NO. 7 SOHON's portraits of INDIANS — EWERS 2$ 



as a separate reservation for the said tribe. No portion of the Bitter Root Valley, 

 above the Loo-lo fork, shall be opened to settlement until such examination is 

 had and the decision of the President made knuwn. 



Governor Stevens ininicdiately instrncted R. II. Lansdalc, Indian 

 Agent, to make an examination of both localities. There exists in the 

 National Archives, Department (jf the Interior, OfTice of Indian Af- 

 fairs, correspondence, a manuscript report from I ansdale to Stevens, 

 dated October 2, 1855, in which he expressed the opinion that the 

 northern (Jocko) site was preferable to the Bitterroot Valley one. 

 In reaching this opinion he considered the natural fertility and re- 

 sources of the two areas. However, he acknowledged that the ex- 

 istence of the St. Ignatius Mission in the northern area weighed 

 heavily in his choice of that location. This report was premature. 

 It was made 3^ years before the Flathead Treaty was ratified by the 

 Senate, April 18, 1859, and therefore had no legal status as the 

 official Government survey specified in the treaty. 



Meanwhile, as they waited for action to be taken on their treaty, 

 the friendly Flathead were disillusioned and embittered by the fact 

 that the Blackfoot Treaty, made 3 months later than theirs, was 

 ratified in 6 months, and the Blackfoot tribes began to receive an- 

 nuities and other benefits provided by that treaty. It appeared to the 

 P'lathead that the Government was following a policy of rewarding 

 enemies and neglecting old friends. (Agent Lansdale, in Ann. Rep. 

 Comm. Ind. Aflf., 1857, p. 378.) 



After the ratification of their treaty the Government made no 

 effort to force the removal of the Flathead from the Bitterroot \'alley. 

 They were a small, friendly, well-behaved tribe, and they were still 

 unwilling to move. In the wake of the Montana gold rush of the 

 early '6o's, white settlers moved into the Bitterroot Valley. Their 

 settlements grew in area and numbers until the lands occupied by the 

 Indians were virtually surrounded. Still the Flathead clung tena- 

 ciously to their land. Some Indians raised food crops for market 

 as well as for their own consumption. T.ut, as late as 1876, three 

 and one-half decades after Father De Smet first showed them how 

 to till the soil, the Flathead Agent reported, "a majority still derive 

 their sustenance from hunting, fishing, root-gathering." (.\nn. Rep. 

 Comm. Ind. AfT., 1876, p. 88.) Until the extermination of the buffalo 

 on the southern Montana plains in 1879-80, the Flathead continued 

 their periodic buffalo-hunting excursions over the Rockies. 



On November 14, 1871, President Grant issued an Executive 

 Order declaring that all Indians residing in the Bitterroot X'allcy 



