Sad story of the Kalispel

This week I'm revisiting a stack of materials gleaned during several months of research for my Pend Oreille Lake project. Focusing on a history of the white settlement around the lake, I can't help but take a cue from my brother's cartoon and mention a significant but very sad segment of the story---the Sandpoint Treaty of 1887.

With this unratified treaty, the Kalispel Indians received their walking papers. Their lands were confiscated when the U.S. government supported the railroad interests which were constructing their line through the Kalispel lands in 1883. According to historians, huge amounts of Kalispel lands and valuable timber were transferred to the railroad. The rest was made available for white settlers.

Historian Nancy F. Renk writes in her "A Brief History of Bonner County" (www.bonnercountyhistory.org/History/BChistory/bchistory.html) that traditional Kalispel territory extended from Lake Pend Oreille along the Pend Oreille River into Eastern Washington and east along the Clark Fork River into Montana. She adds that they established year-round settlements near present-day Laclede, on both sides of the river, and at the mouth of the Clark Fork where 300-400 Kalispel lived.

During the 19th Century, Euro-Americans began to encroach on these lands. With failed efforts to establish a reservation for the Kalispel, bad feelings arose. "Michael, leader of the upper Kalispel, signed a treaty with the government in Sandpoint in 1887, but Masselow, leader of the Lower Kalispel, refused to agree to its terms," Renk continues. "As a result, Congress never ratified the treaty." Those living near the lake had to leave the region. They went to live with relatives in Coeur d'Alene, Montana or Eastern Washington.

Renk reports that later, in 1914, the Kalispel finally received more than 4,500 acres of land for a reservation in Eastern Washington and the tribe continued to move in and out of Bonner County into the 1930s. Their headquarters are located in Usk, Washington (www.kalispeltribe.com/history-chronos.html).