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The Nez Perce American Indian people inhabited a large portion of the Pacific Northwest that included portions of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

While they were known as strategic warriors, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition found them to be kind and helpful, furnishing them with fresh horses and food when they first encountered them, and again on their return.

The Nez Perce hunted deer, elk, moose, mountain sheep, goats, and bears. They also gathered roots, such as camas bulbs, bitterroot, wild carrots, and potatoes, as well as gooseberries, blackberries, elderberries, strawberries, pine nuts, and sunflower seeds. They also fished for salmon, trout, and other fish.

Nez Perce men wore fringed buckskin shirts, leggings, moccasins, and sometimes gloves and featured bonnets. Women wore long buckskin dresses, cornhusk hats, and moccasins, often decorating their clothing with elk teeth, beads, and dyes.

The Nez Perce lived in communal lodges of varying sizes that were A-framed and mat-covered, some housing as many as thirty families.

When the Nez Perce acquired horses in the 18th century, they were able to travel to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains to hunt bison and trade with the Plains peoples. Always fierce warriors, they became more so on horseback. They are believed to have been the first American Indian tribe to conduct a selective breeding program, developing the Appaloosa breed.

Other than occasional contacts with French-Canadian traders, the men from the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first white people to have extended contact with the Nez Perce. Seventy years later, relationships had deteriorated considerably, however.

In the summer of 1877, the Nez Perce were driven from their homelands in the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon. A group of Nez Perce, together with a small band of Palouse warriors, refused to surrender to reservation life. After a series of armed engagements in June, the Nez Perce (men, women, and children opted to seek a new home of their own choosing in Canada. Led by Chief Joseph (Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it), their movement was intended to be peaceful, but the group, found themselves pursued by the U.S. Cavalry.

Early on, a six-person peace party of Nez Perce, carrying a white flag, was fired upon, igniting what is known as the Flight of the Nez Perce, a 1,170-mile journey in which the Nez Perce would encounter the U.S. Army on several occasions, including the Clearwater Battlefield in northeastern Idaho, and the Big Hole Battlefield in western Montana.

Stinging from the 1876 Battle of Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn), which the Nez Perce did not participate in, the U.S. government felt the need to punish the Nez Perce in order to discourage any other American Indian tribes who might consider rebellion against the authority of the United States. Thus, the Nez Perce were pursued by more than 2,000 U.S. Cavalrymen

Within Yellowstone Park, the Nez Perce crossed the Yellowstone River at what is now called Nez Perce Ford, traveling through Pelican Valley, Hoodoo Basin, and the Absaroka Mountains, and were headed north, about forty miles from the Canadian border when they were encountered by the U.S. Army in the foothills of the Bear's Paw Mountains of northern Montana, where they were forced to surrender.

Some of the Nez Perce were able to cross into Canada, but Chief Joseph and the bulk of the group accepted resettlement in various reservations throughout the Northwest. The journey covered more than 1,170 miles across four states and several mountain ranges. Approximately 250 Nez Perce warriors held off the pursuing U.S. Cavalry in eighteen battles, skirmishes, and engagements. Before it was over, hundreds of U.S. soldiers and Nez Perce (including women and children) had been killed.

In surrendering, Chief Joseph sent the following message: "Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

The current tribal land of the Nez Perce is a 1,195-acre reservation in north-central Idaho, largely in the Camas Prairie region south of the Clearwater River. Nearly 90% of the people living on the reservation are white. The Nez Perce Homeland owns 320 acres in northeast Oregon.

 

 

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