Welcome to the first season of Land Grab! In this first chapter, we’re laying out the terms of the story we’re going to tell in this season: the story of the opening of the Flathead Indian Reservation to white settlement; and the real foundations of Missoula and Western Montana.

This first chapter largely focuses on the precolonial history of Montana. We’ll learn about the origins of Montana’s aboriginal people, and the complex societies they developed over tens of thousands of years in the area. We then move into the early interactions between the indigenous people in the region and the first white explorers, trappers, and settlers who ventured into the Northwest: from Lewis and Clark to the Hudson Bay Company.

And we’ll finish the episode by looking at how the Flathead Reservation came into existence with the Hellgate Treaty of 1855. We’ll dive into the miscommunications and outright deception used by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens to engineer a treaty agreement on paper that was vastly different from the one tribal negotiators believed they were signing. And we’ll end as the first permanent settlement, a little shanty town called Hellgate, gets started in the Missoula valley, right as the first gold discoveries are made in the area, and Montana explodes into a new age.

Find out more about Land Grab, and consider making a contribution at www.landgrabpodcast.com and find us on social media @landgrabpod

Links to sources mentioned at the end of the episode:

OPI Indian Education for All Videos: https://montanatribes.org/iefa-big-picture/

CSKT Natural Resource Department Online Education Portal: http://fwrconline.csktnrd.org/

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