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Bitter Root Salish Education
- Boys and girls learned as they played.
- They also learned by helping their parents with the daily chores and work.
- Children were taught history by their grandparents and great-grandparents as stories were passed on to them.
- They learned how to care for and respect the older people because they all lived together as a family unit.
SCHOOLING OF CHILDREN
- Indian children did not attend school in a classroom. They learned lessons throughout the day by being involved in the daily routines of the tribal village.
- The best hunters and warriors were chosen to teach the young boys. By age 5, boys were good riders and contests were held to see how much they had learned. Boys who did best were picked to ride with the scouts and to run errands for warriors in battle. Among the skills they learned were how to:
- Both boys and girls learned:
- make arrows
- shoot the bow and arrow
- hunt
- ride horses without a saddle
- steal horses from enemies
- At age 7, the boys took responsibility to care for the family horses.
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- Girls were taught by their mothers, grandmothers and the other women in the camp. These lessons gave them the needed skills to fulfill their role within the tribe from youth through adulthood. They learned to:
- make and break camp including the set up and take down of the tipis
- start a fire and prepare meals
- skin and tan hides and sew them into useful items such as clothing
- prepare and dry meat for storage
- recognize plants and what they were used for
- ride horses without a saddle
- To swim before they could walk
- How to ride horses
- To hunt small animals with a bow and arrow by age 5
- The tribal dances and their significance
Last Update: 8/24/2016
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Stevensville, MT 59870
