The Osage

Warriors of the Woods and Prairies

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Osage Indians roamed a vast domain in the
heart of North America (Ancestral Lands Map). Although the Osage were a proud and
powerful tribe, they could not withstand the pressure of European civilization. Soon after
French fur trappers established contact with the Osages in the 1670s, their way of life
began to change.

Children of the Middle Waters

A spiritual people, the Osage Indians were excellent hunters and fierce warriors. Their
religious beliefs were based on Wah-kon-tah, the great mystery spirit or power. In one
creation legend, the Osages believed that the People of the Sky (Tzi-sho) met with the
People of the Earth (Hun-Kah) to form one tribe, the Children of the Middle Waters (Nee
Oh-kah-shkahn). Living in semipermanent villages primarily along the Osage River, the
Osage Indians roamed the land between three great rivers, the Missouri to the north,
the Mississippi to the east, and the Arkansas to the south. Their western boundary
stretched into the windswept plains where they hunted buffalo.

Osage Lifestyle

Before Europeans came to the Americas, Osages obtained food by hunting, gathering,
and farming. Osages hunted wild game such as bison, elk and deer. There were two
bison hunts a year, one in the summer and one in the fall. The goal of the summer hunt
was to obtain meat and fat. The purpose of the fall hunt was to obtain food, but also to
get the thick winter coats of the bison for making robes, moccasins, leggings,
breechcloths, and dresses. Although only the men hunted, the women did the work of
butchering and preparing the meat, and tanning the hides.

Additional information is available at: www.osagenation-nsn.gov/k-12-lessons/k12-

osage-food-agriculture-past

Descriptions of the Osages

George Catlin

The famous Indian artist, George Catlin, captured several Osage Indians on canvas at
Fort Gibson in 1834. He stated: “The Osages have been formerly, and until quite
recently, a powerful and warlike tribe: carrying all their arms fearlessly through to all
these realms; and ready to cope with foes of any kind that they were liable to meet. At
present, the case is quite different; they have been repeatedly moved and jostled along,
…” He noted that despite their reduction in numbers caused by every tribal move, war
and smallpox, the Osages waged war on the Pawnee and Comanche. Catlin believed
the Osages “ to be the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins;
there being few indeed of the men at their full growth, who are less than six feet in
stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.”

Louis Cortambert

In 1836, Louis Cortambert, a French writer, observed that the Osage men “ carefully pull
the hairs from their faces, even their eyebrows, and shave their heads, leaving on the
top a tuft of hair, which terminates in back in a pigtail.”

Victor Tixier

In 1840, a young Frenchman named Victor Tixier described the Osages: “The men are
tall and perfectly proportioned. They have at the same time all the physical qualities
which denote skill and strength combined with graceful movements.”The Osages loved
to decorate themselves, often suspending beads and bones from their ears and
tattooing their bodies, Tixler observed: “Their ears, slit by knives, grow to be enormous,
and they hang low under the weight of the ornaments with which they are laden.”

 
Osage Relocation

The ancestral home of the Osage was part of the immense Louisiana Purchase that the
United States acquired in 1803. Missouri achieved statehood in 1821, and soon after
over 5,000 Osage were removed west to the 'Indian Territory'. Other Native American
tribes from the eastern U.S. were also relocated west of the Missouri and Arkansas
boundaries. Federal troops were stationed in this “Permanent Indian Territory” to keep
the peace. After Kansas opened for settlement in 1854, many Native American Tribes
were again relocated. Like other tribes, their ancestral way of life was not compatible
with the white man’s way of life. By 1872, encroachment from American settlers forced
the Osage Tribe to relinquish most of their remaining ancestral homelands and relocate
to their present reservation in Oklahoma (Ceded Lands Map).

Osage
The Osage lived in several villages located in southwest Missouri when Europeans began
to explore and settle the lands west of the Mississippi River late in the seventeenth
century. During this period, Osage hunters made frequent forays into northwest
Arkansas, but, more importantly, their role as key players in economic and political
affairs before the modern era touched the lives of nearly everyone living in the region.

The Osage language is one of the Dhegiha dialects of the Siouan language family, closely
related to languages spoken by members of the Quapaw, Omaha, Kansa (or Kaw), and
Ponca tribes. Archaeologists have not identified the pre-Columbian ancestors of the
historic Osage, but oral traditions and the mutually intelligible character of Dhegihan
dialects suggest a movement of all these groups into the region from the Mississippi or
Ohio river valleys, perhaps as late as the sixteenth century. Osage share many cultural
features with their linguistic relatives, including the tracing of one’s lineage through the
father’s line, the organization of kindred into two main divisions of clans known as the
Earth People and the Sky People, and the devotion of community life to principles
bequeathed to humans by a mysterious creative force called Wakondah.

Osage attribute their origins to events associated with Wakondah’s separation of air,
earth, and water from the primordial Middle Waters. Thus the universe consists of the
earth (Hunka) and sky (Tsi-zho), with earth further separated into land (Hunka) and
water (Wa-sha-she). Humans and other living species inhabit a narrow stratum between
earth and sky, called hó-e-ga (the trap ensnaring all of life). This plane of existence also
consisted of two interconnected realms: a visible world in which things take physical
form, and an invisible world of creative powers and spiritual forces. Nineteenth-century
anthropologists documented twenty-four clans divided among the Earth and Sky People
divisions.
Osage villages came to be organized in relation to principles established in this story.
The leaders of the Sky People and the Earth People built their houses on opposite sides
of a road representing the path of the sun as it traverses the sky from sunrise to sunset.
Clan groups arranged their houses on alternate sides of the path, extending out from
their leaders’ residences. Multiple families, related through the male line, occupied
rectangular longhouses built of pole frameworks covered with bark sheets. Villages also
contained small, circular sweat houses and large meeting houses. Crop fields
surrounded the permanent villages, beyond which extended game-filled forests and
prairies.

