INGIENOUS TOURISM BC VIDEO DESCRIPTION : St. Eugene Resort (near Cranbrook, British Columbia) is known for its stunning location. This hotel reflects the proud heritage of the Tunaxa people who lived and thrived in this area for generations. Several decades ago, St. Eugene was a Mission School. Today people are invited to share in Tunaxa hospitality. St. Eugene now is home to an Interpretive centre that gives glimpses of these determined people and their culture.

BIG MEDICINE - EARLY VISIONS OF MONTANA BY CHARLIE NICKS : In the 1700s, many of the Kootenai were called the Tuna'xe, and their camps dotted the plains of southern Alberta, around what is now known as Fort McLeod, only a few days ride north from the Blackfoot. Then, for reasons unknown, they migrated south and west, crossing the US border, and disappearing for a time in the dense wilderness of northwest Montana and north Idaho.

MONTANA INDIANS : THEIR HISTORY AND LOCATION from the Indian Division of the Montana Office of Public Instruction. >>> The Pend d’Oreille were centered primarily around the Flathead River, Flathead Lake, the Clark Fork River, Lake Pend Oreille, and the Pend Oreille River. However, a related Salish-speaking tribe called the Tunaxe were, like the Salish, based east of the Continental Divide, in the Sun River-Dearborn River areas along the Rocky Mountain Front. It is said that after the Tunaxe were wiped out in the late 1700's by enemy raids and disease, the Pend d’Oreille assumed a claim to the northern portion of Tunaxe territory, and the Bitteroot Salish to the southern portion.

ALEXANDER - CHIEF OF THE PEND D'OREILLES BY CHALK COURCHANE Chief Alexander was also part Tunaxn, the Salishan tribe that traditionally lived in the Sun River-Dearborn River-Great Falls area (not to be confused with the Ktunaxa, the Kootenai). PLUS The Pend d’Oreilles both Upper and Lower (Kalispel) speak the same dialect which is slightly different than that of the Flatheads (Bitterroot Salish) more so in the olden days then it is now. The Semte’use spoke similar to the Pend d’ Oreille, and the Salish Tuna’xe were partially understood by the Pend d’Oreilles and Bitterroot Salish. PLUS To the east of the Pend d’Oreille in the Sun River valley on the plains, were the Tunaxe who eventually merged with the Pend d’Oreille around Flathead Lake. The Tunaxe came into western Montana in the early historic period or very late prehistoric times eventually losing their identity. Their language was not understood by the Flatheads or Pend d’Oreilles. Although they were identified as a Plateau tribe they followed the Plains culture in many of their ways.

ACCESS GENEALOGY : Tunahe Indians (Tuna-‘xe). Given by Teit (1930) as the name of an extinct Salishan tribe living in west central Montana, but identified by Turney-High (1937) as a former eastern or plains band of the Kutenai Indians, that band, in fact, from which the name Kutenai is derived.

COMPARE : Tunahe vs Kutenai OR Tuna'xa vs Ktunaxa!

GRANITE COUNTY HISTORY : H. Turney-High, an Anthropologist, who began publishing papers on the Flathead Indians in 1942, discounts a lot of Teit's information and interviews. If the reader takes into account the three and four decades that passed between Teit and Turney-High's interviews there must have been a major change in the tribe elders and memories during these major years of World Wars and reservation life.

TRADER'S TALES BY ELIZABETH VIBERT : The ethnographer Teit contented that the Salish Flathead, as well as groups he identified as Salish Tuna'xe and Kutenai Tuna'xa, actually occupied territories on the eastern slopes of the Rockies in pre-horse times where they hunted buffalo on foot. Interestingly, in the first decade of the nineteeth century David Thompson heard a similiar account of Flathead and Upper Kutenai history. He, like Teit, believed that these peoples were driven by the Blackfoot from their western-plains home to the refuge of Plateau valleys sometime around the mid-eighteenth century.

ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUP SOURCE : When the Blackfoot arrived in the new environment it was already populated by two groups of people called the "Tunaxa" and the "Tunaha", according to Blackfoot oral history.

WIKIPEDIA Rght north of the Flathead lived the Salis-Tunaxe. There was no sharp line between the two tribal territories, and the people in the border zone often intermarried. Further north lived the Kutenai-Tunaxe (Kootenai-Tunaxe). /// Both the Salish-Tunaxe and the Semteuse were almost "killed off in wars" with the Blackfoot[1]:317 and further reduced by smallpox.[1]:312 Some of the survivors took refuge among the Salish (ie. Flathead / Bitteroot Salish) With the near extinction of the Salish-Tunaxe, the Salish extended their hunting grounds northward to Sun River. Between 1700 and 1750, they were driven back by pedestrian Blackfoot warriors armed with fire weapons.[1]:316 Finally, they were forced out of the bison range and west of the divide along with the Kutenai-Tunaxe.[1]:318

JOHN SWANTON : It is said that there was a distinct band of Salish Indians on a river near Helena, another band near Butte, another somewhere east of Butte, and another somewhere in the Big Hole Valley; and there are traditions of still others. History.- According to Teit (1930) the Salish once extended farther to the east, and there were related tribes in that region which he calls Sematuse and Tunahe. As Turney-High (1937) has pointed out, however, the Tunahe were evidently a Eutenai (Ktunaxa) division; and the Sematuse, if not mythical, seem to have been an alien people in possession of this country before the Salish entered it. Teit states that these Salish were driven westward out of the Plains by the Blackfoot, particularly after that tribe obtained guns. Turney-High, on the other hand, regards the Salish as rather late intruders into the Plains from the west. However, the pressure of tribes westward by their neighbors to the east as soon as the latter obtained guns is such a common story that it hardly seems probable that the Salish could have escaped its effects. Just how far the Salish retired westward may be a matter of argument, nor does it affect the theory of an earlier eastward migration if such a movement can be substantiated on other grounds. Salish relations with the Whites were always friendly and they were successfully missionized by Roman Catholics under the lead of the famous Father De Smet. By the treaty of July 16, 1855, they ceded all of their lands in Montana and Idaho except a reserve south of Flathead Lake and a second tract in Bitter Root Valley which was to be made into a reserve for them if it were considered advisable. It was, however, not 80 considered, and acting upon an Act of Congress of June 5, 1872, the Salish werr removed to the former reservation, where they still live.