The Flathead Indian Reservation

The panel's last line passes over a fight. In 1953 Congress resolved that tribes should be freed from federal supervision at the earliest possible time, and in 1954 joint hearings took up the termination of twelve reservations, the Flathead among them. Tribal chairman Walter McDonald led the opposition, Montana's congressional delegation backed the tribes, and the bill died. After that year's election, Montana's James Murray took the chair of the Senate Interior Committee and saw that no tribe was terminated against its will. The Klamath and the Menominee, taken up in the same years, were terminated.

What the plaque says

The Flathead Indian Reservation In the 1855 Treaty of Hellgate, leaders of the Salish ("Flathead"), Pend d'Oreille, and Kootenai tribes ceded to the United States most of their vast lands west of the Continental Divide. The tribes, however, also "reserved" certain areas, including this 1.3-million-acre reservation, designated by the treaty for their "exclusive use and benefit." The tribes also reserved the right to hunt, gather, fish, and pasture their animals on "open and unclaimed" portions of their ceded lands. In 1904, Congress violated the treaty's guarantee of the reservation as a sovereign homeland with passage of the Flathead Allotment Act, one of a series of laws aimed at forcing Indian people to abandon traditional ways of life by dismantling tribal ownership of land. Between 1904 and 1908, the government surveyed the Flathead Reservation and allotted individual parcels of land to Indian heads of households. The government then declared most remaining lands "surplus" and opened them to non-Indian homesteaders. During the 1910s, aided by construction of the massive Flathead Indian Irrigation Project, non-Indians took control of most of the best lands and the reservation economy. In 1934, Congress ended allotment policy with passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were the first in the nation to adopt a new constitution under the IRA's terms, and since then have gradually rebuilt their sovereignty, developing one of the most accomplished tribal governments in the U.S.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Ignatius Mission — 5.0 mi
  A brick church painted wall to ceiling by the mission cook, beside the boarding schools the mission ran for Native children.
• CSKT Bison Range — 6.7 mi
  The herd the tribes saved, the government forced them to sell, and the range they finally got back.
• Ninemile Remount Depot — 17 mi
  The Forest Service's mule ranch, built because the fires of 1929 ran out of packers.
• Missoula Smokejumper Visitor Center — 25 mi
  The base of the crews descended from the first two men ever to parachute onto a forest fire.

More markers nearby

• The Mission Valley — 1.9 mi
• Fort Connah — 10 mi
• The Salish and Pend d'Oreille People and the Jocko Valley — 12 mi
• The Mission Mountain Wilderness — 15 mi