The Wallowa RecordEnterprise, Oregon · Updated 19 October 2026
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A living record · Tribal nation

Nez Perce Tribe

A sovereign nation whose history and continuing life are essential to understanding this region.

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Wallowa Lake and the mountains, seen from the county park at the north end. Regional landscape context for this record.
Wallowa country

Wallowa Lake and the mountains, seen from the county park at the north end. Regional landscape context for this record.

Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives · 16 May 2012 · CC BY 4.0 · Image & source ↗

The Tribe’s own history describes Nimiipuu life across parts of present-day Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, with travel for fishing, hunting, and trade reaching farther.

Treaties, displacement, and continuing cultural practices belong to the same account. A present-day county boundary cannot contain that geography, and the atlas does not treat tribal history as a closed chapter.

Nez Perce Tribe ↗

Also known as: Nimiipuu · Nimíipuu

Follow the connections

Read the landscape alongside tribal historyWallowa Lake
Nez Perce Tribe ↗
Connected from organization recordChief Joseph Days RodeoConnected from faith community recordWallowa United Methodist Church
From the photograph collection

The wider landscape.

All photographs
A road, fence, and open prairie on the Zumwalt.View photograph
Zumwalt Prairie

A road across the prairie

Rick Swart, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife2015-11-15
Glacier Peak reflected in Glacier Lake, in the Eagle Cap Wilderness.View photograph
Eagle Cap Wilderness

Glacier Peak, reflected

Matthew Tharp / U.S. Forest Service2012-08-11
The Wallowa Wild and Scenic River, photographed in May 2017 by the Bureau of Land Management.View photograph
Wallowa River

Wallowa Wild and Scenic River (34998394195).jpg

Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington2017-05-25
Original recordings · Connected to this page

Watch this part of the story.

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Video
History & memory

The 1866-67 Survey of Wallowa County, Oregon and Nez Perce Resistance

From Wallowa History Center · Date unconfirmed

Original accounts

Voices connected to this place

In the organization’s words
“Today, many traditional ways remain part of our tribal culture.”
Nez Perce TribePublication date not stated
From the recordings

People of the Salmon

Jane Fritz, with Nez Perce cultural leaders and other contributors2025
The larger story

Read the connections.

Wallowa Lake and the mountains, seen from the county park at the north end.
Chapter 01 Land & water

Fish, farms, and the ridge above the lake

Salmon swimming home past eight dams met too little water in the last few miles. What people did about that, about the dam at the lake’s outlet, and about the ridge above Wallowa Lake, comes down to a few signed pieces of paper.

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The Wallowa Mountains reflected in the lake, photographed from the north-end county park. This landscape photograph does not depict a particular cultural gathering.
Chapter 02 Indigenous homelands

The valley they kept coming home to

The Nez Perce people never stopped knowing this valley as home. Photographs of families coming back to fish in the 1930s, the Tribe’s biologists on the Lostine River today, and a plan that looks a hundred years ahead tell the story of return in pieces. The people it belongs to should tell the rest.

Read the story