Flathead Indian Reservation

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DescriptionThe Flathead Indian Reservation, established by the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, is governed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is home to members of the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Kalispel, and Kootenai tribes. The reservation derives its name from a name erroneously given to the Salish by the Pend d’Oreille and later Euro-Americans, since the tribe never bound their children’s heads on cradleboards. In 1855, Isaac I. Stevens negotiated the Hellgate Treaty at Council Grove near Missoula with 4 tribes, creating a reservation in the Jocko Valley south of Flathead Lake. Salish Chief Charlo, however, refused to move his people from their traditional home in the Bitterroot Valley until 1891, when his band resettled in the Mission Valley alongside the St. Ignatius Mission. The Flathead Allotment Act in 1904 required tribal members to claim individual 160-acre parcels, and it opened unclaimed lands to non-Indian homesteaders in 1910. In all, more than half a million acres of the most productive tribal lands were transferred to non-Indian agriculture. By the 1920s, the Salish-Kootenai people owned only a small portion of their own reservation. After the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, a tribal council known as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes emerged to manage reservation affairs. In the 1930s, the tribal government began purchasing land, and the tribes currently own about 70 percent of the reservation. At the time of the Hellgate Treaty, the Flathead Reservation covered 20 million acres; today only 1.3 million acres remain. In the 1970s, the tribe created the Salish-Kootenai Tribal College.Other Name(s)Flathead Indian ReservationContributing InstitutionMontana Historical Society Library and ArchivesGeolocation^[1]CountyLake CountySanders CountyMissoula CountyFlathead County

CollectionMontana Place Names from Alzada to ZortmanPlace Names MapMontana Place Names

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