Sahaptin

The Sahaptin were a number of Native American tribes who spoke dialects of the Sahaptin language. The Sahaptin tribes inhabited territory along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Sahaptin-speaking peoples included the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Tenino, and Yakama.

Territory

The prominent Sahaptin people formerly held a considerable territory in western Idaho and adjacent portions of Oregon and Washington, including the lower Snake River, with its tributaries the Salmon, Clearwater, and Grand Ronde rivers, from about 45° latitude down nearly to the entrance of the Palouse, and from the Blue Mountains of Oregon on the west to the main divide of the Bitterroot Mountains on the east.

Heritage

They are of the Shahaptian linguistic stock, to which belong also the Palouse, Umatilla, Tenino, Yakama and others farther to the west, with whom they maintained close friendly relations, while frequently at variance with the Salishan tribes on their northern border — the Flatheads, Coeur d'Alene and Spokane — and in chronic warfare with the Blackfeet, Crows and Shoshoni on the east and south.

Sahaptin language

Sahaptin (also Shahaptin), Sħáptənəxw, is a Plateau Penutian language of the Sahaptian branch spoken in a section of the northwestern plateau along the Columbia River and its tributaries in southern Washington, northern Oregon, and southwestern Idaho, in the United States.

The Yakama tribal Cultural Resources program has been promoting the use of the traditional name of the language, Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit, instead of Sahaptin which means "stranger in the land."

Dialects

The Sahaptin language into four languages, since it forms a dialect cluster :