The Blackfeet sometimes cut to pieces an enemy killed in battle.  If a Blackfoot had a relation killed by a member of another tribe, and afterward killed one of this tribe, he was likely to cut him all to pieces “to get even,” that is, to gratify his spite—­to obtain revenge.  Sometimes, after they had killed an enemy, they dragged his body into camp, so as to give the children an opportunity to count coup on it.  Often they cut the feet and hands off the dead, and took them away and danced over them for a long time.  Sometimes they cut off an arm or a leg, and often the head, and danced and rejoiced over this trophy.

Women and children of hostile tribes were often captured, and adopted into the Blackfoot tribes with all the rights and privileges of indigenous members.  Men were rarely captured.  When they were taken, they were sometimes killed in cold blood, especially if they had made a desperate resistance before being captured.  At other times, the captive would be kept for a time, and then the chief would take him off away from the camp, and give him provisions, clothing, arms, and a horse, and let him go.  The captive man always had a hard time at first.  When he was brought into the camp, the women and children threw dirt on him and counted coups on him, pounding him with sticks and clubs.  He was rarely tied, but was always watched.  Often the man who had taken him prisoner had great trouble to keep his tribesmen from killing him.

In the very early days of this century, war parties used commonly to start out in the spring, going south to the land where horses were abundant, being absent all summer and the next winter, and returning the following summer or autumn, with great bands of horses.  Sometimes they were gone two years.  They say that on such journeys they used to go to Spai’yu ksah’ku, which means the Spanish lands—­Spai’yu being a recently made word, no doubt from the French espagnol. That they did get as far as Mexico, or at least New Mexico, is indicated by the fact that they brought back branded horses and a few branded mules; for in these early days there was no stock upon the Plains, and animals bearing brands were found only in the Spanish American settlements.  The Blackfeet did not know what these marks meant.  From their raids into these distant lands, they sometimes brought back arms of strange make, lances, axes, and swords, of a form unlike any that they had seen.  The lances had broad heads; some of the axes, as described, were evidently the old “T.  Gray” trade axes of the southwest.  A sword, described as having a long, slender, straight blade, inlaid with a flower pattern of yellow metal along the back, was probably an old Spanish rapier.

In telling of these journeys to Spanish lands, they say of the very long reeds which grow there, that they are very large at the butt, are jointed, very hard, and very tall; they grow in marshy places; and the water there has a strange, mouldy smell.