Milltown State Park has unveiled a new interactive, multi-media account of the natural and cultural history at Milltown State Park. The story map, "A Confluence of Stories: Nature & Culture at Milltown State Park," explores the following topics:  A Landscape of Passage, Rich and Resilient Land and Water, The First Peoples of the Confluence, Rivers and Westward Expansion, The Rise of Industry, The Milltown Dam and Flood of 1908, Restoring the Confluence, and Milltown State Park.

In the coming months more on these topics and others will be examined in additional story maps.

View "A Confluence of Stories: Nature & Culture at Milltown State Park"

For thousands of years, the Clark Fork River watershed has been part of the vast aboriginal territories of the Salish and Pend d’Oreille people, whose sustainable way of life and respect for the natural world helped ensure an abundance of resources for future generations. Salish Place NamesSalish Place Names To View Larger Map Click Here They lived comfortably as hunters, fishers, and gatherers, moving with the seasons, drawing from a profound knowledge of the plants and animals.
Place of Big Bull Trout

Tribal place-names reflect the ancient and continuing meaning of this cultural landscape. Below you, the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork Rivers is known in Salish as Nayccˇstm (In-áye-ts-ch-stm), meaning Place of Big Bull Trout, a fish whose crucial role in tribal subsistence—and whose former abundance in the Clark Fork drainage—is reflected in numerous Salish names. Upstream, on the Clark Fork’s headwaters, Silver Bow Creek and the Butte area is known as Snt’apqéy (Sin-tap-káy), meaning Place Where Something Is Shot in the Head, in reference to the way Salish people used bows and arrows to harvest bull trout there.
The Hellgate Treaty

In the 1855 Hellgate Treaty, tribal leaders ceded ownership of parts of their aboriginal territories to the United States. The chiefs reserved from cession–as sovereign tribal territory–the Flathead and Bitterroot reservations.They also reserved, on the ceded lands, the perpetual right to hunt, fish, gather plants, and pasture their animals. Today, elders continue to pass down to younger generations the vital importance of places like the Place of Big Bull Trout.

 

 

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