Reader’s Guide to THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones

Compiled by Greg Greene
Last updated 1/4/2026

This guide is intended to assist readers of Stephen Graham Jones’ 2025 novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by defining unfamiliar terms used by Good Stab, a fictional nineteenth-century Blackfeet man.

Blackfeet terms and Algonquin-based terms are in italics.
Good Stab’s English descriptors are in bold.

Did I miss any terms in text? Do you have additional perspective on terms or lore? Join the conversation in the comments!

Peoples

Napikwan – European settlers, i.e., white people. An older word for them is napikowaks.

The Long Knives - members of the US Cavalry

Black Robe - an Indigenous reference to a priest or other member of the Christian clergy who wears black robes. (Arthur Beaucarne is a Lutheran pastor.)

The Blackfoot Confederacy - the Siksikaitsitapi, meaning “the people” - is a people comprised of four linguistically related nations:

• The Siksika, called the Blackfoot by European settlers, in Alberta, Canada

• The Kainai, also known as the Blood, in Alberta

• The Pikuni (also known as the Piegan, Piikuni, Piikani, and Piikáni), which is comprised of:

  • The Northern Piikani (Aapátohsipikáni) in Alberta

  • The Southern Piikani (Amskapi Pikuni), called the Blackfeet by European settlers, in present-day Montana, United States. This is the nation to which protagonist Good Stab belongs. (The author, Stephen Graham Jones, is Blackfeet.)

The Small Robes - a band of the Amskapi Pikuni. This is Good Stab’s band. Generally speaking, a band would be comprised of 10 to 30 lodges, with about 80 to 240 members.

Other bands that are likely Pikuni:

• Hard Topknots

• Fat Melters

• Black-Patched Moccasins

• Gopher-Eaters

Other First Nations

• Snakes - the Shoshone people

• Black Paint People - the Nez Perce people

• Blue Mud People - another name for the Nez Perce people

• White Clay People - the Gros Ventre people (also known as A'aninin, Atsina)

• Necklace People - the Dakota or Sioux people

• Rabbit Men - the Cree people

• Crow - an Indigenous people, historically enemies of the Pikuni

Animals

• Big dirty-face - a rat

• Big-ears - a mule

• Big-head - an ox

• Big-mouth - a wolf

• Blackhorn - a buffalo

• Crawls-on-his-belly - a snake

• Dirty-face - a mouse

• Four-leggeds - general term for animals, as opposed to us, the two-leggeds

• Little big-mouth - a coyote

• Little-grass-eater - prairie dog

• Long-legs - an elk

• Long-tail - scissor-tailed flycatcher

• Moving-shadow - moose

• Night-caller - an owl

• Omkomi, the big-fish - a sturgeon

• Prairie-runner - an antelope

• Real-bear - a grizzly bear

• Real-lion - a mountain lion

• Red-back - probably a North American red squirrel

• Sharp-back - a porcupine

• Silver-fish - a trout

• Sticky-mouth - a wolverine, or possibly a black bear

• Swift-runner - a hare, possibly a snowshoe hare

• Wags-his-tail - a white tail deer

• Whitehorn - a cow

• White big-head - a bighorn sheep

• White-cheeks - a goose

• Wood-biter - a beaver

Food

• Real-meat - buffalo meat

• Whitehorn milk - cow's milk

• Pemmican - a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and sometimes dried berries

• Sarvisberries - they look like blueberries and grow on shrubs, and are used in ceremonial events among the Blackfoot.

• Ash cakes - is a type of bread baked over a layer of heated stones or sand and covered in hot ashes

• "Hard yellow whitehorn milk" - butter

Figures

• Napi - The creator god Apistotoke created Napi, the first man and demigod who shaped the world and created the rest of mankind. Napi taught the Blackfeet people what plants to eat and animals to hunt, including their main food source, the buffalo. He is a trickster.

• Coldmaker - the spiritual being that brings cold and snow.

• Sun Chief - the spiritual being associated with the sun.

• Beaver Chief - a man-sized beaver of Blackfeet lore who has powerful medicine and may share knowledge and wisdom with Blackfeet individuals.

• Great Father - the President of the United States.

• The Great White God - a figure of First Nation lore of whom it is said he will come to Chief Mountain at the end of days and the mountain will crumble.

• Blood Clot Boy - the hero of a story belonging to several First Nations, including the Blackfeet.

• A Person-Eater - a monster that eats humans.

• Feather Woman - a figure of Blackfeet lore who falls in love with the Morning Star and is taken into the sky to marry him. They have a child named Star Boy.

• The Inhaler - a monstrous cave that inhales people that get too close.

Places & terrain

• The Bear - Bear Mountain in Glacier County, Montana

• Face Mountain - Matahpi Peak, also known as Going-to-the-Sun Mountain

• Ninastako, also called Chief Mountain - a prominent and highly visible mountain in the Blackfeet region, it rises to 9,080 feet. It holds great spiritual significance for the Blackfeet.

