"This year is the centennial anniversary of the Flathead Indian Reservation being opened to settlers. In 1910, under the Homestead Act, settlers were allowed to claim land that had been set aside for the Kootenai, Salish and Pend d’Oreille tribes. Though the natives and non-natives didn’t share cultures, beliefs or lifestyles, they now share this history – which both groups are striving to preserve and re-tell.

Bud Cheff is in his mid-70’s, but when he gives a tour of the Ninepipes Museum – which he constructed and financed – he’s like a young boy, starting a new story before the last is finished.

Cheff, who has spent his life collecting the artifacts, pictures and paintings that fill the museum, walks to a glass case and looks at a shotgun inside. He squints, pointing out notches that have been carved into the gun’s leather handle. Each represents a buffalo killed, he says. Many of the notches have worn away by now, but there used to be more than 30.

That was in a different time, when wild buffalo roamed Montana from Pablo to Ravalli County, the last free-roaming herd in the country. Those buffalo were eventually captured and sold to Canada to make room for homesteaders, Cheff says.

“It took ‘em about seven years to catch them all, though,” he says, a small smile growing from the corners of his lips.

Cheff, who wears cowboy boots and a hat, is white, but grew up learning Indian traditions. His father used to go out with the natives to dig roots, gather herbs and hunt for pine nuts. That background has made Cheff integrate well with natives in the area.

“I don’t think there are any prejudices here,” he says."

Get the Story:
Carly Flandro: 100 Years of White Settlers on the Flathead Reservation: Is This a Celebration? (The New West 7/20)