The Hellgate Treaty signed at Council Grove near Missoula in 1855 created the Jocko, or Flathead, Indian reservation and was interpreted by the U.S. government as requiring the Pend’Oreille, Kootenai, and Salish tribes to cede all their other lands in western Montana. The Bitterroot Salish disagreed with the federal government's interpretation. The long struggle of the Salish to remain in their ancestral home is a moving and, ultimately unsuccessful, example of debate and diplomacy.
Primary Sources
Bigart, Robert and Clarence Woodcock, In the Name of the Salish & Kootenai Nation: the 1855 Hell Gate Treaty and the Origins of the Flathead Indian Reservation (Pablo, MT: Salish Kootenai College Press, 1966).
Ronan, Margaret, Girl from the Gulches: The story of Mary Ronan, ed. Ellen Baumler (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2003), Book 3.
Dunbar, Seymour and Paul C. Phillips, The Journals and Letters of Major John Owen, Pioneer of the Northwest 1850-1871, (Portland, ME: Southworth Press, 1927).
Missoula Missoulian, September 10, 1911.
Secondary Sources
Bigart, Robert, ed. Life and Death at St. Mary’s Mission. (Pablo, MT: Salish Koontenai College Press, 2005).
Evans, Lucylle H. St. Mary’s in the Rocky Mountains: A History of the Cradle of Montana’s Culture (Stevensville, 1990).
Missoula, Missoulian, August 28, 1941.
Toole, K. Ross Toole. Lecture, “Apostasy” (University of Montana, 1962). Montana Historical Society Research Center video library.
Primary and Secondary Sources on the Web
Transcript of the Hellgate Treaty, http://www.cskt.org/documents/gov/helgatetreaty.pdf
Letter from Chief Victor to Territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton, April 25, 1865, http://mhs.mt.gov/education/textbook/Chapter7/historicaldocCh7.asp
Vertical Files at the Montana Historical Society
Charlot, Chief (Slem-Hak-Kah “Little claw of Grizzly bear”)
Salish Indians
Victor (Salish Chief)
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