On July 16, 1855, eighteen leaders of the Flathead, Kootenai, and Upper Pend d'Oreilles Indians signed an agreement with the United States government, ceding their title to almost all the land in western Montana and establishing the Flathead Indian Reservation. Born of confusion and disagreement, the Hell Gate Treaty is the legal basis for the modern relationship between the tribes and the federal government. In the Name of the Salish & Kootenai Nation reproduces the complete text of the Hell Gate Treaty and collects previously published documents relating to the treaty, among them the...

Duncan McDonald (1849 1937) led a remarkable life as an entrepreneur, tribal leader, historian, and cultural broker on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. The mixed-blood son of a Hudson s Bay Company fur trader and a Nez Perce Indian woman, Duncan accompanied the Pend d Oreille Indians on a buffalo hunt and horse-stealing expedition to the Montana plains during the early 1870s. During the late nineteenth centuryhe was put in charge of Fort Connah, the Hudson s Bay Company post on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and worked as an independent trader across the northern Rocky...