Native Heritage

In September 1809 — more than two centuries before the first chairlift — the first European trading post in Idaho rose on the Hope Peninsula. Finan McDonald, working for explorer and fur trader David Thompson of the North West Company, built Kullyspell House on the northeast shore of Lake Pend Oreille, near the mouth of the Clark Fork.

Long before Sandpoint had a name, Lake Pend Oreille had people. The Kalispel — called Pend d'Oreille by French fur traders, roughly "hangs from ear," for the large shell earrings they wore — made the lake and its rivers their home for centuries.

The Kalispel are an Interior Salish people, believed to have migrated south from British Columbia. They lived in tipis in summer and lodges in winter, both built from woven cattail "tule mats." They made clothing from rabbit pelts and deer hides, embellished with dyes, beads, and porcupine quills, and fashioned tools from flint.