Osage organized the annual cycle of activities in these early villages around a calendar of
seasonal agricultural and hunting activities. They cleared agricultural fields in the
spring, and the women of each household tended their own crops of corn, beans, squash,
and pumpkins. Throughout the year, women also collected a variety of wild plant foods,
including nuts, fruits, and edible roots, some of which they parched over fires or dried
and stored for winter use. Meanwhile, men hunted deer, antelope, bear, and smaller
game. After the crops were established, many families left their permanent villages and
moved west onto the plains of Kansas and Nebraska for a summer buffalo hunt.
Members of different clans occupied the same positions relative to one another in
temporary hunting camps as in the permanent villages. Buffalo hunting was carefully
organized under the command of experienced leaders, and each person—men, women,
and children—was assigned a specific role in an overall strategy executed with military
precision. This hunt, and another one carried out in the late fall, provided abundant
meat, hides, and other resources to support the village economy and to provide extra
commodities for trade. In between these two hunts, people returned to the main villages
to harvest and store their crops. Family groups then spent winters in camps distributed
throughout southwest Missouri and northern Arkansas, along rivers with plentiful
supplies of game and firewood. As winter gave way to spring, families moved back to the
main villages to begin the cycle again.

Village life was full of activity. Women cared for the food stores, cooked meals, and
manufactured clothing and most of the tools, utensils, and furnishings used in and
around the houses. When men were not out hunting, they maintained their supplies of
bows and arrows and other equipment and crafted a variety of ritual objects. Adults and
elders also looked after the children, patiently instructing them in the Osage way. This
they undertook with considerable devotion because children were identified as sacred
bearers of the Osage future. Social activities also provided daily opportunities for village
residents to discuss and evaluate events from the recent and the more distant past, in
order to plan ongoing and future activities.

Osage performed daily ceremonies—large and small, public and private—in connection
with nearly every activity, because all activities triggered the dynamic relationship
between the visible and invisible realms of existence. Hunting, harvesting crops,
collecting plant foods, waging war against enemies, consecrating alliances with friends,
healing illnesses, and even manufacturing the necessities of life brought eternal life
forces into play, thereby necessitating the performance of sacred rituals. Osage also
performed ceremonies in connection with important life events, including birth,
adoption, achievement of adulthood, marriage, and death.

Many ceremonies were public events performed by the clans. Each clan had specific
ceremonial responsibilities that could only be completed with assistance from a partner
clan belonging to the opposite clan division. A group of elders known as the Little Old
Men maintained rules and customs followed in ritual and in most other aspects of
community life. The Little Old Men were careful observers of nature and assiduous
collectors of information acquired by other community members. Attention was paid to
heavenly objects moving across the daytime and nighttime skies in recurring patterns;
to the seasonal cycle of weather patterns, plant growth, and animal behavior; to the
changing patterns of landforms and water bodies; to the cycles of human growth and
development; and, especially, to the interconnectedness of each of these patterns.
Thoughtful analysis of this information yielded a philosophy based on the orderly nature
of the universe that defined the role of people as responsible participants in the ongoing
cycle of life.

European explorers and settlers entered the area the Osage inhabited toward the end of
the seventeenth century. In a replay of the primordial alliance between the Sky People
and the Earth People, French and Spanish colonists and their Osage hosts discovered
mutual benefits in alliance and cooperation. The Osage provided information about
lands and inhabitants west of the Mississippi River and were a ready source for food,
hides, and other commodities required for the survival of the first European
settlements. In return, the Osage received access to horses and manufactured trade
goods, including firearms and ammunition, and a wide range of other items including
tools, clothing, and household furnishings. Their position astride the Mississippi River
Valley and the Great Plains conferred on Osage villages a great advantage as colonial
trade systems developed, enabling them to control the movement of Indian and
European commodities between the two regions. The Osage consequently built a strong
trade empire, capable of withstanding the challenges of competitors and greatly
extending the geographical area under their control.

The mutually dependent relationships that sustained the Osage and their Euro-
American allies ended with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. government was
interested not in sustaining economic and political partnerships with Indian nations but
rather removed Indians from lands both east and west of the Mississippi River now
opened for white American settlement. This policy thrust the Osage into conflicts with
neighboring tribes.

Forced to cede their indigenous homelands via treaties signed in 1808, 1818, and 1825,
the Osage relocated to the Three Forks area of eastern Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, Cherokee settling in increasing numbers along the Arkansas
River between present-day Morrilton (Conway County) and Fort Smith
(Sebastian County) began to encroach on lands north of the river the Osage still
claimed. This led to a number of violent conflicts between the tribes, in response to
which Major William Bradford and a company of U.S. Army soldiers arrived at Belle
Point along the Arkansas River in December 1817 to begin construction of Fort Smith.
This show of force prompted Osage and Cherokee delegations to meet the following
summer in St. Louis, Missouri, with Missouri territorial governor William Clark, who
served also as the territorial supervisor of Indian Affairs. Clark negotiated a truce, part
of which involved the Osage selling a tract of land extending north of the Arkansas River
from Frog Bayou to the Verdigris River, known as “Lovely’s Purchase,” intended to
serve as a buffer between the tribes. Ultimately this truce failed, and Osage and
Cherokee violence continued for several years until another treaty was signed, this time
at Fort Smith, in August 1822.

