The Indian Dispossessed
d'Oreilles, and the Nez Perces, three neighboring tribes under Christian teachers, remained steadfast friends of the whites, and under the guidance of their self-sacrificing instructors these Indians supplemented the pursuit of game with increasingly successful attempts at agriculture and stock-raising.
But the restless white explorers gradually crowded into the attractive valley of the Bitter Root. Then comes the story of another bargain for the Indian country. In 1855 the Flatheads, numbering something less than five hundred, under the leadership of their old Chief Victor, met in council with commissioners appointed to treat with them for the cession of territory and settlement on a reservation. Some miles to the northward of the Bitter Root, in what was known as the Jocko Valley, there had been set apart a large reservation for the Flatheads, the Pend d'Oreilles, and the Kootenais, and thither it was proposed to remove them. The Pend d'Oreilles and Kootenais were successfully disposed of, but Victor and his people strenuously opposed this measure. They were ready to give up the large territory demanded of them, except their Bitter Root Valley; this they would not cede and remove to a country that did not compare in fertility with their own. Besides, why should they? In that valley they had set up their church, their houses, their farms; it belonged to them; there they had established themselves to learn the ways of the
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