NAPIOA.
Napioa is the Secondary Creator of the Indians. There are two kinds of stories told concerning him. One class reveals him in the character of a good man, and the other class as a bad man. He is not, however, a man, but a supernatural being, able to perform deeds which no human being could perform. The Indians do not know the manner of his birth, nor the place from whence he came. He is still living in a great sea away in the south. He made his home for a long time at the source of the Old Man’s River, in Alberta, where may be seen the lake from which he drank, the stones which he threw along the ground when he was sporting, and the indentations in the ground showing where he lay. At the Red Deer River there is a high ridge, where there is a land-slide, down which Napioa slid as a toboggan slide.
One day, as he was travelling across the prairie, he saw a bird which threw its eyes upward, and said, “Tuhu!” As he came up to the place where the bird was, he said, “Let me see how you do that?” After being told to repeat this word and throw his head back, he felt quite elated. He was so much overjoyed that he threw his eyes up repeatedly. He was standing under a tree, and as he threw his eyes upward they were caught in the branches of the tree, and he lost his sight. He then went off alone. As he wandered on his journey he kept beckoning in different directions, so that if any one saw him he would receive help and find his people. A woman saw him throwing his arms about as if desiring some one to come to him, and at once she went and asked him what he wanted. He said, “Take me to the place where the people are.” She took him and led him along by means of a stick, the woman going in front and Napioa following. He was afraid that she might leave him, so he tied a bell to her dress, that he might follow her should she try to escape. Nothing eventful happened until they crossed a river, when he inquired, “Are there any buffalo to be seen?” The woman answered, “Yes, there are some at the river now.” He told her to point his arrow toward the buffalo, that he might shoot one. She did so; but he missed the buffalo, and then he shouted that the arrow did not belong to him. Again he commanded her to point an arrow in the right direction; but the buffalo were not killed, and again he asserted that the arrow did not belong to him. After several attempts he shot a buffalo, and then called out, “That was my arrow.” He bade the woman skin the animal, cut up the meat, and bring it to the camping ground. While she was doing this he said that he would put up the lodge. He sought the lodge-poles; and as he brought them one by one, he failed to find those that he had already placed on the ground. He had quite a number of lodge-poles arranged here and there, but owing to his blindness he could not collect them. When the woman returned she asked him why he had so many poles, and none arranged in their proper places. “That you might choose the best ones,” he replied. Thus was Napioa ever crafty, never allowing any one to say that there was anything wrong with him. The lodge being prepared, and supper ended, Napioa went to sleep. As he lay with his hair drawn over his eyes, the curiosity of the woman tempted her to lift the hair that she might see his face. As she slowly lifted his locks she gazed into the empty sockets from which his eyes had been torn, and suddenly seized with terror, she fled from the lodge and sped her way through the darkness. Napioa heard the bell, and springing from his grassy bed, pursued her, guided by the ringing of the bell. She ran in different directions; but he was fast gaining upon her when she tore the bell from her dress, and as she threw it one way she ran in another direction, and thus escaped from the wiles of Napioa.
The dwellers in the Western lodges have many legends relating to places of historical interest in the country, and these throw a flood of light on the religious ideas, migrations, social and domestic customs, political life, and other matters of interest connected with the tribes comprising the Blackfoot Confederacy. Some of the legends are local, and when told by the aged men as they sit around their camp-fires, vary somewhat in detail according to the intellectual ability, inventiveness, and strength of memory of the narrator. I have listened to some of these legends as told over and over again for the past nine years, and I find that the young men are not able to relate them as accurately as the aged; besides, as the country is becoming settled with white people, they are less disposed to tell to others their native religious ideas, lest they are laughed at because of not believing the same things as their superior brethren of the white race. As the children grow up they are forgetting these things, and the years are not far distant when the folk-lore of the Blackfeet will be greatly changed, and many of their traditions forgotten.