In the years that followed, the extermination of buffalo herds coupled with a greatly
reduced land base on their Oklahoma reservation plunged the Osage into an
impoverished state. The federal government provided only limited assistance as part of a
larger program aimed at transitioning Indian families to a rural American farming
lifestyle. Many elements of Osage culture eroded, including their clan organization and
associated social and religious institutions. In their place, Osage accepted other
institutions that enabled them to endure an era of pronounced cultural oppression. In
1884, the Osage adopted the E-Lon-schka dance from the Kansa Indians, which,
through celebration of the achievement of adulthood by a family’s oldest son, helped
preserve the traditional patrilineal social organization. In 1898, the Osage adopted the
“Big Moon” peyote religion introduced by the Caddo-Delaware prophet John
“Moonhead” Wilson. Combining elements of Christian and traditional Native American
religious beliefs, peyote religion helped preserve ancient beliefs in the ties connecting
human communities with eternal spiritual powers.

Discovery of oil reserves beneath their Oklahoma lands in the early twentieth century
brought unprecedented wealth to the Osage, who, for a time, became popularly known
as the “richest people in the world.” While such wealth enabled many to partake in
material excesses—such as owning expensive cars and lavish residences—enjoyed by
other well-to-do people of the era, the most far-reaching impact was to propel ever-
growing numbers of Osage into wider participation in mainstream American culture.
Even so, the Osage identity is preserved today through participation in language and
cultural preservation activities, museum programs, the E-Lon-schka dances, and other
community ceremonies. Established in 1938, the Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska,
Oklahoma, is the oldest tribally owned museum in the United States.

OSAGE.
The Osage are an American Indian tribe whose ancestral domain included much of Oklahoma. A legend
indicates the Osage and the other Dhegiha Sioux (Kaw, Omaha, Ponca, and Quapaw) originated at Indian
Knoll near the mouth of the Green River in Kentucky. However, in paleolithic times they ranged from the fork
of the Ohio River to the Mississippi and beyond. Osage genesis myths and archaeological evidence tend to
support the legend.

The Osage Bear Clan version of creation has the four winds gathering the flood waters of the earth and
draining the water in great rivers. This place was called Ni-U-Kon-Ska or the Middle Waters. Today this is the
junction of the Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Wabash, Arkansas, and Illinois drainage systems.
From this the Osage took their real name, Ni-U-Kon-Ska or People of the Middle Waters.
By A.D. 1200 both the Osage and the invading Iroquois left the "dark and bloody" ground of Kentucky. Bits
and pieces of evidence indicate there were probably three routes of Osage immigration into the trans-
Mississippi West. A fragmentary cluster of small groups followed the White River to Arkansas, Missouri, and
eastern Oklahoma. The largest core cluster of bands took the Missouri-Osage River route to west central
Missouri. A group of six sizable bands followed their Iowa, Otoe, and Missouria cousins to the Oneota River in
Iowa. After a short stay the six bands of Osage went south to the mouth of the Osage River. After a decade
they went upstream to the bend of the Missouri River opposite the mouth of the Grand River. In 1777 three of
the Osage bands joined the main group on the Osage River. During the move to reach their historic locations
all of the bands kept close contact with their clans and gentile system, which acted as the bond holding the
Osage together as a people.

In the long war to stop the Iroquois' movement from the Northeast to the Old Southwest that is now Kentucky,
the Osage had formed an alliance with the Illinois. Two of the Illinois clans had merged with the Osage on the
Oneota. Both this merger and the long Kentucky war had revolutionized Osage government and their military
organization. Thus, it was natural for them to launch into a territorial war for control of the prairie-plains. The
Caddo speakers who were native to the area were basically a peace-loving people, as the Osage had once
been. Like the Osage, they were forced to become warlike in the face of the Osage invasion. However, by
1750 the Osage had established control over half or more of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

About 1750 the Osage took the westernmost French outpost from the French. This was Ferdinandina on the
Arkansas River, now under the waters of the Kaw Reservoir. By 1790 they were raiding near Santa Fe.
According to one account they explored as far west as the Palos Verdes Peninsula on the Pacific coast of
California before 1800. Spanish governmental communications from New Mexico and Texas clearly show a
well-established Osage presence in Oklahoma by 1750. With the transfer of the French claim to Louisiana to
Spain in 1763 the Spanish found they could not dominate or control the Osage.

One of the largest Osage bands in Oklahoma before 1800 was the Black Dog band. The Black Dog Trail from
Baxter Springs, Kansas, to beyond the 100th Meridian was the first improved road in both Oklahoma and
Kansas. With ramped ford approaches and cleared of all trees, brush, and large rocks, it could accommodate
eight horsemen riding abreast. In 1803 Black Dog moved to Ho-tsa-Tun-ka (Big Cedar), now Claremore,
Oklahoma. Ka-se-gra (Tracks Far Away) who was usually called Big Track, had already established the core
Oklahoma bands at Three Forks some years earlier. Claremore or Town Maker moved this group to near
present Claremore at Claremore Mound. This village was called the Place of the Oaks. A third large band of
Osages in Oklahoma before 1800 were the Grosse Cotes, or Big Hills, near Nowata. Possibly over a
thousand or more other Osages resided in Oklahoma before 1800 in small villages. Osage village and
campsites were favored places for later settlements; the sites were cleared and lay within the network of
Osage trails that became the highways of today.

To end Osage-Cherokee hostilities the U.S. government forced all Osage bands to remove from Arkansas
and Oklahoma in 1839. These bands were relocated on the Verdigris River in the Kansas part of Indian
Territory where the Missouri Osage had agreed to settle in 1825. Thus, removal back to Oklahoma from
Kansas in 1871 was the third displacement within forty-six years. The previous removals were bad, but the
1871 expulsion was worse in terms of lives lost and hardships. This move almost destroyed the Osage
people. Old tombstones indicate the greatest toll was among young mothers and infants. Yet the old people
who made the move never spoke of the deaths and sorrows.

