The Legend of Running Eagle

This waterfall, at what is now the Two Medicine area of East Glacier National Park, was named for a great Blackfoot warrior woman named Running Eagle. She was born in the early 1700's in the heartland of the Amskapi-Pikuni. Running Eagle was a real person, not a legend or a myth.

Running Eagle's life is an illustrious saga of leadership and daring deeds. She is the only young woman of the Pikuni people to have gone on a vision quest. It was to these falls that she came on her quest and it was at this most sacred place that she had her vision to become a leader and warrior.

Running Eagle became a true woman warrior. She was a great horsewoman, fast runner, and an excellent hunter. She was also kind, thoughtful, and generous; traits much admired by her people. Her exploits as a warrior were recounted in lodges throughout the land.

Near her thirtieth year Running Eagle was struck down and killed by a Flathead indian while on a raid across the Continental Divide. In a most fitting honor her warriors brought her home and laid her to rest in a tree overlooking these falls.

Running Eagle Falls is also a "Trick Fall". There are actually two falls in one. A lower fall can be seen at the lower right, where water flows through a cavern and out the side of the mountain. The falls are fed by Two Medicine glacier lake.