EatTheRich
President
As per Montana’s constitutional guarantee of Indian education for all, any student graduating high school in Montana is supposed to know the name of every reservation in the state, when and how it was established, the principal city, the tribes located there, their linguistic affiliations, and a synopsis of their history. I actually learned next to none of this in school and had to look most of it up, but I still think this is a good framework for a starting point to the history we should know. I hope to discuss every reservation in Montana in order of its creation, but it will take me a while. I apologize for any errors.
Flathead reservation: created by the Treaty of Hellgate (1855), signed by War Chief Michelle (Ahn-Akaht=Big Knife) of the Upper Kootenai, Chief Victor (Xwelxl’cin=Plenty of Horses) of the Bitterroot Salish, and Chief Alexander (Tmlxl’cin=No Horses) of the Upper Pend d’Oreille.
As with other tribes in Montana, these tribes seem to trace their roots to Paleo-Indian big-game (usually mammoth) hunters. The ancestors of the nomadic Montana Kootenai appear to have come up from the south and colonized Montana soon after the glaciers receded about 12000 years ago, and for many millennia lived primarily on salmon for food, deerskin clothing, and deerskin-lodgepole tepees for shelter. Related Kootenai bands seem to have once had hunting grounds near the Great Lakes and been driven West by the Blackfeet perhaps 2000 years ago. Kootenai religion centered on Grizzly Bear, a creator god, Blue Jay, a god of war, and sacred tobacco. Their holiest site was Kootenai Falls on the Kootenai River near present-day Libby, where other tribes would come to trade goods such as furs or smoked fish for assistance from their healers, and where people conducted vision quests in order to join the fraternities responsible for the tribal division of labor. Their language, now nearly extinct, is a so-called language isolate, sometimes posited to be distantly related to the Salishan and/or Algonquian languages and their relatives. Their name for themselves, Ksanka, means “eaters of lean meat” while the Blackfeet name for them, Kotonáwa (Kootenai) means “licks the blood,” a possible reference to cannibalistic practice in the distant past. Their leaders, the War Chief responsible for foreign affairs and Guide Chief responsible for everything else, were selected by the fraternities to which people were invited based on their capabilities and were usually but not always male. After trading the excellent canoes they made to the Blackfeet for horses in the 18th century, some of the Kootenai began taking part in the Plains bison hunt east of the Rockies, and bison replaced salmon as the main source of food and deer as the main tepee construction material. Here they were introduced to the Sun Dance cult, which involved mortification of the flesh, perhaps by the Assiniboine. However, they were driven back across the Rockies by the Blackfeet after the Blackfeet acquired guns. They were introduced to Catholicism by Iroquois and later French missionaries beginning in the 17th century and are largely Catholic today. Historically they had good relations with other tribes except the Blackfeet, their longtime enemies.
Flathead reservation: created by the Treaty of Hellgate (1855), signed by War Chief Michelle (Ahn-Akaht=Big Knife) of the Upper Kootenai, Chief Victor (Xwelxl’cin=Plenty of Horses) of the Bitterroot Salish, and Chief Alexander (Tmlxl’cin=No Horses) of the Upper Pend d’Oreille.
As with other tribes in Montana, these tribes seem to trace their roots to Paleo-Indian big-game (usually mammoth) hunters. The ancestors of the nomadic Montana Kootenai appear to have come up from the south and colonized Montana soon after the glaciers receded about 12000 years ago, and for many millennia lived primarily on salmon for food, deerskin clothing, and deerskin-lodgepole tepees for shelter. Related Kootenai bands seem to have once had hunting grounds near the Great Lakes and been driven West by the Blackfeet perhaps 2000 years ago. Kootenai religion centered on Grizzly Bear, a creator god, Blue Jay, a god of war, and sacred tobacco. Their holiest site was Kootenai Falls on the Kootenai River near present-day Libby, where other tribes would come to trade goods such as furs or smoked fish for assistance from their healers, and where people conducted vision quests in order to join the fraternities responsible for the tribal division of labor. Their language, now nearly extinct, is a so-called language isolate, sometimes posited to be distantly related to the Salishan and/or Algonquian languages and their relatives. Their name for themselves, Ksanka, means “eaters of lean meat” while the Blackfeet name for them, Kotonáwa (Kootenai) means “licks the blood,” a possible reference to cannibalistic practice in the distant past. Their leaders, the War Chief responsible for foreign affairs and Guide Chief responsible for everything else, were selected by the fraternities to which people were invited based on their capabilities and were usually but not always male. After trading the excellent canoes they made to the Blackfeet for horses in the 18th century, some of the Kootenai began taking part in the Plains bison hunt east of the Rockies, and bison replaced salmon as the main source of food and deer as the main tepee construction material. Here they were introduced to the Sun Dance cult, which involved mortification of the flesh, perhaps by the Assiniboine. However, they were driven back across the Rockies by the Blackfeet after the Blackfeet acquired guns. They were introduced to Catholicism by Iroquois and later French missionaries beginning in the 17th century and are largely Catholic today. Historically they had good relations with other tribes except the Blackfeet, their longtime enemies.