• The Backbone of the World - the Rocky Mountains

• Two Medicine - this refers to both an area with Blackfeet lodges and to a river

• The Sandhills - the land of the dead, the Pikuni afterlife

• Blood Clot Hills - called the Sweetgrass Hills in 1912

• Nittowsinan - means "Our Place," that is, the Pikuni's ancestral territory, today surrounding Browning, Montana.

• Big Gap - the Marias Pass

• Big-leaf tree - likely the Bigleaf Maple (​​Acer macrophyllum)

• Quaking leaf-tree - likely the Quaking Aspen tree (Populus tremuloides)

Good Stab, AKA…

Names for our Blackfeet protagonist

• Good Stab

• Takes No Scalps

• The Fullblood

• Weasel Plume (his name as a child, a name he later gives to his adopted buffalo calf)

• Blackie (when disguised as a white trader)

• The Nachzehrer - in German folklore, a vampiric form of a revenant, that is, one recently returned from death with the power to drain the life force of its family and community. Its German name literally means “after-consumer” (eating the living from the afterlife).

• Bear Sleep / Bear Dreamer / Tender of the Dead - nicknames given Good Stab by Napi

Weapons

• Many-shots guns - a repeating rifle, most likely an 1873 Winchester

• Greased-shooters - bullets

• Short-gun - a pistol

• Round-ball gun - a muzzle-loaded gun

• Long-shooter gun - a buffalo gun, probably a .50 Sharps

Astronomy

• Seven Persons - the Big Dipper

• The Poor Boys - also called The Lost Children, the terms both refer to the Pleiades, from a tale about six neglected, orphaned children.

• Big Fire Star - the planet Mars

• "I was born the year the stars fell" - Good Stab claims to have been born this year, which is the Great Leonid Meteor Shower of 1833.

Rituals

• The winter count - pictorial calendars or histories of the previous year’s significant events, as recorded by the Blackfeet, Lakota, and other Plains peoples. Traditionally painted on buffalo hides.

• Grass dance - a traditional Blackfeet dance to bless an area at the beginning of a religious festival. The dance beats down the grass to prepare the area for rituals.

• Sun Dance - The Sun Dance was performed to wake the earth back to life after winter and to give thanks for the sun's gifts. Doing the Sun Dance during Frog Moon is the wrong time.

• Counting coup - to demonstrate bravery by daring to get close enough to an enemy to touch or hit them.

Roles

• Kunnutsomitaks - a military status or role for the boldest, most reckless warriors, those who often lead the advance against an enemy force. In English, they’re called All Crazy Dogs or Foolish Dogs. Good Stab says, “Hunts-to-the-Side and Peasy were All Crazy Dogs, Kunnutsomitaks, which is like your police.” (Saga Press edition, p. 39)

• Nightrider - an Indigenous person assigned to watch the herd at night, often a teenage boy.

• Many-faces man - a medicine man, physical and spiritual healer of the Pikuni.

Other

• Dead-man-cross - a crucifix

• Pinkerton - a private detective/operative of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

• White scabs - smallpox

• Parfleche - a wallet or bag made from rawhide

Lunar cycle

• Beginning Summer Moon - the first month of the summer half of the year, which is Frog Moon.

• Frog Moon - April 20 to May 20

• Thunder Moon - the full moon in July

• Tricky Moon - also known as Deceptive Moon, it occurs every few years in Blackfeet tradition and serves as a “leap moon.”

• "The moon when the snakes go blind" - August

Events

• Starvation Winter - “During the winter months of 1883-1884, nearly 600 Piegans, a quarter of the tribe, died of starvation. The starvation was directly caused by the extermination of the buffalo.”

• From page 269:

  • “The Rabbit Man said something in his tongue but when it was nothing to me, he used his hands to sign, and told me about how his band had died from the white scabs, and they were coming over the mountains for something I couldn’t understand, but I think it was the black sky iron he was talking about, sky iron that could bring their dead back, if they went far enough north to find it on top of all the ice where it fell.”

  • This fascinating passage refers to the Cree and a 320 lb iron meteorite known as the Manitou Asinîy, which they held sacred. It was stolen in 1866 by a Methodist missionary in an attempt to draw Indigenous people to his mission. Read more.

Acknowledgements: This document is compiled from a number of sources including reddit.com/r/horrorlit, Goodreads, Niitsitapi Learning Centre, Denver Art Museum, sacred-texts.com, native-languages.org, the U.S. National Park Service, Wikipedia, Montana History Portal, Montana Office of Public Instruction, and James Welch's novel Fools Crow.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is published by Saga Press, 2025, available in bookstores everywhere.

Celebrate our favorite white buffalo, Good Stab’s adopted calf, Weasel Plume, with a Weasel Plume Protection Society tee from threadsofdread.com! (Developed in collaboration with Stephen Graham Jones, designed by Derrick Castle, and screen printed by Friendly Arctic in Nashville, Tennessee.)