As to spirits, the Blackfeet believe in, or at least tell stories of, ghosts, which conduct themselves much as in our old-fashioned ghost stories.  They haunt people in a rather sportive and irresponsible way.  The souls or shadows of respectable persons go to the bleak country called the Sand Hills, where they live in a dull, monotonous kind of Sheol.  The shades of the wicked are ‘earth-bound’ and mischievous, especially ghosts of men slain in battle.  They cause paralysis and madness, but dread interiors of lodges; they only ‘tap on the lodge-skins.’  Like many Indian tribes, the Blackfeet have the Eurydice legend.  A man grieving for his dead wife finds his way to Hades, is pitied by the dead, and allowed to carry the woman back with him, under certain ritual prohibitions, one of which he unhappily infringes.  The range of this deeply touching story among the Red Men, and its close resemblance to the tale of Orpheus, is one of the most curious facts in mythology.  Mr. Grinnell’s friend Young Bear, when lost with his wife in a fog, heard a Voice, ’It is well.  Go on, you are going right.’  ’The top of my head seemed to lift up.  It seemed as if a lot of needles were running into it....  This must have been a ghost.’  As the wife also heard the Voice it was probably human, not hallucinatory.

Animals receive the usual amount of friendly respect from the Blackfeet.  They have also an inchoate polytheism, ’Above Persons, Ground Persons, and Under Water Persons.’  Of the first, Thunder is most important, and is worshipped.  There is the Cold Maker, a white figure on a white horse, the Wind, and so on.

The Creator is Na-pi, Old Man; Dr. Brinton thinks he is a personification of Light, but Mr. Grinnell reckons it absurd to attribute so abstract a conception to the Blackfeet.  Na-pi is simply a primal Being, an Immortal Man,[11] who was before Death came into the world, concerning which one of the usual tales of the Origin of Death is told.  ’All things that he had made understood him when he spoke to them—­birds, animals, and people,’ as in the first chapters of Genesis.  With Na-pi, Creation worked on the lines of adaptation to environment.  He put the bighorn on the prairie.  There it was awkward, so he set it on rocky places, where it skipped about with ease.  The antelope fell on the rocks, so he removed it to the level prairie.  Na-pi created man and woman, out of clay, but the folly of the woman introduced Death.  Na-pi, as a Prometheus, gave fire, and taught the forest arts.  He inculcated the duty of prayer; his will should be done by emissaries in the shape of animals.  Then he went to other peoples.  The misfortunes of the Indians arise from disobedience to his laws.

Chiefs were elective, for conduct, courage, and charity.

Though weapons and utensils were buried with the dead, or exposed on platforms, and though great men were left to sleep in their lodges, henceforth never to be entered by the living, there is no trace known to me of continued ancestor-worship.  As many Blackfeet change their names yearly, ancestral names are not likely to become those of gods.