The West Old & New Vol. III Issue II February 2014 | Page 17

In 1910 the Flathead Indian Reservation was opened
to homesteaders. Read real stories about life on the
high mountain prairie.
One man who came to the valley gave voice to the changes the Dawes Act
leveled on the Native people. Known as an Indian trader Fred E. Peeso came to
Camas Hot Springs in 1908, “The whites have come in and robbed the Indians
of their lands and other possessions, killed off their game and destroyed their
means of livelihood, made it impossible to get a square deal in the courts. Not
satisfied with that, they have tried by every means to defame their character
and give them a bad name.” The white settlers said little about the Native people in their oral history that was originally compiled in “Settlers and Sodbusters,” as a Bicentennial Project of the Hot Springs Historical Society in
June 1976, the majority of their stories are about how they got here, how they
built homes, and how they survived. This book is a compilation of their stories
compiled in to chapters on the landscape that defined their lives.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/291038

The best of
The West Old & New.
Stories from the first
year of publication of
the magazine as a
quarterly in 2012.
The first year of the West was as a hard
copy only. Read about the people and
places of Montana.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/290345

The West Old & New Page 17