Remembering The Indians - Bob Green

by Bob Gunter

Bob Green was born and lived in Bonner County most of his life and now lives in Washington State. He remembers well, as a young person, seeing the Indians gather on the flats of Lake Pend Oreille. Here, in his own words is his story.

I'll tell you, there was about thirty or forty teepees a lot of the time. My sister said there were a lot more than that but I remember that's about what there were. They'd catch big squawfish. The squawfish in the lake were, oh, three feet long on an average pretty much.

They'd build a little frame of willows and that was used to lay the fish on. They'd smoke them there. Then during the summer time they'd go up the trails on the mountains and get huckleberries ? get lots of huckleberries. They made cedar baskets. They hauled their berries in those cedar baskets on horses. There used to be a trail that went right up behind my granddad's homestead that went clear over to Troy, Montana.

They went up that trail and it was, oh, three feet wide. Then in the fall they'd go back up on the Flathead country in Montana. They'd stay in the flats during the summer and pasture their horses out there on the bottom for the rush hay out there. Now the horses could eat that rush hay when it was green. There was giant rush and goose rush, but they couldn't use it as a hay to feed horses.

Indians visit Sandpoint Idaho.
Click photo to enlarge

They'd get the staggers with it. I saw, I guess, a hundred horses that died from that. They belonged to people that were logging in that country. We enjoyed the Indians. There was an old man and he was kind of a French Indian, I guess? I can't remember. He used to come and stay at our place. He would go out there and give talks. In the fall of the year we had our meetings out there. It was an old timer's picnic is what it was over there.

He'd go out there and give these talks. He was interesting. He would tell about his dad and the early days of the Indians and the white people that went through the country. They came up to Memaloose to the old building that was their trading post, there at Memaloose.

That's all that I can pretty much tell you about the Indians being there. The last I remember seeing them was in 1928 or 29. I think these Indians were Flatfeet or Flatheads from over in the Plains, Montana area.

All photographs have been used with permission of the Bonner County Museum.