Buffalo Child

My name is Buffalo Child, and I belong to the proud and warlike Blackfeet tribe. Since times immemorial my home country has been one the most beautiful places in the world. It's the land of the prairies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, just there where they are cut through by the US-Canadian border.

Fur-bearing animals, especially beavers, there were so many of them where we lived that all neighbouring tribes, like the Cree, the Assiniboins, the Sioux and the Crow, would sneak into our hunting grounds, and we would be forced to be on a continuous warpath with them. Worse was the fate that struck us with the white hunters who had been invading our territory for more than a century and who were in possession of excellent firearms. Yet our people knew how to deal with them, too. The other murderous weapon the white man had brought with him, however, left us powerless: the black smallpox.
Weakened, but not less warlike a tribe, we survived this plague. And we were lucky, in that we didn't feel the white man's greed so much any longer. We lived in a more secluded territory and would keep a certain distance from his paths.
Actually, the sad period of the white man's history in our territory began around the year 1880, when the big buffalo herds, our principal source of foot, dwindled away in the gunfire of the American hunters at a terribly rapid speed.
Me, I was born right at the time of transition of these two great periods of prairie history, namely the Indian period and white man's period. My youth was still an immensely happy, even if very adventurous one.
When I became older I was also bound to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
Until the present day the words once spoken by my elder brother Mighty Voice keep my company: "Don't lose your Indian heart in the white man's world."

Yes, I haven't lost it.