The Osage economy relied upon hunting and gathering, but they had a sizable agriculture and an extensive
trading system. Grazing became economically important in the 1890s. Income mainly from grazing leases
caused the commissioner of Indian affairs to call the Osages "the richest people on earth." Petroleum income
did not become a monetary factor until after Osage allotment in 1906–1907. By the 1920s the commissioner's
comment had come closer to the truth.

Osage grass-leasing regulations made an easy transfer from grass to oil leasing. "Black Gold" became a
national term when an Osage-bred, -trained, and -owned race horse by that name won the Kentucky Derby in
1924. Allotment brought a division of the Osage Trust Estate. This financial estate came from treaty
settlements, land sales from the Kansas Reservation, and accumulated interest on money held in trust by the
United States. This was distributed to each living Osage and amounted to a little more than ten thousand
dollars each. Income from grass and mineral leases were distributed quarterly on a per capita basis to those
who had been living in 1907. In addition, each headright holder, that is, one entitled to an equal share of the
tribe's mineral interests, was allotted just over 640 acres in Osage County, Oklahoma. Unlike other
reservation allotments in Oklahoma, there were no surplus lands after Osage allotment. The Osage had
purchased their reservation and owned it in fee simple. Osage County never came under the Homestead Act
of 1862.

Osage prosperity attracted money-hungry outsiders. The so-called Reign of Terror, in which a number of
Osage were murdered for their petroleum wealth, ended only when the newly formed Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) won a conviction in federal courts. The Osage Murders was the FBI's first homicide case.
The economic depression of the 1930s made the Osage once again poor, but happier. Since then,
stereotypes and exaggerated stories about rich Indians and books about the murders have held the center
stage in Osage-related literature. As a result, little has been said about the majority of the Osage people, who
were busy giving their children the best education money could buy, who worked hard to produce beef for
American tables, who firmly backed their state and nation in both war and peace. Notable Osages include
John Joseph Mathews, Gen. Clarence Tinker, Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, and Bacon Rind.

The Osage allotment is full of firsts. Separation of mineral rights from surface rights by federal law first
occurred in the Osage oil fields. Most Oklahoma history texts mention that the Constitutional Convention of
1907 had delegates from Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory but neglect to note that the Osage Tribe
also had two convention delegates. Although they were not U.S. citizens during World War I, Osage men
accepted the draft and volunteered for service in the highest percentage of any ethnic group of U.S. citizens.
This was repeated during World War II.

A new current of vitality enlivens the fifteen thousand Osage people since the turn of the twenty-first century.
More than ever before, Osages hold graduate degrees. Language and craft classes are held throughout the
year at several locations, including the Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska and the White Hair Memorial, an
Oklahoma Historical Society facility near Ralston. Most of the old Osages have died (four of the original 2,229
Osage allottees survived in October 2003), which means that a new generation now leads the people. A new
tribal life began with the new generations.

[The primary content for this article is an edited rendition of the Osage Indians as told
in William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, first published in 1883.]
Of the Indian nations living north of the Arkansas River and west of the Mississippi River,
the Osage were best known to the French during the early years of their occupancy
of Louisiana. Claiming lands extending east even to the banks of the Mississippi River,
and maintaining friendly intercourse with the Illinois tribe, who dwelt on the opposite
shore, the Osage were brought in frequent contact with the French adventurers of
Kaskaskia, Natchez and New Orleans. Rumors of mines of silver and lead to the west of
the Mississippi River brought, at a very early day, many explorers into that region, and
the discovery of the “Mine of the Marameg” by Sieur de Lichens in 1719, followed by the
arrival of a large company of the King’s miners, under the superintendence of M.
Renandiere, to construct furnaces and develop the mine, gave a fresh impetus to the
prevailing spirit of extravagant expectation in regard to the mineral resources of the
western portion of Louisiana.
At this time, the Osage had villages on the Missouri and Osage Rivers, the latter not very
distant from the famous mine. Their country was thoroughly explored by parties in
search of silver and lead, and to a comparatively late day, the extensive “diggings’ on
the old Osage Trail near the Le Mine River bore the marks of the spade and pick of the
early French explorers.
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It was during the year that silver was discovered on the Marameg, and when the mining
mania was at fever heat, that Du Tissenet was sent by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de
Bienville, Governor of Louisiana, to explore the western part of the province, and, in the
course of his investigations, visited and crossed from southeast to northwest to the
present State of Kansas. Du Tissenet visited the village of the Osage Indians, five miles
from the Osage River, at eighty leagues above its mouth, and describes the inhabitants
as stout, well made and great warriors. He also mentions the lead mines that were
found in their country.
Sixty-four Osage Indians formed a part of the escort of Etienne de Veniard, Sieur de
Bourgmont on his Pacific Mission to the Padoucas in 1724, but from that time there is
no record of any organized French expedition visiting the region. The destruction of Fort
Orleans, of which De Bourgmont was Commandant, and the massacre of the entire
garrison, effectually put a stop, for a long time, to any further attempts to extend French
exploration toward the west, and, except the fact that the Osage, Kanza,
and Pawnee were engaged in continual war among themselves and with the more
western tribes, little is known of them until the explorations of Lewis and Clark and
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike furnished more definite knowledge of their locations, homes,
and habits of life.

