The heart of the territory of the Lower Kalispel is the Pend Oreille Lake in northern Idaho. The Kalispel used canoes to ply the waters of Lake Pend Oreille and the many rivers and streams that bisected the nearby land. With hooks and lines, men fished from canoes. The Kalispel also used family- or village-owned weirs to trap fish in some of their territory’s smaller streams. Kalispel people fished at Kettle Falls and, to a lesser extent, at the Little Spokane River where they would join their allies, the Spokane.
The Kalispel Reservation, a tiny reserve of only 4,600 acres, was established by Executive Order by Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This small reservation had a population of 246 in 1989. The Kalispel have been affected by the dams on the upper Columbia and its tributaries including Grand Coulee on the mainstem and Albeni Falls Dam near Pend Oreille Lake.
