Pend d'Oreille Hunting Grounds

Pend d'Oreille Hunting Grounds. . For many thousands of years, this area has been a favorite hunting, fishing and food-gathering area for the Olispé (Pend d'Oreille) people, many of whom live today on the Flathead Reservation. The Salish-language name for the Thompson Falls area is Seqeylqm, which refers to the sound made by water go the Clark's Fork falling over the drop. , Oral history tells of a time long ago when the Salish-speaking people lived in one great tribe. When the people became too numerous for the available food supply, they split into many smaller bands and spread out across western Montana and then west into what is now Idaho and Washington. Since that time, the Seqeylqm or Thompson Falls area has been near the near of the Clark Fork Valley travel corridor for tribal people visiting relatives and friends from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia Plateau in the west. People traveled by foot and birch-bark cancers, and in later yeas by horse, train and today by automobile. , Because of the tribal importance of this travel route, David Thompson and the Hudson's Bay Company decided to locate Saleesh House near here in 1809. The trading post operated until the 1820s when the Hudson's Bay Company closed it.