NEZ PERC

Sahaptian-speaking North American Indian people centring on the lower Snake River and such tributaries as the Salmon and Clearwater rivers in what is now central Idaho and adjacent areas of Oregon and Washington. They were the largest, most powerful, and best known of the Sahaptin (q.v.) and were called by various names by other peoples; the French name, Nez Perc (Pierced Nose), referred to the wearing of nose pendants, though the fashion does not seem to have been widespread among them. Their culture was primarily that of the Plateau culture area and more specifically that of the Sahaptin tribes. As one of the easternmost groups, however, they were influenced by the Plains Indians living just east of the Rockies. Typical of the Plateau, their domestic life traditionally centred on small villages located on streams having abundant salmon, which, dried, formed their main source of food. They also sought a variety of game, berries, and roots. Their dwellings were communal lodges, A-framed and mat-covered, varying in size but sometimes housing as many as 30 families. After acquiring horses early in the 18th century, however, Nez Perc life began to change dramatically, at least among some groups. They were able to mount expeditions for bison hunts and to trade with peoples beyond the Rockies. Always somewhat warlike, they now became more so, adopting many war honours, war dances, and horse tactics imitative of the custom of the Plains; the Plains tepee was also used. The Nez Perc built up one of the largest horse herds on the continent and were almost unique among American Indians in learning selective breeding. As this enrichment and expansionism led to more tribal or intervillage consultation, they tended to dominate negotiations with other tribes. The arrival of whites gradually changed their life. Just six years after the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark visited the Nez Perc in 1805, fur traders and trappers began penetrating the area, followed later by missionaries. By the 1840s white settlers were moving through on the Oregon Trail, leading in 1855 to a treaty with the United States that created a large Nez Perc reservation, encompassing most of their traditional land. The discovery of gold on the Salmon and Clearwater rivers in 1860, however, and the influx of thousands of miners and then settlers, led U.S. commissioners in 1863 to force renegotiation of the treaty, fraudulently reducing the size of the reservation by three-fourths; subsequent invasions of homesteaders reduced the area even more. Many Nez Perc, perhaps a majority, had never accepted either the old treaty or the new, and hostile actions and raids by both whites and Indians finally evolved into the Nez Perc War of 1877. For five months a small band of 250 Nez Perc warriors, under the leadership of Chief Joseph, held off a U.S. force of 5,000 troops led by General O.O. Howard, who tracked them through Idaho, Yellowstone Park, and Montana before they surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles on October 5. In the campaign, Chief Joseph lost 239 persons, including women and children, and the United States lost 266. The tribe was then assigned to malarial country in Oklahoma rather than being returned to the Northwest as promised. (See also Joseph, Chief.) In the late 20th century some 1,500 Nez Perc still remained on the Nez Perc Reservation in Idaho, but most had left to join the general U.S. population, largely as small landowners or labourers.