HAVRE — Surrounded by fields of knee-high wheat and rolling prairie, Havre proudly shows off the icons of an All-American town: city bands and manicured parks, high school mascots and flags on porches.

Residents wave to each other on the street and call the mayor by his first name. It's the kind of place where strangers in bars can linger only a few minutes before regulars send over a drink.

Unless you're an American Indian.

Sitting on a bar stool during happy hour at the Golden Spike, Jerry Hayes, who is white, describes recently inviting a group of American Indian college students he teaches out for pizza and a beer.

‘‘I said, ‘Why don't we go to 15 West?' They said, ‘They don't like Indians there.' So I said, ‘How about the Golden Spike?' They said that was worse,'' said Hayes, who teaches biology on nearby Rocky Boy's Reservation.

It soon became clear that ‘‘they didn't want to come to town because of the way they would be treated,'' Hayes said.

Those tensions are not new. Towns near Montana's seven reservations have long had reputations for strained relations between Indians and whites.

But a series of events in Havre — a newspaper article, the distribution of racially charged leaflets and the intervention of a Justice Department mediator — have combined to transform this town tucked between two reservations into an emblem of racial strife.

‘‘This racist thing has gotten everyone's attention,'' said Bob Rice, the Republican mayor of the town of 10,000 who admits to ‘‘losing some sleep'' over it.

He was at a public event recently when bikers from California approached him and asked if he was ‘‘that racist.''

‘‘ ‘No,' I said, ‘I am the mayor of a town accused of being racist,' '' Rice said he told them. ‘‘But it took me aback.''

Havre now finds itself in that unenviable position of places like Benton Harbor, Mich., and Lewiston, Maine — towns where a racial spark came to define a larger struggle to cope with the nation's racial divide.

In Benton Harbor, the death of 28-year-old Terrance Shurn during a police chase in 2003 produced angry protests and the focus of national civil-rights leaders. In Lewiston, population 36,000, efforts by the city to stop a wave of Somali refugees resettling there in 2002 brought network-TV trucks and reporters.

Among the damage-control duties of the Havre mayor these days is juggling media interviews, and in almost all of them Rice begins by admitting the town has problems.

‘‘We are not unlike any town near a reservation. We've got people who are bigots, and (American Indians) have got people who are bigots, too,'' he said. ‘‘I'm not saying it's a perfect world.''

The attitudes in Havre were spotlighted this spring when the University of Montana School of Journalism's Native News Project sent a pair of student journalists to the town as part of an investigation of race relations in the state. They spent several days reporting, said Carol Van Valkenburg, chairwoman of the university's print journalism department, and talked to dozens of people.

The image the students left with — which was published as inserts in the state's three largest newspapers — was damning.

It recounts a scene from a Friday night at the Golden Spike as a white customer mocks four Indians until they leave the bar. It quotes the bar's owner describing how to tell a ‘‘good Indian'' from a bad one. At the town's upscale department store, a clerk says she scrutinizes American Indians more carefully when looking for shoplifters.

Not long after, leaflets appeared at dozens of homes in town. This time the vitriol flowed the other way. ‘‘(Expletive) whites. (Expletive) America. Get the (expletive) off our land,'' said the leaflet, which was signed ‘‘Native Pride'' and included a drawing of an upside-down, burning American flag.

The eruption has brought the intervention of the Justice Department's Community Relations Service. Established under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the office's mediators specialize in diffusing racial strife.

Grace Sage, a Denver-based mediator, has made two trips to Havre, the most recent in early August. She will return in October to present her findings, said the agency's deputy director, Stephen Thom, and outline possible remedies, from formal mediation to community hearings.

But the tensions in Havre are bitter and longstanding, locals and experts say. They have historical undertones and in many cases have been passed from one generation to the next.

As the afternoon light fades and a crowd pours onto the grounds of the Hill County fair, Havre presents a placid picture of small-town America.

Groups of American Indians and whites stroll the neon-lit midway. They slurp sodas and munch on buffalo burgers, a local specialty.

But anger lingers close to the surface.

Sitting on a picnic table under a red, white and blue awning, Bryan Ruhkamp, thickset in a worn T-shirt and cap, complains that the negative image of American Indians stems from their own behavior.

‘‘The government just hands out so much to these reservations,'' said Ruhkamp, 42, who works in an agricultural-supply store. ‘‘I try and make ends meet with my paycheck. But you go to the grocery store and here's this cart loaded with meat and everything else and they're loading it into a brand-new vehicle.''

Four tables away, Clara Bauer and Audrey Flansburg, both American Indians, talk about the difficulties Indians have renting from white landlords in town. They recall being called ‘‘squaw'' and other racial slurs by strangers.

Whites ‘‘don't experience it like Indians do. Maybe that's why they don't see a problem,'' said Flansburg, 25, who works at a dry-cleaners in town.

Many Indians here can tick off the names of stores where they say they have been shadowed by clerks. They complain they often face insults and stereotyping in schools, restaurants and stores.