Culturally, the Nez Perce people identify themselves as
Niimíipuu the Real People; however, it is also quite common for tribal members to use their ancestral band designation as an identity marker. In the historic period, the name
Nez Percé, a French term meaning pierced nose, was applied to the
Niimíipuu by French fur traders and through later historic usage the name has come to identify both the
Niimíipuu language and its people. Today, the majority of the Nez Perce people (a population estimated at 3,000) reside on the Nez Perce Reservation in central Idaho, with several smaller communities of Nez Perce in Oregon and Washington. The Nez Perce language, like many indigenous languages of North America, is endangered and is spoken by sixty to seventy fluent elders, the majority of whom speak the Upper River dialect. Only a handful of elders still speak the Lower River dialect.
The religious traditions of the Niimíipuu, the Nez Perce people, trace their origin to the mythic emergence of the Netíitelwit, the first human beings to inhabit the earth. The emergence of the Netíitelwit brought to an end the existence of powerful mythic beings and signaled the beginning of a world inhabited by ordinary humans.
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