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The Salish Remember Lewis and Clark
Salish elders passed on to subsequent generations their stories recalling when a tribal hunting party had met a small body of white men in the Bitterroot Valley. They told how they welcomed the strangers to their homeland, fed them, and tried to communicate. The elders also told of how their leader, Three Eagles, had directed the visitors to the trail west over the mountains.
When Jesuit missionaries and other outsiders came to live with the Salish in the middle of the nineteenth century, they recorded the elders’ stories. This version was collected on the present-day Flathead Reservation.
Click here to read a Salish elder’s story of the meeting.
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Crossing the Indian Country, 1804 – 1806
