blackfoot-valley

Giants: the Drive to the Pacific Northwest, 1956). Some Pacific Coast tribes, however, did practice this type of deformation. One might speculate whether it may have originated in a cultural link or transmission from the Maya of Central America, whose painting, murals, reliefs, and sculptures con- spicuously display just such sloping foreheads. The “Flatheads” call them- selves Salish, that name now becoming increasingly current in English. Unless used very carefully and specifically, however, the term Salish can introduce con- fusion as to the original mean- ing of the word. A closely re- lated and associated tribe- was-and is-the Kalispel or Pend d’ Orieille, also of ling- uistically Salishan stock, living farther north and west with twice the Flathead population. Another group, the Kutenai, or Kootenay, lived in the area from the northwest corner of today’s Montana well into Can- ada and spoke an unrelated language, but became friends and allies of the Flatheads. Flathead Indian, “ Also known as Salish” Members of the three tribes sometimes joined forces in bison-hunting trips to the east of the mountains. They are collectively re- ferred to as the Salish Nation. To avoid ambiguity we use the term “Flathead” here to denote the smallest of these groups, whose traditional territory at the time of first known contacts included the Nevada Valley and present Ranch, but nearly all the population lived to the west. Although their ancestors originally came from the Pacific Coast, the Flat- heads were a culturally transistional group, showing certain aspects of both the Plateau and Plains people. During spring and summer, parties of Flat- heads roamed east as far as Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains and lived in the Three Forks area until around 1700. At that time, they were forced back into the mountains by Shoshoni from the south and Blackfeet from the northeast, reducing their core area to a broad strip stretching from the Flathead Lake area in the north, to Missoula and Bitterroot valleys in the south. In earlier times on the Plains, archeologists estimate that by 1450 an early bison- 51