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From Peaks to Plains, the Pressures of Western Expansionism

Montana’s territorial year marked the beginning of American Indians ceding sacred lands

By Tristan Scott

In 1864, Native Americans populated both sides of the Continental Divide, while Lewis and Clark had come and gone as a blip on their radar, as had many of the mountain men and fur trappers.

But in a single, pivotal, tumultuous year, the pressures of western expansionism by white Americans and fortune seekers would apply unprecedented pressure on Montana’s earliest residents, setting into motion a history that would forever change the culture of the indigenous people and deal them untold injustice.

Native Americans have lived in Montana for more than 14,000 years, according to archaeological records, with the Bitterroot Salish arriving from the west coast and the Kootenai residing mostly in present-day Idaho, Montana and Canada.

The first written record of the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreilles tribes, which today form the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, came through their meeting with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805.

After the gold rush of 1864, in the newly established Montana Territory, pressure intensified and problems with the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, which from the beginning was riddled with translation problems, ran deep.

The Hellgate Treaty created the Flathead Indian Reservation and defined its boundaries, but government surveys ultimately diminished the allotment of lands on its northern and southern tips.

In 1904, Congress passed the Flathead Allotment Act, setting the course for the loss of more than 60 percent of the reservation land base. By the time enrollment and census were complete, only 245,000 acres of the 1,245,000 allotted in the Hellgate Treaty were secured by allotments. The remaining lands were opened to homesteading for agriculture and grazing.

The arrival of homesteaders changed more than land ownership as they began fencing the land and claiming water rights from streams and diverting it for irrigation.

As more non-Indians moved to the reservation, the influx of homesteaders led to the tribes being the minority population on their own reservation, with non-Indians outnumbering Indians 2-1.