Nimiipuu Country
1The Nez Perce call themselves Nimiipuu, "the people." Their homeland lies where today's Idaho, Oregon and Washington meet. There the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers have cut deep canyons between high plateaus and mountain valleys. Nez Perce bands moved with the seasons. In winter, they lived in villages in the sheltered canyon bottoms, where snow was lighter. In spring and summer, they moved up to fish for salmon, dig camas roots in the meadows and graze large herds of horses on upland grass, as in the high Wallowa Valley. Some bands also crossed the Bitterroot Mountains on the Lolo Trail to hunt bison on the plains of Montana.
2In 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition came west over the Lolo Trail, cold and starving, and Nez Perce families fed the men and kept their horses through the winter. In the 1840s, the Oregon Trail carried thousands of settlers across the Blue Mountains, just west of Nez Perce country, toward the farmland of the Willamette Valley. By the 1870s, homesteaders and railroads were filling much of the Great Plains, and ranchers looked farther west for open grass.
3In an 1855 treaty, the Nez Perce kept a large reservation that included the Wallowa Valley. In 1860, gold was found on that reservation, and thousands of miners rushed in; the town of Lewiston grew up where the Snake and Clearwater rivers meet. In 1863, U.S. officials made a new treaty that shrank the reservation to about one-tenth of its size. Leaders whose bands lived inside the new line signed it. Bands whose homes lay outside, including the Wallowa band of Old Joseph and later his son, Joseph, refused. During the 1870s, settlers drove cattle into the Wallowa's meadows.
4In 1877, the army ordered the bands that had not signed to move onto the smaller reservation within 30 days. Joseph's band crossed the Snake River while it ran high with melting snow and lost many animals. Before the bands reached the reservation, some young warriors killed several settlers, and war broke out. Several hundred Nez Perce men, women and children fled east over the Lolo Trail and across Montana, covering more than 1,100 miles as army columns pursued them. In October 1877, in the Bear Paw Mountains, Joseph and most of those still with him surrendered; some escaped to Canada.
5The army sent the prisoners to Kansas and then to Indian Territory, where many died of disease. In 1885, the survivors were allowed to return to the Northwest, some to Lapwai and others, including Joseph, to the Colville Reservation in Washington. Joseph was never allowed to live in the Wallowa again, and he died at Colville in 1904. Today the Nez Perce Tribe governs its reservation from Lapwai, Idaho, and descendants of Joseph's band live on the Colville Reservation.