Manuel Lisa founded the Missouri Fur Trading Company

As early as 1796, a division was effected in the Osage Nation. The Chaneers, or
Arkansa band, under the leadership of Chief Cashesegra, or Clermont, removed to the
Verdigris River and formed several villages along its banks, that of Clermont being
about 60 miles up the river. The Arkansa band was principally composed of the young
men of the two tribes, and its formation was effected through the influence of Pierre
Choteau, a St. Louis fur trader, who had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly of the trade with
the Osage by the way of the river of the same name. Having been superseded as the
agent by Manuel de Lisa, also an enterprising St. Louis trader, Choteau determined to
plant a colony of young and vigorous Osage on one of the tributaries of the Arkansas
River, and endeavor to draw the trade of his rival to the more southern river, in which
financial scheme he was quite successful, the new settlement soon quite
overshadowing the older.
About 1803, the Little Osage separated from the Grand Osage, and made a village on
the Missouri River, near where Fort Clark, afterward called Fort Osage, was built. They,
however, were soon attacked by the warlike tribes farther to the north and east, and
forced to seek refuge and protection in the vicinity of the more numerous band of the
Grand Osage, who dwelt near the headwaters of the Osage River, about fifteen miles
east of the present Kansas line.
One of the objectives of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike’s expedition of 1806 and 1807 through
the interior of Louisiana was to deliver at the village of Grand Osage several Osage
captives, lately prisoners in the hands of the  Pottawatomie. Another was “the
accomplishment of a permanent peace between the Osage and Kanza and a third was
to endeavor to make peace between the Comanche and Osage.

Zebulon M. Pike, early 1800s

In the accomplishment of these objectives, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike had the opportunity
to carefully observe the customs and noted the peculiarities of the Osage at that period.
At the time of his arrival at the village of the Grand Osage, the Little Osage had already
marched a war party against the Kanza, and the Grand Osage, a party against the
Arkansa band. White Hair, chief of the Grand Osage, was unable to prevent it, although
the expedition was contrary to his wishes. Schemers at St. Louis were constantly
inciting trouble between the tribes, and turning their quarrels to their own advantage.
The treaty of peace, which Lieutenant Pike was instrumental in bringing about, was
faithfully observed by both Osage and Kanza.
At the time of this visit, the Grand Osage village on the Osage River numbered, by
actual census — men, 502; boys, 341; women and girls, 851; lodges, 214. Cheveau
Blanc, or White Hair, was the chief. The Little Osage numbered 824, and Clermont’s
band, 1,500. The government was nominally vested in a small number of chiefs, but
their power was limited, all measures which they proposed being submitted to a council
of warriors and decided by a majority vote.

The tribe was divided into two classes; warriors and hunters composing the first, cooks
and doctors the second. The doctors were also priests or magicians, possessing great
influence, being supposed to have knowledge of deep mysteries and to be wonderfully
skilled in the use of medicines. The cooks were also of much importance, the class
including all the warriors who, from age or other cause, were unable to join the war
parties.

When received into an Osage village, a guest immediately presented himself at the
lodge of the chief, where he was expected to eat his first meal, after which he was
invited to a general feast, given by the most important warriors and great men. The
cooks stood outside the lodge and gave the invitation by crying, in a loud voice: “Come
and eat; such a one gives a feast.” The feasts were repeated until all the more important
members of the tribe had an opportunity to display their hospitality.

Indian Lodge
The Osage lodges were usually constructed by driving into the ground upright posts,
about twenty feet high, with crotched tops as a rest for the ridge pole, over which were
bent small poles, fastened to stakes about four feet high.

The ends of the lodge were formed by broad slabs, and the whole covered with rush
matting. There was generally a door on each side, the fire being in the center, with a
hole in the roof for the escape of the smoke. A raised platform, covered with skins, at
one end, served to display the household treasures of the host, and as a place of honor
for the guests. The lodges varied in length from thirty-six to one hundred feet.

Physically, the Osage were the finest specimens of Western Indians — tall, erect and
dignified. The average height of the men was over six feet.

On November 10, 1808, a few years subsequent to the acquisition of Louisiana by the
United States, a treaty was made at Fort Clark, then recently built, on the Missouri
River, between the United States and the Osage Nation.

Article 1 of the treaty reads as follows:

“The United States, being anxious to promote peace, friendship and intercourse with the
Osage tribes, to afford them every assistance in their power, and to protect them from
the insults and injuries of other tribes of Indians situated near the settlements of the
white people, have thought proper to build a fort on the right bank of the Missouri, a few
miles above the fire prairie, and do agree to garrison the same with as many regular
troops as the President of United States may, from time to time, deem necessary for the
protection of all orderly, friendly and well disposed Indians of the Great and Little Osage
Nations who reside at this place, and who do strictly conform to and pursue the
counsels or admonitions of the President of the United States through his subordinate
officers.”

Fort Clark on the Missouri River, Missouri

At Fort Clark the United States agreed “to establish and permanently to continue, at all
seasons of the year, a well-assorted store of goods, “for the purpose of bartering with
the Osage, on moderate terms, for their peltries and furs; also “to furnish at this place,
for the use of the Osage Nations, a blacksmith, and tools to mend their arms and
utensils of husbandry, and engage to build them a horse-mill, or water-mill; also to
furnish them with plows, and to build for the great chief of the Great Osage, and for the
great chief of the Little Osage, a strong blockhouse in each of their towns, which are to
be established near this fort.”
There was also, by the terms of the treaty, to be delivered annually to the Great Osage
Nation, merchandise to the value of $1,000, and to the Little Osage Nation merchandise
to the value of $500, and in addition, there was to be paid, at or before the signature of
the treaty, to the Great Osage Nation, the sum of $800, and to the Little Osage Nation
the sum of $400.

