Blackfeet Tales & Teachings by John Tatsey

Blackfeet Tales & Teachings in the Uhlenbecks’ papers in the Congressional Record and in The Black Moccasin by John Tatsey. Introductions, translations and annotations by Mary Eggermont-Molenaar.

In 1911 John Tatsey was 17 years old when he told stories about his life at the Blackfeet Reservation and helped out Dutch linguist C. C. Uhlenbeck with his Blackfoot language studies, while Mrs. Uhlenbeck recorded her impressions of him and his family in her diary.

By 1957 John Tatsey had become a rancher, a policeman and a columnist for the Glacier Reporter. Montana Senator Mike Mansfield loved to read Tatsey’s columns and saw to it that several of them were published in the Congressional Record.

In 1970: Paul T. Devore published more of Tatsey’s columns, Blackfeet tales and teachings in The Black Moccasin. Blackfeet Tales & Teachings is an illustrated compilation of publications by or about John Tatsey providing an intimate, sometimes self-depreciating, resigned or humorous view of Tatsey’s life at the Blackfeet Reservation over the seven decades of the last century.