KALISPEL

The name Kalispel, pronounced KAL-uh-spell, means “camas” in the tribe’s Salishan dialect, after the wild plant that many western Indians dug up for food. An alternate name, Pend d’Oreille, pronounced pon-duh-RAY, is French for “earrings”; when French traders first met the Kalispel, many of them wore shells dangling from their ears.

Different bands of Kalispel, discussed as two divi-sions—Upper Kalispel and Lower Kalispel—occupied ancestral territory in present-day northern Idaho, southern British Columbia, northwestern Montana, and northeastern Washington. A lake at the heart of their homeland bears their French name with an alternate spelling, Pend Oreille, as does a river flowing west of the lake. The Kalispel also lived along the Clark Fork to the east of the lake. The Bitterroot Range, part of the Rocky Mountain chain, rises up in Kalispel country.

The Kalispel depended heavily on fishing in the waterways that were part of the Columbia River network winding along the Columbia Plateau to the Pacific Ocean. They supplemented their diet by hunting small game and gathering wild plant foods. They lived in cone-shaped dwellings constructed over pits. (First they dug circular holes; they set poles around the edges of the holes, their tops leaning against one another; they covered the framework with branches, grass or cedar bark, and earth.) The Kalispel, like other Interior Salishan tribes, are classified as PLATEAU INDIANS. They eventually adopted some of the cultural traits of PLAINS INDIANS living to the east, in particular horse-mounted buffalo hunting.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Kalispel in 1805. The North West Company established trading posts on Pend Oreille Lake and Clark Fork in 1809. In later years, the American Fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor, also developed the fur trade with the Kalispel. A Jesuit priest by the name of Father Pierre Jean de Smet established a mission among them in 1844 and ensured the continuing tradition of friendly relations between the Kalispel and Euroamericans. He also worked among the FLATHEAD, neighboring Salishans.

After having signed a treaty in 1855 with the federal government, the Kalispel were settled on the Kalispel and Colville Reservations in Washington and on the Flathead (or Jocko) Reservation in Montana.

In 1872, another agreement was signed with a band of Kalispel living in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho and Montana for their relocation to the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Their principal chief, known as Charlot, after a French trader, resisted passively through oratory, excuses, and delays. White officials declared Charlot’s rival Arly the new chief. Arly took 71 members of the band to the reservation with him. The rest—several hundred—stayed with Charlot in their ancestral valley. In 1884, the Indian agent Peter Ronan took Charlot to Washington, D. C., in order to negotiate a compromise. Neither side budged. In the following years, with continuing non-Indian expansion, many in Charlot’s band made the move to the reservation. Charlot and his most faithful held out until 1890, when troops were sent in to relocate them by force.

Present-day Kalispel are seeking to purchase additional land for redevelopment. Community development programs among the Kalispel include the Camas Institute, which provides educational, counseling, and health facilities. Patients have access to both modern medicine and traditional healing techniques. Profits from the tribally run Northern Quest Casino are now helping fund the institute.

See KAW