Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes

192 NEZ PERCE
east to the Grand River in the west. Their palisaded villages—at
least 28 of them—of bark-covered longhouses,
typically located on high, defensible grounds, were
mostly in present-day southern Ontario but also in present-day
southeastern Michigan, northeastern Ohio, and
western New York. The Wenro (Wenrohronon) to their
east were possibly a subgroup. The name Wenro is translated
as “the people of the place of floating scum” in reference
to an oil spring at present-day Cuba, New York,
which the Indians used for healing surface wounds and
stomach ailments.
The French fur trader Étienne Brulé, exploring for
Samuel de Champlain, the first known non-Indian to
visit Lake Erie in 1615, is thought to have encountered
the Neutral just before meeting up with the ERIE living
to the south of the lake. From that time on, the Neutral
became part of the extensive trade network between the
French and area tribes, with the Huron acting as middlemen.
In exchange for European trade goods, the Neutral
and the TIONONTATI provided agricultural products—
especially corn, tobacco, and hemp—which the Huron
traded to nonagricultural tribes in exchange for furs and
fish. They took the furs to the French. In the late 1630s,
intertribal contact or perhaps contact with French missionaries,
such as Joseph de La Roche Daillon of the Recollect
order, who stayed with them in 1636, led to a
smallpox epidemic, a disease introduced to the region by
Europeans, killing as many as half of some tribes. That
same year, the Neutral ceased their protection of the
Wenro in order to avoid trouble with the Iroquois;
Wenro tribal members settled among the Neutral and
Huron.
Invasions by the SENECA and other Iroquois into
Huron territory in 1648–49 put an end to the trade
enterprise. After the Huron defeat, the Neutral tried to
avoid conflict with the Iroquois by taking Huron
refugees captive, thus ending their neutrality, but the
Iroquois, in their ambitions to control more lands for the
fur trade, conquered the Neutral in 1650–51, killing or
absorbing many of them. Some Neutral managed to
escape, fleeing west. Some tribal members were reported
living in Michigan near Detroit in 1653, the last
recorded mention of any Neutral.
The name of one of the Neutral subdivisions, Ongniaahra,
pronounced nie-AG-uh-ruh by non-Indians,
came to be applied to the Niagara River, which forms the
boundary between New York and Canada, and the
famous Niagara Falls.
NEZ PERCE
“I will fight no more forever.” These are among the most
famous words spoken by an Indian. In 1877, at the time
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce spoke them, many Indians
of the West had come to the conclusion that continuing
war with the much more numerous Euroamericans was
hopeless and that their Indian way of life would never be
the same.
Nez Perce is a French-derived name, given to the tribe
by fur traders, meaning “pierced noses.” It can be pronounced
the English way, nes PURSE, or the French
way, nay per-SAY. Some tribal members did wear nose
pendants, but not the majority. The Nez Perce Native
name is Nimiipu or Nee-mee-poo, meaning “the people.”
To Salishan-speaking peoples living nearby they were the
Sahaptian (or Shahaptin). Lewis and Clark referred to
them as Chopunnish. The name Sahaptin or Sahaptian
has come to identify the Nez Perce language, which is a
subfamily of the Penutian phylum.
The ancestral homeland of the Nez Perce is territory
now comprising central Idaho, southeastern Washington
State, and northeastern Oregon. The heart of their
homeland was in the vicinity of the Snake and Salmon
Rivers. These rivers merge with the Columbia River,
which drains the high plateau country between the
Rocky Mountains to the east and the Cascade Mountains
to the west toward the Pacific Ocean. As a result,
Indians of this region are classified as part of the Plateau
Culture Area.
Lifeways
The Nez Perce and other PLATEAU INDIANS did not farm
but wandered the dry, rugged high country in search of
a variety of foods, moving their village sites with the
changing seasons. Important foods were fish, especially
salmon, which swam upriver from the ocean to spawn
and lay eggs; mammals, especially elk, deer, mountain
sheep, and rabbits; and wild plant foods, especially
camas (lily) bulb and roots, and berries.
The Nez Perce were inventive in their fishing gear,
using a number of techniques. They stood on the bank
or on platforms they built and thrust at fish with long-