Poplar, Heart of Fort Peck Reservation

Poplar is the headquarters of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux nations in northeastern Montana. The area's history as a meeting point stretches back to the fur-trade years, when traders built posts near the confluence of the Poplar and Missouri rivers. The federal government first established the Fort Peck Indian Agency in the early eighteen seventies to serve the tribes, originally locating it downriver on a floodplain.

After floods destroyed the site each spring, the agency relocated to Poplar in eighteen seventy-eight, and when the Army abandoned Camp Poplar River in eighteen ninety-three, Poplar became the undisputed center of reservation life. Fort Peck is the second largest reservation in Montana, covering over two million acres. Today Poplar is a small city where tribal government, the Fort Peck Community College, and the heritage of both nations shape daily life along the Missouri River corridor.