Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
Traditional Territory
Originally lived in areas of Montana, parts of Idaho, British Columbia, and Wyoming, with original territory comprising about 22 million acres. The Salish initially lived entirely east of the Continental Divide, with headquarters near the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. They were later forced west of the divide between the Cascade Range and Rocky Mountains.
Overview
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana are a federally recognized tribe that includes Kutenai, Bitterroot Salish, and Upper Pend d'Oreille people. The tribe was formed when these peoples were relocated to the Flathead Reservation in 1891 following the 1855 Hellgate treaty.
Historical Notes
The first written record of the tribes is from their meeting with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in September 1805. In October 1891, troops from Fort Missoula forced Charlot and the Salish out of the Bitterroot Valley and marched them to the Flathead Reservation, though they continue to be present on the reservation to the present day.
Language and Culture
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes speak a language belonging to the Salishan language family, with historical presence recorded across Montana, documented from 1805 to 1891. Language family affiliation is one of the primary means by which historians and anthropologists identify historical connections between Indigenous peoples across time and geography.
Federal Recognition
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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