Montana

Long before it became the fourth-largest U.S. state by area, Montana was—and remains—the ancestral homeland of numerous Native American nations, including the Crow (Apsáalooke), Cheyenne (Tsitsistas and Só’taeo’o), Blackfeet (Niitsitapi), Assiniboine (Nakoda), Gros Ventres (A’aninin), Kootenai (Ktunaxa), and Salish peoples. When Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery crossed the region in 1805, much of the territory they traversed was controlled by the Blackfeet Confederacy. The decades that followed brought fur traders, Catholic missionaries, gold seekers, railroads, and homesteaders—each wave reshaping Indigenous life through disease, warfare, and broken treaties. Today, twelve recognized tribes call Montana home, making up more than 6 percent of the state’s population and carrying forward one of the most consequential Indigenous histories in North America, anchored by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Montana’s First Nations Before European Contact

For centuries before Europeans arrived, the lands encompassing present-day Montana supported diverse and sophisticated Indigenous societies. The Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d’Oreille peoples of the western valleys and mountains maintained seasonal rounds of fishing, root gathering, and hunting. On the eastern plains, the Blackfeet dominated a vast territory, while the Crow held the southeastern plains along the Bighorn and Yellowstone river drainages. The Assiniboine and Gros Ventres ranged the north-central prairies, and bands of Cheyenne and Lakota hunted across the southeastern grasslands.

The arrival of horses on the northern plains—part of the broader transformation explored in the rise of the Horse Nation—revolutionized buffalo hunting, warfare, trade, and social organization. By the early 19th century, mounted Plains nations had built extensive economic and diplomatic networks, exchanging buffalo robes, horses, and European goods through vast trading systems.

Contact, Missions, and the Fur Trade Era

Following Lewis and Clark’s 1805 expedition, fur trappers were among the first Europeans to venture into Montana in the early decades of the 1800s. Competition among trading companies—including the Hudson’s Bay Company and later American concerns—intensified pressure on buffalo herds and drew Indigenous nations into global commercial networks. In 1841, Catholic missionaries established St. Mary’s Mission among the Salish people in the Bitterroot Valley, the region’s first permanent non-Native settlement. The Jesuit mission, still preserved today as a historic site, marked the beginning of sustained colonial settlement in western Montana. The Salish, under leaders such as Chief Victor and later Chief Charlo, engaged with the missionaries strategically, but the decades that followed brought smallpox epidemics, resource depletion, and relentless pressure to cede lands.

Gold, Territory, and the Erosion of Indigenous Sovereignty

Montana remained a sparsely settled frontier until 1863, when gold was discovered at Alder Gulch in the southwest. The strike drew a flood of prospectors to remote boomtowns like Virginia City and Helena, and Montana was officially organized as a U.S. territory in 1864. Among the newcomers were thousands of Chinese migrants who, barred by discriminatory laws from owning many mining claims, established laundries and restaurants—and later faced boycotts intensified by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The gold economy also accelerated settler conflict with Montana’s tribes. Bozeman Trail traffic through Lakota and Cheyenne hunting grounds, the atrocity-known histories of the Marias Massacre of 1870, and successive land cession treaties steadily eroded Indigenous land bases. The federal government repeatedly promised reservations and annuities—then violated those commitments when gold or railroads made the land valuable.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn: The Greasy Grass Fight

The defining clash of the Plains Indian Wars came in 1876, when more than 10,000 Lakota and Northern Cheyenne—including elders, families, and warriors—gathered in a great encampment along the Little Bighorn River, a place the Lakota called the Greasy Grass. Led spiritually by Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake) and militarily by leaders including Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) and Chief Gall, thegathered nations refused U.S. government orders to report to reservations after gold was discovered in the sacred Black Hills (Pahá Sapo), territory guaranteed to the Lakota by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.

On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer launched an improvised attack on the massive encampment, splitting his forces without adequate reconnaissance. The result was catastrophic for the U.S. Army: Custer and all 210 men under his immediate command were killed in the worst American defeat of the Plains Indian Wars. Rather than a “Last Stand” by Custer, historians now frame the battle as a moment of unified Indigenous resistance—an alliance victory achieved through superior numbers, leadership, and terrain awareness. To explore the deeper context, see essential facts about Sitting Bull and his role in the Lakota resistance. The victory, however, proved short-lived: within a year, the U.S. Army forced the surrender of most bands, and the Black Hills were seized in 1877, a taking the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled illegal.

Railroads, Statehood, and Homesteaders

The arrival of railroads in the 1880s transformed Montana, tying it to national markets. Construction relied heavily on immigrant labor from China, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Bulgaria. Montana became the 41st state on November 8, 1889. The same era saw rich silver and copper deposits fuel the rise of Butte and the Anaconda Copper Company, one of the world’s largest mining operations.

Early 20th-century homesteading—spurred by Congress expanding the Homestead Act allotment from 160 to 320 acres and railroad advertising—brought waves of settlers onto arid plains, most of which had been recently ceded by tribes. Severe drought beginning in 1917 and dust storms in the 1920s drove many homesteaders to abandon their claims, leaving behind an ecological and economic cautionary tale.

Montana’s Tribal Nations Today

Today, eleven tribal nations live on seven reservations in Montana, while a twelfth, the Little Shell Band of Chippewa—federally recognized only in 2019 after more than a century of petitioning—lives within the state without its own land base. Only the Blackfeet Nation resides on a portion of its original ancestral territory. Reservations such as the Fort Peck (Assiniboine and Sioux), Fort Belknap (Gros Ventre and Assiniboine), Northern Cheyenne, Crow, Flathead (Confederated Salish and Kootenai), and Rocky Boy’s (Chippewa-Cree) host governments, language programs, and cultural institutions that sustain tribal sovereignty. As Montana’s population exceeded 1 million in 2012, Native communities grew alongside it—now more than 6 percent of the state—alongside landmarks preserving shared heritage, from the National Bison Range (established 1908) to Glacier National Park, joined with Canada’s Waterton Lakes in 1932 as the world’s first international peace park.

Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways

• Treaty violations drove conflict. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota; the U.S. seizure of that land after gold discoveries directly precipitated the 1876 confrontation at the Greasy Grass.
• The Little Bighorn was a coalition victory, not an accident. Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces at the June 25, 1876 battle defeated Custer’s force of about 210 men through coordinated leadership—an event best understood through the perspective of defenders of their homelands, not merely as a military footnote.
• Land loss was total and largely permanent. Of Montana’s tribes, only the Blackfeet remain on part of their ancestral territory, a fact that underlines the scale of nineteenth-century dispossession.
• Indigenous presence endures. Twelve recognized tribes, seven reservations, and living cultural institutions demonstrate that Montana’s Native nations are contemporary communities, not relics of the past.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: The Living Legacy of Big Sky Country

Montana’s story is inseparable from its first peoples. From the buffalo cultures of the northern plains to the fishing and gathering nations of the mountain west, from Sitting Bull’s encampment at the Greasy Grass to the modern governments of the Crow, Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai, Northern Cheyenne, and other nations, Indigenous Montana is not a closed chapter but a continuing history. The state’s nickname—the Treasure State—and its motto, Oro y Plata (“Gold and Silver”), honor mineral wealth, but Montana’s richest inheritance may be the endurance, sovereignty, and cultural revitalization of the tribes who have called this land home for millennia.