This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks to anthropologist Sally Thompson, author of Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo and Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains (Bison Books; University of Nebraska Press). In this, the second half of their conversation, Lauren and Sally discuss Chiefs Victor and Charlo and the relationship between Jesuit missionaries and Montana’s native people. The two also talk at length about Chief Charlo’s 1876 speech, a lament of white politicians and settlers who evicted his people from the Bitterroot Valley after the tribe had always/only helped them, beginning with Lewis and Clark.
Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World was the winner of the 2025 Big Sky Award from High Plains International Book Award, the Gold Medal Winner for the 2025 Will Rogers Medallion, and a finalist for the 2025 High Plains International Book Award in Non-Fiction. Congratulations, Sally!
This conversation has been edited for time and is the second part of a two-part conversation. Listen to the first part of the conversation here.
About the book:
Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World brings to life the complicated history of Jesuit missionaries among Montana’s Native peoples—a saga of encounter, accommodation, and resistance during the transformative decades of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Sally Thompson tells the story of how Jesuit values played out in the lives of the Bitterroot Salish people. The famous Black Robe (Jesuit) Father Pierre-Jean De Smet actually spent little time among his “beloved Flatheads.” Instead, he traveled extensively between the Pacific and the Rockies, mapping the pathways and noting the valuable resources. His popular writings helped spark the westward movement of white settlers.
Thompson picks up the story of the Salish peoples and black-robed missionaries at a Potawatomi mission on the Missouri in 1839 and follows their intertwined experiences throughout the lifetime of Salish chief Charlo, who eventually cursed the day white immigrants came into his country. Chief Charlo attributed the missionaries’ disconnected beliefs and exploitative actions to their status as orphans rejected from their place of creation, as he had learned from the story of Eden. Despite Charlo’s valiant efforts to protect his homeland, the Salish endured a forced removal from their beloved Bitterroot Valley to the Flathead Reservation in 1891. Charlo died in 1910, just before the massive giveaway of more than half of the Salish’s treaty-guaranteed lands through implementation of the Allotment Act. Despite it all, his people endure.
In this up-close account of the Bitterroot Salish people during the lifetime of Chief Charlo, Thompson examines the fundamental differences in the ways Euro-Americans and Native Americans related to land and nature.
About Sally:
Sally Thompson is an anthropologist and cultural heritage consultant. She formerly served as founder and director of the Regional Learning Project and as Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act specialist for the University of Montana, Missoula, where, on occasion, she teaches traditional ecological knowledge. Thompson is the author of People before the Park: The Kootenai and Blackfeet before Glacier National Park and Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories that Awaken Montana’s Past.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes’ ARCO lawsuit regarding off-reservation treaty losses due to pollution of the Clark Fork River
The Judith River, or Lame Bull, Treaty of 1855
Sally’s Missoula Art Museum book launch, featuring a full Salish reading of Chief Charlo’s speech by spiritual leader Joseph Arlee (with an English translation by Martin A. Charlo)
The Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness, the first tribal wilderness established in the U.S.
CSKT, Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Montana
Sally Thompson recommends:
The Surrounded by D’Arcy McNickle (University of New Mexico Press), which “influenced my writing. It made me understand how important close-up storytelling is to drawing readers into a historic tale with both heart and head. Too many histories only speak to the intellect.”
Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across North America by Jack Nisbet (Sasquatch Books);
Astoria: Astor and Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier by Peter Stark (Ecco Press);
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez (Scribner);
Coming into the Country by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); and
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (Penguin Random House), “all informed me about creative ways to engage readers in non-fiction.”
The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins (Little, Brown & Company) “is a must read for Montanans. Fans of Yellowstone would learn a truer history of 20th century western life through this book, while having their hearts touched by the humanity of his struggling characters.” Listen to Lauren’s conversation with Joe here!
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling (Milkweed Editions) “is truly astonishing. I had to wriggle through a narrow passage to get into this unique narrative, but once I was there, I didn’t want to leave.” Listen to Lauren’s conversation with Debra here!
Lauren Korn recommends:
Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo and Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains (Bison Books; University of Nebraska Press), Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories that Awaken Montana’s Past (Sweetgrass Books) and People before the Park: The Kootenai and Blackfeet before Glacier National Park (Montana Historical Society Press) by Sally Thompson
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The Write Question team is Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Montana Book Co., located in downtown Helena, Montana, since 1978, offering new books for all ages, vinyl records, and community activism. For delivery in Helena and shipping online, visit mtbookco.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. A hat-tip to Humanities Montana for supporting this program since 2008.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
