Left: A colorized portrait of Chief Charlo (aka Small Grizzly Bear Claws). Right: Members of the Bitterroot Salish Tribe are shown shortly before they were marched to the Flathead Reservation, leaving behind their ancestral homeland in the Bitterroot Valley.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are comprised of three Tribes: Bitterroot Salish, Upper Qlisp’e (aka Upper Pend d’Orielle) Tribe, and the Ksanka (Kootenai) Tribe.
In 1855, when the Hellgate Treaty was negotiated with the United States, both the Bitterroot Salish Chief and the Upper Qlisp’e Chief were adamant that the Reservation be placed on their respective ancestral homeland.
Due to the presence of white settlers flooding into the Bitterroot Valley, the federal government wanted the Bitterroot Salish to leave and move to what became the Flathead Indian Reservation. This reservation is located north of the Bitterroot Valley in Western Montana. In 1872, they sent an emissary to speak with Chief Charlo (aka Small Grizzly Bear Claws) and compel him to remove his people to the Reservation.
President Ulysses S. Grant sent James A. Garfield, an ambitious Ohio U.S. Congressman, to speak with the Chief. Grant was sure he could convince the Chief to comply and sign the removal document. When negotiations broke down and Chief Charlo refused to give his mark to the agreement, Garfield simply forged the Chief’s mark.
Despite Garfield’s deception, Chief Charlo and his people held out in the Bitterroot Valley until 1891. As for the ambitious Garfield, he would eventually become President of the United States. He was assassinated in 1881, some six months into his term.