Article 6 of treaty reads as follows:

“And in consideration of the advantages which we derive from the stipulations contained
in the foregoing article, we, the chiefs and warriors of the Great and Little Osage, for
ourselves and our nation respectively, covenant and agree with the United States, that
the boundary line between our nations and the United States shall be as follows, to wit:
Beginning at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River, five miles above Fire Prairie, and running
thence a due south course to the river Arkansas and down the same to the Mississippi,
hereby ceding and relinquishing forever to the United States all the lands which lie east
of the said line, and north of the southwardly bank of the said river Arkansas and all
lands situated northwardly of the Missouri River. And we do further cede and relinquish
to the United States forever, a tract of two leagues square, to embrace Fort Clark, and
to be laid off in such manner as the President of United States shall think proper.”
 Pierre Choteau
According to his report, in 1804, President Thomas Jefferson promised the Osage chiefs,
then on a visit to Washington, to establish a trading post for the benefit of their nation,
this promise being repeated in 1806. The fort was built in October 1808, and the
following month, November 8, 1808, Pierre Chouteau, United States Agent for the
Osage, arrived at Fort Clark, prepared to execute the treaty which Governor Lewis,
of Missouri had deputized him to offer the nation. The chiefs and warriors of the Great
and Little Osage assembled on the 10th, and, upon learning that the trading post, which
was supposed by them to have been established as a favor and mark of friendship,
was, in fact, a part of the price paid for their lands, and that, unless they accepted the
provisions of the treaty, they virtually forfeited the protection of the United States, they
reluctantly signed it, protesting that “they had no choice; they must either sign the treaty,
or be declared the enemies of the United States.”
This treaty was not ratified by the Senate until 1810, and the Indians did not receive the
first annuity until September 1811, three years after the treaty was made. The
blockhouse which was promised for the defense of the Osage towns on the Osage
River was useful only to the traders, being detached from the agency, and no
competent person having charge. A mill was built and a blacksmith sent to the town of
the Great Osage.

By the terms of the treaty of 1808, the Osage title to all land in Missouri was
extinguished, excepting a strip twenty-four miles wide lying eastward from the western
boundary of the State, and extending from the Missouri River south into the Territory
of Arkansas. The eastern line extended a few miles east of Fort Clark, which was
situated on a bluff on the Missouri River, near the present site of the town of Sibley. The
principal village of the Osage was due south from the fort, on the Osage River, and it was
this that Captain Zebulon Pike visited and described in 1806.
George Sibley, former commandant at Fort Clark, in his report, commended the Osage
for their uniform and constant faithfulness to the French and Americans. They offered
their services to him when in command of Fort Clark, when British emissaries attempted
to engage them in their service and declared their determination “never to desert their
American father as long as he was faithful to them.” He says that “of all
the Missouri Indians, they were the least accessible to British influence.”
 Osage Indians by George Catlin
At about the time of this report, a portion of the Osage Nation moved from the old
location on the forks of the Osage River and settled on the bank of the Neosho River in
the present county of Labette.
In 1817, the Cherokee attacked the Osage village on the Verdigris River during the
absence of Clermont and his warriors, fired the town, destroyed the crops, and took
prisoners, which included 50-60 old men, women and children who were left there. This
assault was followed by mutual acts of recrimination between the hostile tribes,
eventuating in war, which lasted several years, the Delaware joining the Cherokee as
allies. A treaty of peace between the contending nations was concluded at Belle Point in
1822.
The Osage Nation, in 1818, as pay for property taken from citizens of the United States
“by war parties and other thoughtless men of their several bands,” and being destitute of
funds to do that justice to the citizens of the United States which is calculated to
promote a friendly intercourse, have agreed, and do hereby cede to the United States,
and forever quit claim to the tract of country included within the following bounds, to wit:

“Beginning at the Arkansas River, at where the present Osage boundary line strikes the
river at Frog Bayou; then up the Arkansas River and Verdigris to the falls of Verdigris
River; thence eastwardly to the said Osage boundary line at a point twenty leagues north
from the Arkansas River; and with that line to the place of beginning.”
In consideration of the above-described cession, the United States agreed to pay their
own citizens the losses they had sustained at the hands of the Osage, provided the
same did not exceed the sum of $4,000.

Three years after this treaty was concluded, the following report of their location and
condition was made by their agent at Fort Osage. The report was dated October 1,
1820:

“The Great Osage of the Osage River lived in one village on the Osage River, 78 miles
due south of Fort Osage. They hunt over a very great extent of country, comprising the
Osage, Gasconade and Neosho Rivers, and their numerous branches. They also hunt on
the heads of the St. Francis and White Rivers, and on the Arkansas River. I rate them at
about one thousand two hundred souls, three hundred and fifty of whom are warriors
and hunters, fifty or sixty superannuated, and the rest are women and children.
The Great Osage of the Neosho River live about 130-140 miles southwest of Fort
Osage in one village on the Neosho River. They hunt pretty much in common with the
tribe of the Osage River, from which they separated six or eight years ago. This village
contains about 400 people, of whom about 100 are warriors and hunters, some 10-15
aged persons, and the rest are women and children.

The Little Osage had three villages on the Neosho River about 120-140 miles southwest
of this place. This tribe, comprising all three villages, and comprehending about 20
families of Missouri Indians that are intermarried with them are estimated at about 1000
people, about 300 of whom are hunters and warriors, 20-30 aged, and the rest are
women and children. They hunt pretty much in common with the other tribes of the
Osage frequently on the head-waters of the Kansas River, some of the branches of which
interlock with those of the Neosho River.
Of the Chaneers; or, Arkansa tribes of Osage, they do not come to the area to trade.
They are equal in number to about half of all the other Osage. They hunt chiefly in the
and White Rivers.”
 George C. Sibley
George Sibley, the Indian agent, stated it was impossible to obtain an exact number of
the tribes, as they were continually moving from one village to another, and
intermarrying. As to their mode of subsistence, he wrote:
“The main dependence of each and every tribe is hunting. They also raise small crops
of corn, beans, and pumpkins. These they cultivate entirely with the hoe, in the simplest
manner. Their crops are usually planted in April before they leave their villages for the
summer hunt in May. About the first week in August, they return to their villages to
gather their crops which were left un-hoed and unfenced all season.

