Niarada

West of Flathead Lake lies the country around Niarada, within the homeland of the Salish and their neighbours. The valleys and mountains of the upper Columbia basin sustained communities who fished, hunted and gathered plants through the changing seasons. Across the mountains to the east lay the plains, where bison drew hunting parties from the west. In 1809 the trader David Thompson established Saleesh House on the Clark Fork, bringing a fur-trading post into this network of Indigenous travel and exchange.