Mineral County is within the traditional territory of the Salish and Pend d’Oreille Indians. These tribes and other regional Indians made camps along the Clark Fork River that allowed them to take advantage of the plentiful resources of the area. The confluence of the Clark Fork and St. Regis Rivers was such a site. Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens passed by that location in 1855 on his way to negotiate a peace treaty at Council Grove, some 65 miles upstream. The river, still flowing high from its annual snowmelt, presented a formidable obstacle. Local Indians camped nearby demonstrated their prowess in river crossing, while Stevens’s group nearly succumbed to the swift current.

In 1859–1860, Lieutenant John Mullan led a construction party eastward while building his military wagon road east from Fort Walla Walla, Washington, to Fort Benton, Montana. Mullan ordered one of his men, John Strachan, to lead a small party to construct a ferry over the Clark Fork near the present-day community of St. Regis. During his time at the confluence, Strachan took interest in the local “Pende Oreilles and Flat Head” Indians camped nearby. He observed that they hunted deer and small game, gathered roots and fruits, and harvested fish.

Indeed, early traveler accounts from the Mullan Road provide further documentation of the location as a favored Indian campsite. In September 1862, a group of Mullan Road travelers remarked on the existence of an Indian encampment there and camped among them. They also reported encountering other Indians utilizing the new wagon road for their own travels through the region.

Following the gold rush and subsequent mining booms of the area during the 1860s and 1870s, Indian activity appears to have decreased. Nevertheless, as local historian Margie Hahn explained, the region’s earliest inhabitants left their mark: “The number of artifacts that has been found along the Clark Fork River through Mineral County is an indication that before the coming of the white men, it was a popular place with the Indians.”

Credits and Sources:

Hahn, Margie. Montana’s Mineral County in Retrospect. Stevensville, MT: Stoneydale Press Publishing Company, 1997.

Strachan, John. Blazing the Mullan Trail: Connecting the Headwaters of the Missouri and the Columbia Rivers and Locating the Great Overland Highway to the Pacific Northwest. Rockford, IL: Rockford Register, 1861.

Historic drawing of “Mode of Crossing Rivers by the Flathead and Other Indians” by C. Sohon, in Capt. John Mullan’s Report on the Construction of a Military Road from Fort Walla-Walla to Fort Benton.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863.

Contemporary photograph of Confluence Camp area courtesy of Historical Research Associates, Inc.