Pi'tamaka: The Warrior Whose Name Is on the Falls

Running Eagle Falls has a secret that you can only see in late summer. Early in the season, when snowmelt is high, the water pours over a single lip at the top, a conventional waterfall. Later in the year, when the water level drops, a second opening is revealed lower in the rock face, and water emerges from two levels simultaneously. The Blackfeet called it Trick Falls, for exactly this reason.

The park's formal name for the falls honors Pi'tamaka, a Blackfeet woman warrior whose story is preserved in Blackfeet oral tradition with a specificity that suggests long memory and careful keeping. Pi'tamaka, whose name translates to Running Eagle, became a warrior after the death of her husband, leading raids at a time and in a culture where this role was exceptional, though not without precedent. The oral tradition describes her as skilled, honored, and ultimately killed in battle against a Flathead raiding party, most likely in the early nineteenth century. No colonial documentation of her life has been found. Her story exists in the historical record because the Blackfeet kept it.

The National Park Service's dual naming approach at this site, acknowledging both Trick Falls and Running Eagle Falls, the geological name and the human one, is one of the park's more successful attempts at integrating Blackfeet interpretive material into the landscape where it belongs. The Browning Pikuni Cultural Society, the primary archive for Blackfeet cultural materials, maintains records of Pi'tamaka's story in substantially more detail than any National Park Service sign can convey.

The waterfall itself, a short walk from the Two Medicine Road parking area, is worth the trip for both names.