Pend d'Oreille Hunting Grounds

For many thousands of years, this area has been a favorite hunting, fishing, and food-gathering place for the Olispé (Pend d'Oreille) people, many of whom live today on the Flathead Reservation. The Salish-language name for the Thompson Falls area is Seqeylqm, referring to the sound made by water on the Clark's Fork falling over the drop. Oral history tells of a time long ago when the Salish-speaking people lived in one great tribe, then split into many smaller bands and spread across western Montana and west into what is now Idaho and Washington when their numbers became too great for the available food supply. Since that time, the Seqeylqm, or Thompson Falls, area has been near the heart of the Clark Fork Valley travel corridor for tribal people visiting relatives and friends from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia Plateau in the west. People traveled by foot and birch-bark canoes, and later by horse, train, and automobile. Because of the tribal importance of this travel route, David Thompson and the Hudson's Bay Company located Saleesh House near here in 1809, and the trading post operated until the 1820s, when the Hudson's Bay Company closed it.

Montana · United States