The Salish and Pend d'Oreille People and the Jocko Valley

The Salish and Pend d'Oreille People and the Jocko Valley. . For thousands of years, western Montana, including the Jocko Valley, has been home to the Qluspé (Kalispel or Pend d'Oreille) and Séliš (Salish or "Flathead") people. In their tradition creation stories, tribal elders tell how Coyote traveled across this "island," North America, preparing it for human beings who were yet to come. He left signs of his deeds upon the land, some of which can still be seen today. Here in Jocko, Coyote killed a gigantic monster who swallowed all living things. , Long before the arrival of non-Indians, Salish-language place names covered this area. including Snlacnála (Edge between Forest and Prairie-Schley area) and Nlqála (Place of Wide Trees-Arlee area). The more recent name "Jocko" came from Jacco (Jacques) Raphael Finely, a fur trapper with the North West Fur Company (1806-1809) who intermarried with local Indian people and has many descendants here. , In the Hellgate Treaty (1855) U.S. officials tried to force the Salish, Pend d'Oreille, and Kootenai people onto a single reservation, The Salish resisted removal from their ancestral Bitterroot Valley. When troops finally forced them north in 1891, the Salish came only as far as they had to, stopping at the Flathead or Jocko Reservations southern edge. To this day, many Salish people live in the area, which now faces a new kind of "swallowing monsters," as suburban sprawl presses north from Missoula.