How did the Blackfoot handle death?

Answer 1

The Blackfoot tribes (Blood, Piegan and Blackfoot) believed that when a person died they became a ghost and travelled to the "Sand Hills" - much like the Christian idea of Heaven. There they live just like humans, with horses, tipis, weapons and other belongings; they became tiny and hunt mice for food in the same way that living people hunt buffalo. Everything buried with the dead person is taken to the Sand Hills with them - a horse killed soon after a warrior's death can be ridden by the ghost.

Mourners wore old clothes, men dressing only in a ragged blanket and old breechclout. The hair was cut short and not braided. People in mourning did not paint themselves or wear any ornaments or shell jewellery. Some might walk away from camp and cry and shout in grief until someone else came to take them home. Some of the men would cut off the tip of a little finger as a sign of mourning.

When a death had happened all the household goods of that person would be given away; a wife mourning her husband might wear a string with a single blue bead around each ankle. Some women tried to kill themselves but their friends watched closely to prevent it.

Historically the corpse was dressed in the finest clothes and regalia, wrapped in a buffalo hide or bear skin and tied in the branches of a tree, or left on some remote hilltop, or simply left inside the empty tipi when the remainder of the hunting band moved on.