EMBARKING - KUTENAI

April 23, 2020 1 min read

Embarking Kutenai

Plate 250 from portfolio 7 is titled “Embarking” and depicts a woman in a canoe pulled up to a rocky shore with a woman standing on the shoreline. Edward Curtis took this photograph near the southern end of Flathead lake in Montana where the Kutenai tribe occupied land along the Kootenay river. Today, Kutenai bands live in southeastern British Columbia, northern Idaho, and western Montana. The language spoken by the Kutenai is considered a language isolate, meaning it is unrelated to any other language families. The Kutenai are thought to be descendants of an ancient Blackfeet group that moved west from the Great Plains. The area they occupied was plentiful of streams, lakes and rainfall which meant plenty of game and fish, making this the most favorable part of the plateau.