Geomorphic theophanies can be known as body-part maps or anthropomorphic maps, with anatomical Place names in the Landscape. Scholars Stanley Knowlton (2008, 2010) and Dan Moonhawk Alford (pers. comm.) described Place names in the Blackfoot language as body parts that formed the map of Napi, Old Man, the Blackfoot Creator. Napi is comparable to Coyote on the Pacific Coast as a geomorphic theophany and Creator. Napi is approximately 350 miles long along the crest of the Rocky Mountains, his “backbone.” Napi’s wife and children are also embedded in the Landscape. Names for some of Napi’s body parts can still be found on maps of Alberta and Montana, along the Rocky Mountains. Knowlton, a Blackfoot, related:
The Oldman to us was something that existed right through this whole area. The mountains represent the backbone. When you get up to a place in Kananaskis and Blackfoot you're talking about gananatsis, which is what the most important person wears, the male, which is a headdress. As you move down towards the city of Calgary there's a place on the north side of the river called Nosehill, which is moksisis. Below the Nosehill you've got the Bow River, which is the bow or nama. Down east you've got the town of Arrowwood, which is napsi, which is the arrow. Then moving back up toward Calgary you've got the Elbow River, which is mokinstis. That's what we still call Calgary today. We just automatically assumed that everybody understands this. Down farther south we have the Porcupine Hills, which is the chest area. We've got the Buffalo Jump, which comes to the bottom of the ribcage. Then the next river over is the Belly River which used to flow through Lethbridge. Below that you've got Chief Mountain. Then all the way down to Missoula you've got the Blackfoot River. When you start to put it together you begin to say, okay now that's what we refer to as the Old Man. As you move up towards Kallispel, that's kallispel, which is a little pouch that's worn on the hip. (2008)
Howe described that “Naapi stories’ toponyms name special sites associated with Naapi in Landscapes that record and hold space for him to explain and interpret their place and their personhood” (2019, 95). She quoted Spotted Eagle: “The ancient Indian traditions of Old Man have left their impress in many geographical names of this region, as Old Man’s River, Old Man Mountains, Old Man’s Slide, and Old-Man-on-His-Back Plateau” (McClintock 1968, 338, quoted in Howe 2019, 99).
References:
Howe, Nimachia. 2019. Retelling Trickster in Naapi’s Language. Lewisville, CO: University Press of Colorado.
Knowlton, Stanley. 2008. Interview. “Workers’ Histories, Workers’ Stories.” Alberta Labor History Institute. https://albertalabourhistory.org/indigenous-labour-history-project/stanley-knowlton/.
———. 2010. “A Pekani Perspective of Time and Space.” Unpublished manuscript.
McClintock, Walter. (1910) 1968. The Old North Trail: Life, Legends, and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. Lincoln, NB: Bison Book Printing.
