"Seizer of Eagles...is a true story: I have written it just as Old Sun told it to me." -James Willard Schultz (as quoted in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 6, 1922)

"Braver, self-control and loyalty...the boy of this story learns these in ordeals he undergoes to realize his dreams of becoming a 'seizer of eagles,' a position greatly respected in the tribe and won by a rigorous training, prowess and bravery." LA Times, Oct. 23, 1921

"James Willard Schultz in...Seizer of Eagles has written...the story of a boy who became a Seizer of Eagles...a position of great honor among the Blackfeet attained only after a rigorous training and many religious rites...encounters with enemies of different tribes, a battle with a bear." -Oakland Tribune, Oct. 1, 1922

"To become a Seizer of Eagles is to hold a position of great honor in the Blackfoot tribes. It can be won only after many feats of bravery and physical prowess have been performed and hard religious rites completed." -The Missoulian (Montana), Oct. 26, 1924

Originally published in 1922, in "Seizer of Eagles," James Willard Schultz (1859 – 1947) repeats the story of an elderly Blackfeet warrior of his youth, when his tribe owned and lived free on the great plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. During those days of freedom and plenty, they hunted the vast herds of buffalo, worshipped their ancient gods and sought glory in war parties against their traditional tribal enemies.

In order to achieve his adulthood in the tribe, Little Otter must face the dangerous vision quest to find his sacred helper and then risk death as a member of a daring war party. Most of all, though, Little Otter wants to become a Sun priest. Alone, armed with nothing more than his own strength, he must capture and kill an eagle for its sacred and power-giving feathers. With the guidance of the elderly Sun priest Red Wings, he prepares himself to take on the most death-defying test of all: To become a seizer of eagles.

About the author:

James Willard Schultz (1859–1947) was an author, explorer, and historian known for his historical writings of the Blackfoot Indians in the late 1800s, when he lived among them as a fur trader. In 1907, Schultz published My Life as an Indian, the first of many future writings about the Blackfeet that he would produce over the next thirty years. Schultz lived in Browning, Montana.

Other books by the author include:

With the Indians in the Rockies

Sinopah: The Indian Boy

The Quest of the Fish-dog Skin

On The Warpath

Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park

Apauk-Caller of Buffalo

The Gold Cache

Bird Woman Sacajewa - The Guide of Lewis and Clark

Lone Bull's Mistake-A Lodgepole Chief Story

Rising Wolf-The White Blackfeet, Hugh Monroe's Story of his first year on the plains

Running Eagle-The Warrior Girl

In the Great Apache Forest

Dreadful River Cave

The War-Trail Fort-Further Adventures of Thomas Fox and Pitamakan

Seizer of Eagles

Trail of the Spanish Horse

The Danger Trail: A Thrilling Story of the Fur-Traders

Friends of My Life as an Indian

Sahtaki And I

Plumed Snake Medicine

Questers of the Desert

Signposts of Adventure:Glacier National Park as the Indians Know It

Sun Woman - A Novel

William Jackson-Indian Scout

A Son of the Navahos

Red Crow's Brother

In Enemy Country

Skull Head The Terrible

The White Beaver

Schultz, James Willard; Donaldson, Jesse Louise Sun God's Children

Friends and Foes in the Rockies

Alder Gulch Gold

Gold Dust

The White Buffalo Robe

Stained Gold

Short Bow's Big Medicine