Each family, if lucky, can save from ten to twenty bags of corn and beans, of a bushel
and a half each, besides a quantity of dried pumpkins. On this, they feast, with the dried
meat saved in summer, until  September, when they set out on the fall hunt, from which
they return about Christmas. From that time, till some time in February or March, as the
season happens to be mild or severe, they stay pretty much in their villages, making
only short hunting excursions occasionally. In February or March, the spring hunt
commences, which they pursue until planting time when they again return to their
village.

This is the circle of an Osage life, here and there indented with war and trading
expeditions, and thus it has been with very little variation for years. The game is
diminishing in the country which these tribes inhabit but has not yet become scarce. Its
gradual diminution seems to have had no other effect on the Indians than to make them
more expert and industrious hunters, and better warriors.”

On June 2, 1825, the Osage Nation relinquished its title to all the lands it still claimed
in Missouri and Arkansas, and in addition, ceded to the United States “all lands lying
west of Missouri and Arkansas, north and west of the Red River, south of the Kansas
River, and east of a line to be drawn from the head sources of the Kansas River
southwardly through the Rock Saline.”
Article 2 of the treaty contained the following reservation:

 “Within the limits of the country above ceded and relinquished, there shall be reserved
to and for the Great and Little Osage tribes or nation aforesaid, so long as they may
choose to occupy the same, the following described tract of land: “Beginning at a point
due east of White Hair’s village and twenty-five miles west of the western boundary line
of the State of Missouri, fronting on a north and south line, so as to leave ten miles north
and forty miles south of the point of said beginning, and extending west, with the width
of fifty miles, to the western boundary of the lands hereby ceded and relinquished by
said tribes or nations.”

Osage Village
In addition to the principal reservation, various half-breed and other small reservations
were located on the Neosho, Marais des Cygnes and Mine Rivers, including the
sections whereon the principal improvements had been made, and those on which the
missionary establishments were located.

The United States agreed to pay the Osage Nation, in consideration of the cession,
yearly annuities to the amount of $7,000 for twenty years; also to provide for them
stock, farming utensils, a person to teach them agriculture, and a blacksmith; to build for
each of the four principal chiefs a comfortable and commodious dwelling-house, and to
pay any debts which citizens of the United States, members of the Delaware nation, and
certain traders, held against them.
The trading interests among the Osage were principally in the hands of a few persons
who represented large and influential companies at St. Louis. Pierre Choteau, Manuel
De Lisa, Pierre Menard, Hugh Glen and other early Indian traders acquired an
ascendancy over this tribe and their affairs that proved detrimental, if not fatal, to the
efforts of the Protestant missionaries and teachers who sought to induce them to
forsake their wandering, savage life, and endeavor to procure a subsistence by the slow
and unexciting methods of agriculture. Those of the traders who desired to enrich
themselves by the barter in furs and peltries, of course, would desire to see the nation
continue to follow the chase and would discourage any intimation of improvement.

Osage traders by Charles Banks Wilson, courtesy of the artist

The impression was fostered that they were an uncommonly savage, warlike race, and
the advent of educators among them was undesired and discouraged. This, added to
their own indolence and apathy in regard to improvement, disheartened those who
made the earliest attempts for their advancement, and the early Protestant missions
were abandoned.

In the course of ten or twelve years, the Osage were reduced in numbers and had
become a most degraded, servile people — neglected by Government and imposed
upon by traders and agents. The teachers of agriculture stipulated for in the treaty of
1825 were unable to render them much service, and left the country. The blacksmiths
also departed. Their annuities, after a few years, were paid to them in articles of but little
real value; and, sinking from bad to worse, from poverty almost to starvation, they finally
eked out the scanty supplies by incursions into the neighboring white settlements of
Missouri. In 1837, these depredations became so serious that the frontier citizens of
Missouri called for the assistance of the State militia, and a force of 500 men was sent
to the border to quell the disturbances. The miserable condition of the Osage was
reported to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the fall of 1837, and an act was
passed, January 11, 1839, allowing them to take the amount of their next annuity in
articles of food, instead of money, making an appropriation to aid them in farming
operations; also providing them two millers and two blacksmith establishments.
In 1842, Fort Scott was established as a military post and Hiero T. Wilson being
appointed Post Sutler the succeeding year. This post became a trading resort for the
Osage and continued as such for many years. The Catholic missionary institutions
which were founded among them proved more successful than the early efforts of the
Presbyterians, and many of the Osage children were benefited by the various branches
of the Catholic Osage Mission. White Hair, the venerable chief of the Grand Osage,
became a convert to the faith and, after his death, his successor also was baptized into
the communion of the same church. The Indian Agency was removed from the Neosho
River to Quapaw country, but the Osage continued to live in their old villages, so great a
part of their time being spent in hunting or idly wandering from place to place.
During the first year of the Civil War, the Osage Agency was moved to Fort Scott. One
regiment of the Indian Brigade was composed of the Osage, and throughout the whole
struggle, the tribe was faithful allies of the Unionists.

