization (sensu Feinman 2000) through which individuals established long-distance or local partnerships that neutralized the power of corporate institutions to regulate the circulation of valuables and wealth. Communal pedestrian hunts lost favor to mounted roundup hunts in which rifles were used as much as traditional weapons. As the bison herds diminished, differences in wealth distribution among the Blackfoot became highly pronounced, with the horse and not the bison the new focus of abundance.

Conclusion

Abundance has tangible and intangible dimensions, encompassing both quantity and quality. Abundance may be directly tied to the availability of staple resources but can also be fabricated through the manipulation of the value of both widely available and scarce resources. Manipulations of value, in turn, are encoded within social and ritual systems that are pragmatic and result-oriented (Joyce 2013; Ortner 1978). Broadening measures of abundance to include these dimensions is particularly important in the archaeology of pre-state societies, where cultural systems of valuation mediate the production of abundance and accumulation of wealth along a continuum ranging from spiritual power to social prestige and from to economic gain to political influence. A reevaluation of the usefulness of categories of value such as gift, commodity, and inalienable possession is necessary to unpack the complex system of production, accumulation, and circulation of resources, knowledge, and services; in the Blackfoot case, powerful institutions such as esoteric societies, as well as individual sources of power, could alter the perception of value and thus the quality of abundance.