Nez Perce

The Nez Perce (Nimiipuu, we the people) are a Sahaptin-speaking people of the Columbia Plateau whose country, occupied for at least eleven thousand years, lies on the southeastern plateau of the Pacific Northwest. For much of that span they dominated plateau trade and war, networking from the Oregon and Washington shores to the Montana high plains and the northern Great Basin. Horses acquired in the 18th century made them breeders of the Appaloosa, the only horses generally available then, and mounted hunters who ranged to the bison plains. French trappers misnamed them pierced noses, a fashion only the Chinook wore. Economically and culturally ascendant at first contact, they faced American pressure after mid-century: the 1855 and 1863 treaties shrank their reservation, and the 1877 flight of Chief Joseph toward Canada ended in surrender forty miles short. The Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho keeps the language, the Appaloosa herds and the saga of the flight alive.