Bitterroot Valley: Where the Salish Were Expelled from Their Own Name

The Bitterroot Valley runs north and south for roughly one hundred miles between two mountain ranges that both carry the name: the Bitterroot Mountains to the west, which form the Idaho border, and the Sapphire Mountains to the east. The Bitterroot National Forest covers the valley's flanks and the wilderness areas above it. The valley is named for the bitterroot plant, whose root the Salish harvested as a staple food, and which Meriwether Lewis collected and pressed into the botanical record in eighteen oh six.

The Salish people, who called themselves the Séliš, had lived in this valley for centuries and considered it their homeland. The valley's bitterroot flower is also the source of the Salish name Spetlum, which translates roughly as bitter through hunger, a name that acknowledged the root's importance to survival in lean times.

The Hellgate Treaty of eighteen fifty-five established the Flathead Reservation to the north and required the Salish to relocate there from the Bitterroot. Chief Charlo refused to leave. He and a portion of the band remained in the Bitterroot Valley for roughly thirty-six years after the treaty, farming alongside white settlers, arguing unsuccessfully through diplomatic channels that the original treaty had not required the move.

In eighteen ninety-one, the federal government forcibly removed Charlo and the remaining Bitterroot Salish to the Flathead Reservation. The removal was conducted in October. Charlo reportedly wept as his people left the valley. He died on the reservation in nineteen ten.

The Bitterroot is still called the Bitterroot. The people who named it were told to leave it and were made to go.