Dammed in Region Six: The Nez Perce Tribe, Agricultural Development, and the Inequality of Scale

This essay quantifies the rise and development of agriculture on the Nez Perce reservation and the surrounding watershed. Included in this study is an analysis of Nez Perce pre-contact economy, society, and environment and how the Nez Perces continue to operate from a collective and communal past. Social power and cultural scale provide a framework for understanding power struggles and the evolution of Euroamerican agricultural economy and society in Nez Perce territory. A twentieth-century analysis of Nez Perce Tribal Land Services GIS data and U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics demonstrates the loss of Indian-owned land and the reduction of Indian farm operators on the Nez Perce reservation and throughout the lower Snake River watershed (Region Six). Therefore, the impetus driving this research is to trace the history of the Nez Perces and agriculture in Region Six and to empirically demonstrate how the power-elite hypothesis operates at both a regional and local level. (Contains 2 Tables, 5 figures, and 53 endnotes.)