With the exception of the Kootenais, few Indians ventured into the
fastness of the park mountains before the coming of the white men. Yet
so frequently did a large number of tribes use its trails for hunting
and warfare, or camp in midsummer along its lakes and streams on the
edge of the plains, that the park has an Indian story intertwined with
its own that is unsurpassed in interest. Except for a few plateau
Indians who had strong plains' characteristics because they once lived
on the plains, all tribes were of that most interesting of Indian
types, the plains Indian.
The earliest peoples inhabiting the northern Montana plains of which
we have any record were apparently Snake Indians of Shoshonean stock.
Later Nez Perces, Flatheads, and Kootenais pushed eastward through
passes from the headwaters of the Columbia River system. Then came
horses and firearms, and the whites themselves to set up an entirely
different state of affairs in their hitherto relatively peaceful
existence. First, a growing and expounding Siouan race, pressed forward
also by an expanding irresistible Algonkian stock, occupied the high
plains and pushed back its peoples behind the wall of mountains. These
were the Crows from the south, the Assiniboins to the east. Lastly,
armed with strategy and Hudson's Bay Co. firearms, and given speed and
range with horses, the dauntless Blackfeet came forth from their
forests to become the terror of the north. They grew strong on the
abundance of food and game on the Great Plains, and pushed the Crows
beyond the Yellowstone River, until met by the forces of white soldiery
and the tide of civilization.
Today the Blackfeet on the reservation adjoining the park on the east
remain a pitiful but picturesque remnant of their former pride and
glory. They have laid aside their former intense hostility to the
whites and have reconciled themselves to the fate of irrepressible
civilization. Dressed in colorful native costume, a few families of
braves greet the park visitor at Glacier Park Station and Hotel. Here
they sing, dance, and tell stories of their former greatness. In these
are reflected in a measure the dignity, the nobility, the haughtiness,
and the savagery of one of the highest and most interesting of
aboriginal American peoples.