When they see fresh tracks of people, or signs that enemies are in the country, they stop travelling in the daytime and move altogether by night, until they come to some good place for hiding, and here they stop and sleep.  When day comes, the leader sends out young men to the different buttes, to look over the country and see if they can discover the enemy.  If some one of the scouts reports that he has seen a camp, and that the enemy have been found, the leader directs his men to paint themselves and put on their war bonnets.  This last is a figure of speech, since the war bonnets, having of late years been usually ornamented with brass bells, could not be worn in a secret attack, on account of the noise they would make.  Before painting themselves, therefore, they untie their war bonnets, and spread them out on the ground, as if they were about to be worn, and then when they have finished painting themselves, tie them up again.  When it begins to get dark, they start on the run for the enemy’s camp.  They leave their food in camp, but carry their ropes slung over the shoulder and under the arm, whips stuck in belts, guns and blankets.

After they have crept up close to the lodges, the leader chooses certain men that have strong hearts, and takes them with him into the camp to cut loose the horses.  The rest of the party remain outside the camp, and look about its outskirts, driving in any horses that may be feeding about, not tied up.  Of those who have gone into the camp, some cut loose one horse, while others cut all that may be tied about a lodge.  Some go only once into the camp, and some go twice to get the horses.  When they have secured the horses, they drive them off a little way from the camp, at first going slowly, and then mount and ride off fast.  Generally, they travel two nights and one day before sleeping.

This is the usual method of procedure of an ordinary expedition to capture horses, and I have given it very nearly in the language of the men who explained it to me.

In their hostile encounters, the Blackfeet have much that is common to many Plains tribes, and also some customs that are peculiar to themselves.  Like most Indians, they are subject to sudden, apparently causeless, panics, while at other times they display a courage that is heroic.  They are firm believers in luck, and will follow a leader who is fortunate in his expeditions into almost any danger.  On the other hand, if the leader of a war party loses his young men, or any of them, the people in the camp think that he is unlucky, and does not know how to lead a war party.  Young men will not follow him as a leader, and he is obliged to go as a servant or scout under another leader.  He is likely never again to lead a war party, having learned to distrust his luck.

If a war party meets the enemy, and kills several of them, losing in the battle one of its own number, it is likely, as the phrase is, to “cover” the slain Blackfoot with all the dead enemies save one, and to have a scalp dance over that remaining one.  If a party had killed six of the enemy and lost a man, it might “cover” the slain Blackfoot with five of the enemy.  In other words, the five dead enemies would pay for the one which the war party had lost.  So far, matters would be even, and they would feel at liberty to rejoice over the victory gained over the one that is left.