The story of a monster in Flathead Lake originates in a
Kutenai traditional legend. According to the story, long ago, the first native tribe in the area lived on an island in the middle of the lake. One winter while crossing the frozen lake to move camp, two girls saw antlers approximately two feet in length protruding through the frozen ice. Thinking the antlers belonged to some animal, the girls decided to chop them off and take them. They used sharp-edged rocks to cut through the ice when the antlers suddenly started shaking, the ice around them split open, and the head of a monster appeared through the ice shaking its giant antlers. The girls used their special powers to transform into a ball and a buckskin target to escape the monster, but half of the tribe drowned in the lake, which is said to be the reason why there are so few Kutenai people. The narrative holds that the Kutenai never strayed far from the lakeshore after that, and white settlers later reported occasionally seeing the monster. ==Local stories==