Accommodations

Their permanent houses were communal structures, sometimes circular, but more often oblong, about 20 feet (6.1 m) in width and 60 to 90 feet (18 to 27 m) in length, with a framework of poles covered by rush mats. In the interior, the floor was dug below the ground level, and earth banked up around the sides for insulation. An open space in the centre of the roof, allowed for the escape of smoke. On the inside were ranged fires along the centre at a distance of 10 to 12 feet (3.0 to 3.7 m) apart, each fire serving two families on opposite sides of the house, the family sections being sometimes separated by mat curtains. One house might shelter more than one hundred persons. Lewis and Clark mention one large enough to accommodate nearly fifty families. On temporary expeditions, they raised buffalo-skin tipis or brush shelters.

They also used sweat-houses and menstrual lodges. The permanent sweat-house was a shallow subterranean excavation, roofed with poles and earth and bedded with grass. The young and unmarried men slept here during the winter season. They occasionally performed sweat ceremonies by steam produced by pouring water upon hot stones placed in the centre.

There were also temporary sweat-houses, used in turn by both sexes. It had a framework of willow rods, covered with blankets, and heated stones were brought inside from fires. The menstrual lodge was constructed for the seclusion of women during the menstrual period, and for a short period before and after childbirth. It was a subterranean structure, considerably larger than the sweat-house, and entered by means of a ladder from above. The occupants cooked their meals alone and were not allowed to touch any articles used by outsiders, because of beliefs about the power of blood.

Furniture consisted chiefly of bed platforms. The women made varieties of baskets and bags woven of rushes or grass, and used wooden mortars for pounding roots. They used no pottery. They made spoons of horn from deer or bison. The woman had a digging stick for gathering roots, which they were given in a rite of adulthood. The women also processed and tanned animal skins, sewing and decorating them for clothing. The women wore a fez-shaped basket hat.

The men conducted hunting and fishing, and were armed with a bow and arrows, lance (stone or silver strung to willow branch), shield, and fishing equipment. A protective skin helmet was fashioned for warriors.

Food

Sahaptins, although semi-sedentary, were traditionally hunter-gatherers. The women gathered and processed many wild roots and berries, sometimes combining them with cooked meats and drying the mixture. Aside from fish and game, chiefly salmon and deer, their principal foods were the roots of the camas (Camassia quamash) and kouse (Lomatium cous). The camas roots were roasted in pits. Kouse was ground in mortars and molded into cakes for future use. Women were primarily responsible for the gathering and preparing of these root crops.

Religion

Marriage occurred at about the age of fourteen. The ceremony was accompanied by communal feasting and giving of presents. Polygamy was general, but kinship prohibition was enforced. They had a patriarchal kinship system, with inheritance in the male line. "The standard of morality, both before and after marriage seems to have been conspicuously high" (Spinden).

Interment was in the ground, and the personal belongings of the deceased were deposited with the body. The dwelling was torn down or removed to another spot. The new house was ceremonially purified and the ghost exorcised. The end of the official mourning period was marked with a funeral feast. Sickness and death, especially of children, were frequently ascribed to the work of ghosts.

The religion was animistic, with a marked absence of elaborate myth or ritual. The principal religious event in the life of the boy or girl was the dream vigil. After solitary fasting for several days, the child was encouraged to have a vision of the spirit animal that was to be his or her tutelary through life. Dreams were the great source of spiritual instruction, and children were taught how to interpret and understand them. The principal ceremonial was the dance to the tutelary spirit, next to which in importance was the scalp dance.

Trading posts were first established in the upper Columbia region. Catholic Canadian and Iroquois employees of the Hudson's Bay Company passed on some ideas about Christianity to the Nez Percés. By 1820 both they and the Flathead had voluntarily adopted many of the Catholic forms. Of the Nez Percé people, European-American missionaries said: "They seemed to realize the paucity of their religious traditions and from the first eagerly seconded the efforts of the missionaries to instruct them in the Christian faith."

The Flathead Indians appealed for missionaries. A Presbyterian mission was established in 1837 among the Nez Percés at Lapwai, near the present Lewiston, Idaho, by Reverend Henry H. Spalding. Two years later, he set up a printing press and published some small pamphlets in the native language. Regular Catholic work in the same region began with the advent of Fathers François Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers along the Columbia in 1838). Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, assigned from St. Louis, Missouri, and other Jesuits operated in the Flathead country beginning in 1840.

The establishment of the Oregon Trail through the country of the Nez Percé and allied tribes resulted in the passage of many more European Americans and introduction of an epidemic disease. Frantic because of the many deaths they suffered, the Cayuse held Dr. Whitman of the Presbyterian mission as responsible. They killed the minister, his wife and eleven others.

When the Catholic Bishop Brouillet arrived, who had intended to meet with Whitman about purchase of the mission property, he was allowed to bury the dead. He warned Spaulding so that he could leave the area and reach safety. Because of the troubles, all the Presbyterian missions in the Columbia region were discontinued. Missionary work resumed in later years, and many of the Nez Percé became Presbyterian.

The Catholic work in the tribe was given in charge of the Jesuits, aided by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, and centering at St. Joseph's mission, Slickpoo, Idaho. For fifty years it was conducted by Joseph Cataldo, S.J., who gave attention also to the neighbouring tribes. The Catholic Indians were reported in the early 20th century at over 500.