© Meaghan PorterA map of the Napi effigy - it's about five meters by five meters in size and was created with rocks the size of a fist. You can see Napi's arms, legs, head, torso and genitalia. The dark coloured stones are ones that have been disturbed, moved from their original position. There is a depression in the torso area, as represented by the circle.
A stone effigy monument, in the shape of a Blackfoot creator god named Napi, has been discovered in southern Alberta - south of the Red Deer River near the hamlet of Finnegan.
One day Old Man determined that he would make a woman and a child; so he formed them both - the woman and the child, her son - of clay. After he had moulded the clay in human shape, he said to the clay, "You must be people" ...
They walked down to the river with their Maker, and then he told them that his name was Na'pi, - Old Man.
From
Blackfoot Lodge Tales, George Grinnell, 1892.
The Blackfoot are a people that have inhabited the prairies since ancient times. The effigy dates to somewhere between AD 1000 and AD 1500. It would have been constructed before the time of European contact.
Napi is a deity credited with creating the Blackfoot people and the landscape they inhabit. "According to Blackfoot tradition he's like the creator," said archaeologist Meaghan Porter, who investigated the site.
She said that the image is "made out of rocks and it's in the outline of a man - it has arms and a torso, head and legs as well as genitalia." It's roughly five meters by five meters long. The rocks are about the size of a fist, they have a mix of black, grey and tan colours. Porter doesn't think these colours were chosen deliberately "I think that's just the rocks that were available," she said.
