NO. 7 SOHON S PORTRAITS OF INDIANS — EWERS 33 



expeditions. Mullan sugj^ested that the Indian Department should 

 erect a monument to Victor's memory "to commemorate his wortli 

 and acts, and at the same time to teach all Indians that their good 

 deeds never die." A portrait of Victor, as a "representative of the 

 religious element," was sought for a proposed new volume of Thomas 

 L. McKenney's "History of the Indian Tribes of North America." 

 (Chittenden and Richardson, 1905, vol. 4, pp. 1337-1341.) The little 

 town of Victor, on the Bitterroot River, 12 miles north of Hamilton, 

 Mont., bears the name of this noted chief. 



\'ictor was head chief of the Flathead for nearly three decades 

 during a particularly trying period in the history of that tribe. Al- 

 though at times his leadership may have suffered from want of firm- 

 ness in dealing with dissident elements, his sincere goodness, quiet 

 courage, patience, and dogged determination won him wide respect 

 in his later years. Victor's compromise offered at the Flathead Treaty 

 Council was a statesmanlike action. Ilis insistence on the right of 

 his tribe to remain in the Bitterroot \^alley won him the approval of 

 his own people and the respect of Government officials. For 21 years 

 after his death, his son and successor, Chariot, held stubbornly to 

 \'ictor's policy of refusing to leave the Bitterroot \'^alley for the 

 established reservation. Until the decade of the eighties this policy 

 expressed the will of the majority of the members of the tribe. 



MoiSE, Second Chief of the Flathead (Plate 9) 



Steit-tisli-lutse-so or the Crawling Mountain 



Known among the Americans as Moise 



2nd chief of the Flatheads, a talented and worthy Indian 



Moise (French for Moses) received his Christian name on baptism 

 by Father De Smet at St. Mary's Mission on Easter, 1846. De Smet 

 said that he was surnamed "Bravest of the Brave." (Chittenden and 

 Richardson, 1905, vol. i, p. 305; vol. 2, p. 472.) 



Moise told Lieutenant Mullan that he had been present in the Flat- 

 head camp in Ross' Hole when Lewis and Clark visited it in the fall of 

 1805. He said the explorers took what the Indians knew as the South- 

 ern Nez Perces' trail, following the Bitterroot River to its fork, after 

 they left the Flathead village. (Report of Explorations, etc., i860, 

 vol. I, p. 325.) 



Moise headed the Flathead delegation that went to meet Father 

 De Smet at Fort Hall in 1841. He sent ahead his finest horse as a 

 gift to the priest. After their meeting De Smet described Moise as 

 "the handsomest Indian warrior of my acquaintance" who was "dis- 



