The Bitterroot Valley, Homeland of the Selíš

Since Coyote first prepared this place for human beings, the Bitterroot Valley has been the homeland of Salish-speaking peoples of western Montana -- the Qlispé (Kalispel or Pend d’Oreille) and the closely-related Selíš (Bitterroot Salish or “Flathead”). Their tribal ways helped maintain its great natural abundances. The Lolo area -- called Tmsmti, or No Salmon, has always been favored for its deer-hunting. Bitterroot and camas carpeted the valley. Long ago, the Selíš lived between here and the Yellowstone. Smallpox epidemics and war with rifle-armed Plains tribes led them to concentrate within the Bitterroot. They continued to hunt buffalo east of the mountains. In 1855, the Hellgate Treaty designated the valley south of Lolo Creek a “conditional” reservation. Elders still recall with bitterness and grief their forced removal to the Flathead Indian Reservation in 1891. The Bitterroot Valley remains of great spiritual and material importance to the Selíš, who revisit and utilize their cherished homeland, the resting place of countless ancestors.