The First Peoples: Seven Nations, Seven Homelands

Before the United States existed, before the Corps of Discovery arrived, before the first fur trader crossed the mountains, Montana was home to peoples who had organized their lives here for thousands of years. Seven reservations remain in Montana today, and the tribal nations on them are not remnants. They are governing bodies with constitutions, courts, colleges, economies, and citizens who have lived in this country longer than the United States has existed as a concept.

The Blackfeet Nation, or the Niitsitapi as they call themselves, occupied the great northern plains along the Rocky Mountain Front. Their territory ran from what is now southern Alberta deep into Montana and east across the plains. At the height of their power in the early nineteenth century, the Blackfeet Confederacy controlled one of the most effective horse-and-buffalo cultures on the continent.

The Apsaalooke, whom outsiders called the Crow, occupied the Yellowstone River basin and the mountain valleys to the south. Their reservation in southeastern Montana remains the largest in the state.

The Salish and the Kootenai peoples lived in the mountain valleys of the west, particularly around Flathead Lake and the Bitterroot Valley. The Salish had encountered horses by the early seventeen hundreds, adopting them from the Shoshone to the south and building a culture that ranged across the continental divide for the great bison hunts each year.

The Northern Cheyenne hold a reservation on the Tongue River in the southeast, won through one of the most remarkable acts of collective resistance in American history. The Assiniboine and the Sioux peoples share the Fort Peck Reservation in the northeastern corner of the state, a community that today encompasses two distinct nations and their languages. The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine peoples share the Fort Belknap Reservation along Milk River in the north-central plains.

Each of these nations signed treaties with the United States government. Every one of those treaties was subsequently modified, violated, or broken by the federal government. What remains of the reservations today is a fraction of what the treaties originally defined. The colleges and languages and ceremonies that remain are a testament to what survived anyway.