Comprehensively describes Indians past and present on all seven Montana reservations, plus the Little Shell people.

From the book: This is a book about more than 50,000 people of Montana, many of whose ancestors called this country their home well before Lewis and Clark reached the mouth of the Yellowstone on the Missouri River. These people are the Indians of the Northern Plains and Columbia Plateau, who now happen to live primarily on the seven Montana reservations.

It was only 125 years ago that they hunted the buffalo in the Big Sky country. Today, through executive order and treaty, many live on reservations that have semi-sovereign legal status in relationship with the state of Montana and the United States government.

The subject of this book is not so much "the Indians of Montana," but rather tribes of people native to Montana who like to be thought of as Assiniboine, Sioux, Gros Ventre, Kootenai, Salish, Blackfeet, Cree, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and Chippawa. George Snell, an Assiniboine tribal leader, put it simply: "The non-Indian has a way of lumping us all together, and I don't like it. Blacks don't like to be lumped with the Spanish, and Irish don't like to be be lumped with the English, so why does everybody have to call us Indian?"