Marias Pass
From west of the divide, the group most frequently associated with Glacier National Park is the Tobacco Plains Band, once located near Eureka, Montana. These people hunted and quarried workable stone (chert). Linguistically and culturally, these people, the Kootenai (spelled various ways including Kootenai, Kootenay and Kutenai), are a people unto themselves, with origins difficult to trace. Skilled hunters, trappers, and fishermen, the Tobacco Plains Band historically traversed the mountains on annual bison hunts into the Waterton area, utilizing crucial mountain passes.
Marias Pass was one of the principal early passes through which the Indians from west of the mountains, mainly the Selish, (Flatheads) and Kootenais, came across the mountains to the buffalo hunting grounds in the country of the Blackfeet. Many early fur traders and prospectors also used this and other passes in the area, but, unfortunately, because too few left any record of their passing we know little of who they were, where they went, or when they passed. In 1810 David Thompson, a fur trader, was the first to report the use of the pass. In 1831, Captain James Kipp was able to establish the first successful American trading post on the mouth of the Marias River. This post, called Fort Piegan, was burned down the following year, but was rebuilt that fall and the name changed to Fort McKenzie.
