Arlee was named after the Salish leader Arlee. In October 1873, he moved a small group of his people from the Bitterroot Valley, a "conditional reservation" according to the 1855 Hellgate Treaty, to the Jocko Agency, later known as the Flathead Indian Agency, located a few miles south of the town of Arlee. This forced move stemmed from the efforts of a congressional delegation led by future president James Garfield to negotiate Salish removal from the Bitterroot Valley. The Indians of Arlee have a celebration that happens to fall on the fourth of July. The earliest evidence of an attempt to hold a Fourth of July Powwow was in 1891. In the 1890s, however, traditional Indian dances were illegal under Bureau of Indian Affairs rules, and the Indian police and Flathead Indian Agent Peter Ronan used the threat of U.S. Army intervention to break up the dance. The Bureau of Indian Affairs found it difficult to argue that it should be illegal to celebrate the Fourth of July, though for a time government attempts to suppress traditional dances forced the tribes to hold them secretly. Because of this persecution, we cannot, at this time, establish definitively when the first Fourth of July Powwow was held.
http://www.arleepowwow.com