The Nimi'ipuu

What did the Nez Perce people eat before contact with white men ?

The Nez Perce people didn't just concentrate all their time on food gathering, hunting or food preparation.  The question was "what kind of food did the Nez Perce people eat", and it so happens we travel with the seasons.  I will describe the food gathering, hunting and preparing by going through each season and what a Nez Perce family (or band) would have gathered at that time.

Within the deep canyons of the traditional Nimi'ipuu land, the people relied on the rivers, mountains and prairies for sustenance.  They practiced a seasonal subsistence cycle, living with the seasons, not by the month.  In early spring, the women traveled to the lower valleys to dig root crops.  The men traveled to the Snake and Columbia rivers to intercept the early salmon runs.  The men still hunted, but much less during the salmon runs. In mid-summer all the people of the village moved to higher mountainous areas setting up temporary camps to gather later root crops, fish the streams, and do more hunting of the big game.  By late fall the people settled back into their traditional villages along the Snake, Clearwater, and Salmon rivers.  Salmon and other fish, game, dried roots and berries provided winter foods for storage.  However, hunting parties would travel to the hills and river bottoms where the deer and elk wintered.

The basic roots gathered for winter storage included camas bulb (kehmmes), bitterroot (thlee-tahn), khouse (qawas), wild carrot (tsa-weetkh), wild potato (keh-keet), and other root crops.  Fruit collected included service berries, gooseberries, hawthorn berries, thorn berries, huckleberries, currants, elderberries, chokecherries, blackberries, raspberries, and wild strawberries.  Other food gathered includes pine nuts, sunflower seeds, and black moss.

Large game animals that were hunted include deer, elk, moose, bear (black, brown, and grizzly), mountain sheep and goats.  After the introduction of the horse, the Nimi'ipuu men traveled to the Montana Plains to hunt bison and antelope with the Flathead (Sa-likh) people.  Even after bison was introduced into the Nimi'ipuu diet, deer and elk meat were still important foods for the winter storage.  Small game was hunted when needed, include rabbit, squirrel, badgers, and marmot.  Birds  such as ducks, geese, ruffed grouse, and sage hens were also hunted.  

Today deer, elk, and salmon are still important foods for the Nimi'ipuu , but they are no longer our only foods.  We also frequent restaurants and eat modern foods ( TV dinners, microwave dishes, canned foods...)