Montana Memories : The Life of Emma Magee in the Rocky Mountain West, 1866-1950

Published by the Salish Kootenai College Press Montana Memories is the life story of a mixed-blood Indian woman in western Montana and southern Alberta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in 1866 to a white trader and a Shoshone and Salish Indian mother, Emma Magee saw Montana change from Indian Country to a part of industrial America. When she was born, mixed-blood Indians were socially part of the white community in Montana. By the time she died in 1950, however, mixed-bloods were considered Indians. In the memoirs of her long and dramatic life, Magee recounts many interesting aspects of early Montana:-Her father’s experiences as a free trader in the Rocky Mountains. -Her mother’s tales of her Shoshone ancestors. -Her memories of her life as a mixed-blood child in the Missoula Valley during the nineteenth century. -Her father’s and other relatives’ role in the Nez Perce War of 1877. -Her travels with her first husband through the Upper Flathead Country and the Thompson Falls area of Montana and High River, Alberta. -Her move with her second husband to the Flathead Indian Reservation and her impressions of the impact of allotment and the new irrigation system on the reservation community. -Her daughter’s life in the boarding school at St. Ignatius Mission in the early twentieth century.