Fort Chardon Historical Marker

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Categories:

Historical Markers/Interpretive Sign,  Historic Sites,  Lewis and Clark Expedition

Keywords:

• Fort Chardon, 
• Montana Historical Markers

General info

Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through this area (1805) on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean, and the landscape here remains much as they described it. Fur trappers and traders then followed them into the Upper Missouri region. Fort Chardon was erected (1844) on this bank, but local Indian hostilities forced its closure two years later. The north bank also was the site of two important treaty councils. In 1846, Father Pierre Jean De Smet convened the Blackfeet and the Salish here to end their open warfare. In 1855, Governor Isaac I. Stevens organized a meeting of more than 3,000 Blackfeet, Gros Ventres, Nez Perces, and Salish to produce a major treaty between the tribes and the government. This area first was homesteaded in the 1880s. Traces of early homestead irrigation systems can still be seen within the National Historic District.