Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Native Americans
Although the Flathead Indians lived west of the Continental Divide, the Indians that we
associate with Montana today did not arrive until the early 1600s, moving westward
after European settlement forced them from their traditional homelands. These new mi-
grants—Plains Indians, as we refer to them today—mostly came from the Great Lakes and
Mississippi Basin region, where their sedentary life was uprooted by westward expansion-
ism. Many Native Americans abandoned their agricultural lifestyle and developed a culture
of hunting as they were forced west onto the plains, where the buffalo was plentiful and the
newly developed tipi provided a means to move around and follow the herds.
The Shoshone were among the first Plains Indians to enter Montana, displacing the res-
ident Salish farther north. They brought with them the first horses and were fierce warri-
ors. The Crow Indians followed shortly after, settling in the prairies around the Yellow-
stone River in eastern Montana. The Blackfeet brought the rifle with them when they settled
in Montana during the early 1700s, and together with their allies, the Gros Ventre and
Assiniboine, they quickly came to dominate the northern plains. Other groups that came to
settle in Montana were the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Cree, and Chippewa, causing ten-
sions with so many squeezed into a limited area as white settlers moved farther west.
Lewis and Clark
It was hard to envision what a monumental change would come when President Thomas
Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. This large part of the
western United States was viewed as an important acquisition, and Jefferson hoped to ex-
plore this new territory to find a safe trade route from the Missouri River to the headwaters
of the Columbia River and the Pacific. In other words, the West would soon be open for
business.
Jefferson charged his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark with the
task of putting together a Corps of Discovery to explore the West, and on May 14, 1804, the
two set out from St. Louis with 45 men. Traveling up the Missouri River, the party spent the
following winter in a Mandan village in North Dakota. Here they recruited French trader
Toussaint Charbonneau, who spoke several Indian languages and had traveled extensively
along the Missouri. One of Charbonneau's wives was the young Shoshone Indian named
Sacagawea, who accompanied the party as an interpreter and guide.
The Corps entered Montana in April 1805 and followed the Missouri to its headwaters,
near the present-day town of Three Forks. Lewis encountered the expedition's first Native
American shortly thereafter, a Shoshone who led them to Sacagawea's brother, and the tribe
