People before the Park: Tales of Glacier National Park before tourists

With warm days and cool nights, the winter snow in Glacier National Park has set, allowing one to walk on the crust. This all important snow was critical to the Kootenai people, who would  cross its surface up and over what is now Logan Pass to hunt buffalo near the shores of St. Mary Lake. They would butcher the beasts and carry them back over the pass, with one man sometimes standing on the shoulders of another man to get over cliffs.

Such a journey seems implausible today, but was commonplace in the time before the white man settled the West, author Sally Thompson notes in her new book, “People Before the Park: The Kootenai and Blackfeet Before Glacier National Park.”

Co-written with the Kootenai Cultural Committee and the Pikunni Traditional Association, the book is page-after-page of fascinating stories of the people, culture and history of the Native American tribes that didn’t just visit what is now Glacier, but relied on it for their livelihood.

Both the Blackfeet and the Kootenais lived off the land, bound to the seasons. They hunted and fished, gathered berries and roots to survive. They made fish traps out of wood and speared trout from streams. Before horses, they drove the buffalo over cliffs or into snow drifts where they could be killed with bows and arrows and spears. They wore handmade snowshoes and coats made from mountain goats. Buffalo robes were good for the floor of a tipi, but goat robes were warmer and lighter.

In spring, bird eggs were a welcome treat and the cambium layer of bark from Ponderosa pine gave them something sweet to eat.

Their lives were tied to the seasons and the bounty each one brought to the tribes.

The book is meticulously researched and detailed. Thompson began work on the book in the summer of 2008 and it was published last summer by the Montana Historical Society. 

Thompson received her doctorate in anthropology in 1980, but this is her first book. She said it took time to earn the trust of her Native American co-authors and even today, she still can’t fully grasp the way they lived in the landscape.

“They had a richness in life that modern people can’t imagine,” she said. “I have a deep respect for their culture and history ... this isn’t my book, it’s our book.”

The narrative draws on the old stories of tribal elders, oral histories passed on from generation to generation. The stories follow the seasons, from the darkest depths of winter, when tribes relied on caches of dried meat and berries, to the fall, when elk meat was at its prime.

The book also tells the traditional names of places. For example, Apgar was a winter gathering ground for the Kootenai where they sang and danced. It was called “A Good Place to Dance.” Bowman Creek was “Big Strawberries” and the St. Mary River was “Where Rawhide Was Stretched Across the River to Pull Tipi Bundles Across.”

The book also details creation stories of both tribes and dozens of other fascinating tales.

The challenge today is to keep the old traditions and stories alive in a modern world. Thompson said she’d like to see more Native Americans employed by the Park Service, where interpreters can relay the old stories and history to visitors.

The first printing has already sold out and a second printing is on the way. Thompson has been enthused by the success and the reaction from readers. Hopefully, they come to see Glacier as not just a park, but a way of life for indigenous people, she notes.

“The tribes and the park hold something essential for all of us. Like indigenous people all over the world, the Blackfeet and Kootenai continue to honor the reciprocal relationship that formed the essence of their original covenants, and wherever they can, they continue to act on their responsibility,” Thompson writes.

But it might be even more simple than that.

“I have friends who read the book at night before bed,” she said. “They say it calms them down.”