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The Flathead Indians
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13115 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
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11 / 1987 |
5,350 Words |
| Author
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Patricia Braun
Patricia Braun is a free-lance journalist. |
Flathead Indians are little known outside of the area of Montana where the U.S. government placed them more than a century ago.
Their reservation, beautifully situated on Flathead Lake, with the Cabinet Mountains to the west and the Mission Mountains to the east, spans over a million acres, 92 percent of which is owned by the tribe and its tribal members. Large areas of the reservation are mountainous, providing little grazing and farmland. Flathead tribal enrollment in the confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes currently totals 6,377, with approximately half their members living off the reservation. The Kootenai members of the confederation live primarily in the northwestern part of the reservation near the town of Elmo. The Salish live in and around the communities of St. Ignatius and Arlee.
Historically, the term Salish refers to the linguistic character of a number of tribes that occupied the Columbia plateau of northwestern America. This language family included the tribes of the Flathead, Pend Oreille, Kalispell, Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, and other tribes. They lived in what is known as the plateau areas of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and the lands north to the Fraser River in Canada. When food became scarce, however, they wee forced to disperse. Most Salish-speaking people stayed near the Pacific Coast, but the Flathead and Pend Oreille Indians gradually moved eastward into Montana. Initially, the Flatheads lived east of the Continental Divide. The Pend Oreilles lived around what is now Paradise, Montana, as far south as Butte, and in the Bitterroot, Missoula, and Flathead valleys.
In the early 1700s, after being
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