COUNCIL GROVES - The yellow pines were here, scattered across the meadow much as they are today, when the Confederated Tribes of the Flathead, Kootenai and Upper Pend d'Oreille came to this place in July of 1855 to meet with the white governor.
The Indian people wanted to talk to Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens about the troubles white settlement was bringing to their homeland. Disease. Trespass by settlers, and by hostile tribes. Guns and death.
Over the next eight days, tribal leaders became reluctant signatories to the Hellgate Treaty, and the people left Council Groves sad and angry and forever changed.
In their aboriginal homeland of more than 22 million acres, life had been hard, but good. The earth provided all that they needed.
The treaty, though, provided for the conveyance of 12 million acres of land to the United States in return for a reservation of 1.25 million acres, a place known today as the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Other lands, most notably in the Bitterroot Valley, were to be surveyed as potential homelands for the tribes. But that promise by the white leaders was never fulfilled.
And the story of the Hellgate Treaty and its continuing significance to the native people of western Montana fell silent for many generations.
On Saturday, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes will remember and honor the 1855 treaty and dedicate a new sign at Council Groves State Park west of Missoula.
For the first time, the sign will tell "the accurate and appropriate story" of the Hellgate Treaty, said Julie Cajune, who coordinated the project for the Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council.
"For some people, this is a really sad place - a place that symbolizes a time in history they'd rather not remember," Cajune said Friday, as tribal members made preparations for the observance. "Every day, we live with the consequences of what happened here."
But Cajune also comes to Council Groves with "a profound sense of gratefulness to my cultural ancestors, that in an extreme time of stress, they were able to preserve something - a sanctuary - for our people and for the animals and wild places."
The sign project began quietly, four years ago now, with a conversation between Cajune and Cheryl Vanderburg, a public affairs specialist for the Lolo National Forest and a Salish tribal member.
While looking over possible sites for interpretive programs, Vanderburg came across a little sign on the edge of the parking lot at Council Groves.
She was shocked by its description of the Hellgate Treaty as "an agreement by which the Indians relinquished their ancestral hunting grounds in exchange for a reservation in the Mission Valley."
"It simply was not true," Vanderburg said. "The tribes did not relinquish their rights."
In fact, as the effort to create and build a new sign for Council Groves unfolded, all involved realized how little non-Indians know of their Indian neighbors.
Missoula is just 20 miles from the Flathead Reservation, but few residents of Missoula know the story of the Hellgate Treaty or understand tribal sovereignty, Cajune said.
"Indian people are the most unknown and misunderstood minority in America," she said. "It always surprises me."
So the three-panel sign begins at the beginning, with the creation story as told by tribal elder Clarence Woodcock.
"Our story begins when the Creator put the animal people on this earth," said Woodcock. "He sent Coyote ahead, as the world was full of evils and not yet fit for mankind. Coyote came with his brother Fox to this big island, as the elders call this land, to free it of these evils.
"They were responsible for creating many geographic formations and providing good and special skills and knowledge for man to use. Coyote, however, left many faults such as greed, jealousy, hunger, envy and many other imperfections that we know of today."
Everyone involved with the project agreed: The sign needed to convey the long history of tribal inhabitancy, told as tribal elders know the story.
"This is an old tribal world," Cajune said. "We were always here."
A map hand-drawn by tribal member Rosemary Roullier shows the aboriginal lands and a few of their original uses: the great rivers of fish, the places where elk and buffalo were hunted, the favorite bitterroot grounds.
The Salish, Pend d'Oreille and Kootenai people had "an intimate knowledge of this sacred landscape" and the people "practiced a complex pattern of movements within the seasonal round," the sign explains.
A second map shows those aboriginal lands with the white man's political boundaries drawn upon them: all of Montana, the northern half of Wyoming, central and northern Idaho, eastern Washington, the western edge of the Dakotas.
The Flathead Indian Reservation is shown, too, as a tiny fraction of the homeland.
The focus of the sign, though, is the treaty itself, which is printed in bronze on the central panel. (Dan Roullier of Ronan made the sign; all funding came from the Confederated Tribes and a number of other public and private donors on the reservation.)
Alongside the treaty is printed an explanation by Dan Decker, a tribal member, attorney and authority on treaty law.
Most contentious of the treaty's provisions is Article 3, Decker tells. In that article, the tribes reserved the exclusive rights of fishing and hunting on the reservation, together with hunting, fishing, gathering and grazing rights on open and unclaimed lands off the reservation, but within their vast aboriginal territory.
So, too, did the treaty and the subsequent Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 provide the basis for tribal self-determination and self-governance, Decker said.
Today, sovereignty is exercised by "a representative form of government, yet governance of the reservation remains in accordance with tribal relations and culture, keeping tribal children and their children in mind, to the seventh generation from today, accounting for the strong religious and environmental stances of the tribes," the sign reads.
And while it was impossible on one sign to say all that tribal members hoped to say, Cajune sees the project as a start.
Now, she will work on a teacher's packet, hoping schools will bring students to Council Groves to walk along the Clark Fork River and beneath the pines, then to sit alongside the sign and learn about the Hellgate Treaty.
Terry Tanner, work projects coordinator for the Salish-Kootenai Wildland Recreation Program, would like to see the 186-acre state park redesignated as an international peace park, jointly managed by the tribes, the state of Montana and the U.S. government.
The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks manages the land now.
As Missoula moves farther out into the valley and surrounds Council Groves, its preservation will become ever-more important, Tanner said. "It will take us all to protect this place and keep it pristine."
"This is a place with a story we must preserve and tell," he said, "as it continues to unfold."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.
If you're interested
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes will remember and honor the Hellgate Treaty and unveil a new commemorative sign at Council Groves State Park, beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday. A traditional feast will be served
at 4 p.m.
Council Groves is six miles northwest of Missoula on Mullan Road. The park is open daily for picnicking, hiking and fishing, and is managed by Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)