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Montana's Human History

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Migrants apparently came to North America across a temporary land bridge from Asia over 10,000 years ago. They traveled south from what is now Alaska, along the eastern side of the Continental Divide. In Montana, there is some archeological evidence of these early visitors’ travels through the state, and their hunting of the woolly mammoth. A major climate change ended the short period of occupation by these early Montanans, by creating desert conditions on the Great Plains. Between 5,000 and 4,000 B.C., a group of people now known as the "late hunters," probably the direct ancestors of today's Indian tribes, began to migrate north from the southwestern deserts. Late hunters arrived in Montana between 3,000 and 2,000 B.C. These groups of people traveled widely across the plains, hunting the bison that roamed the American West for thousands of years.

The 17th and 18th centuries A.D. were a busy and flourishing period of Native American culture in Montana, with people migrating to the area from every direction. The largest tribe of this time was that of the Blackfeet Indians, who came from the north and east, and settled in north and central Montana. The Atsinas, later known as the Gros Ventres, lived to the east of the Blackfeet, and the Assiniboine Indians in turn lived east of the Atsinas. Crow Indians came from the east and settled in and around the Yellowstone River Valley. West of the Rockies, the Flathead Indians had arrived in the early 1500s. They and other tribes of the Columbia Plateau lived in villages and subsisted on plants and fish, rather than bison. The Salish and Kootenai tribes did some of both, crossing the mountains to hunt in the summer and returning to the Columbia Plateau during the winter.

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