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 Photo courtesy of the Montana Historical Society A Brief History of Montana's Native Americans The history of the various modern tribes in the part of America we now call "Montana," is characterized by years of constant movement for many of them. They traversed the plains to follow the bison and then retreated in intertribal struggles for control of hunting territory. Finally, with the bison nearly extinct and tribes decimated by battles with white men, there came the final move onto reservations, marking the end of an era. Archeological evidence shows that Native Americans inhabited Montana more than 14,000 years ago. Artifacts indicate the Kootenai have roots in the area's prehistory. The Kootenai inhabited the mountainous terrain west of the divide, venturing only seasonally to the east for buffalo hunts. The Salish and the Pend d' Oreilles occupied territory as far east as the Bighorn Mountains. During the 1700s these two tribes and the Kootenai shared common hunting and gathering grounds. With the signing of the Hellgate Treaty, their massive landholdings were ceded and the tribes now share the fertile ground of the Flathead Reservation. The Chippewa and Cree were the latest tribal groups to come to Montana. They came from reservations outside the state late in the nineteenth century after Montana's reservation system was in existence. These tribes today are intermixed and use the name, "Chippewa-Cree." They claim the windswept Rocky Boy's Reservation in the north. The bison-based economy deteriorated in the 1880s when several factors affected the future of Montana's Indians. Bison were hunted to near extinction, the Canadian and United States governments became the dominant force driving Indians from their lands, and white men's diseases diminished the population and faded the spirit of the Native Americans. By the 1870s large tracts of land, through various treaties and executive orders, were formally reserved for Indians. Thus the reservations evolved. Today nine percent of the Montana land base is reservations. Not all of this land is still owned by Indians, but all is governed by tribal or federal law. Reservations are important, not only because Native Americans have strong spiritual ties to the land, but because reservations have become the Indians' last retreat and the last chance to preserve their culture. Now, the people of Montana's reservations are working to build strong economic bases so that their culture will survive and flourish with future generations of Indian people.
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