On September 19, 1865, by the terms of the treaty made at Canville Trading Post, the
Great and Little Osage Indians sold to the United States the following defined country:

“Beginning at the southeast corner of their present reservation, and running thence
north, with the eastern boundary thereof, fifty miles, to the northeast corner; thence west
with the northern line, thirty miles; thence south fifty miles, to the southern boundary to
said reservation; and thence east with said boundary to the place of beginning; provided
that the western boundary of said land herein ceded shall not extend farther westward
than a line commencing at a point on the southern boundary of said Osage country, one
mile east of the place where the Verdigris River crosses the southern boundary of the
State of Kansas.”
For this tract of country, afterward known as the “Osage Ceded Lands,” the United
States was to pay $300,000, “which sum should be placed to the credit of the nation in
the Treasury of the United States, interest at 5 percent thereon, to paid to the tribe
semi-annually, in money or such articles or merchandise as the Secretary of Interior
may direct,” no pre-emption claim or homestead settlement to be allowed on the land so
ceded. After reimbursing the United States, the purchase money ($300,000), and
paying the expense of survey and sale, the residue of proceeds to be placed in the
United States Treasury to the credit of “Indian Civilization Fund.”

The Osage, by the same treaty, also ceded “a tract of land twenty miles in width from
north to south off the north side of the remainder of their present reservation, and
extending its entire length from east to west;” which land was to be held in trust for said
Indians, and to be surveyed and sold for their benefit, under the direction of the
Commissioner of the General Land Office, at a price not less than $1.25 per acre. This
cession was known as the “Osage Trust Lands.”

The remaining strip, thirty miles in width, and lying west of the “Ceded Lands,” was the
“Osage Diminished Reserve.” After the treaty of 1865, the tribe moved on to this
reservation, a part settling on Pumpkin Creek, in the Verdigris Valley, and several bands
at the junction of Fall River with the Verdigris. On February 14, 1877, the Osage, after
trying in vain to obtain the payments due from the United States under the terms of the
treaty of 1865, made a contract with Charles Ewing, an attorney at Washington, by the
terms of which, as approved by Honorable Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior, Ewing
was to obtain payment for all lands which had been sold or used contrary to the terms
specified in the treaty; to procure certain payments for the Clermont band of Osage; to
secure pensions to dependent families of Osage who were killed by Kansas militia in
1873, and patents for the lands owned by the Osage in the Indian Territory at the date of
the contract. June 16, 1880, a law was enacted, directing, in effect, that the Osage
should be paid an amount equivalent to the loss they had sustained by the non-
observance of the treaty. They were accordingly credited with $1,028,785.15, paid in
two settlements in August 1880 and June 1881.

Osage Warrior
At the time this contract was concluded in 1877, the tribe was divided into eight bands,
and numbered about 4,000 people. At Big Hill, the largest town was 100 lodges and
about 950 people. White Hair’s band was reduced to between 300-400 and the Little
Osage, to 700. After the tribe obtained the payment of the sum due to them by
Government, their condition was materially altered for the better. By 1882, they
numbered almost 2,000.
In 1907 the Osage, through the efforts of Principal Chief James Bigheart, negotiated to
maintain mineral rights to their new reservation lands, which was later found to have
great amounts of crude oil. They were unyielding and held up statehood
for Oklahoma before signing an Allotment Act.
Today, they are the only tribe since the early 20th Century to retain a federally
recognized reservation within the state of Oklahoma. They have nearly 10,000 enrolled
tribal members, with almost half of them living within the state of Oklahoma. The tribe is
headquartered in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and have jurisdiction in Osage County. They
issue their own vehicle tags, operate their own housing authority, and own several
businesses including a truck stop, a gas station, 19 smoke shops, and seven casinos.
The Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska is the oldest tribally-owned museum in the
country.

The Osage Indians

by George Sabo III

The Osage Indians lived along the Osage and Missouri rivers in what is now
western Missouri when French explorers first heard of them in 1673. A
seminomadic people with a lifeway based on hunting, foraging, and
gardening, the seasonal movements of the Osage brought them annually
into northwestern Arkansas
throughout the 18th century.

Three principal hunts, each organized

by a council of elders, were held
during the spring, summer, and fall.
The men hunted bison, deer, elk, bear,
and smaller game. The women
butchered the animals and dried or
smoked the meat and prepared the
hides. The women also gathered wild
plant foods and at the summer villages Osages hunting buffalo, by George
tended gardens of corn, beans, squash, Catlin.
and pumpkins. Surplus products,
including meat, hides, and oil, were traded to other Indians or to Europeans.
The Osages acquired guns and horses from Europeans during the eighteenth
century, which enabled them to extend their territory and control the
distribution of European goods to other tribes in the region.
Most men shaved their heads, leaving only a scalplock extending from the
forehead to the back of the neck. The pattern of a man's scalplock indicated
the clan he belonged to. Men wore deerskin loincloths, leggings, and
moccasins, and bearskin or buffalo robes when it was cold. Beaded ear
ornaments and armbands were worn, and warriors tattooed their chests and
arms.

Women kept their hair long and wore deerskin dresses, woven belts,
leggings, and moccasins. Clothing was perfumed with chewed columbine
seed and ceremonial garments were decorated with the furs of ermine and
puma. Earrings, pendants, and bracelets were worn, and women decorated
their bodies with tattoos.

Osage communities were organized into two divisions called the Sky People
and the Earth People. According to their traditions, Wakondah, the creative
force of the universe, sent the Sky People down to the surface of the earth
where they met the Earth People, whom they joined to form the Osage tribe.
Each division consisted of family groups related through the males, called
clans, that organized social events and performed rituals for special
occasions. Each clan had its own location in the village camping circle and
appointed representatives to village councils which advised the two village
leaders - one representing each tribal division.

Villages were laid out with houses on either side of a main road running
east and west. The two village leaders lived in large houses on opposite
sides of the main road near the center of the village. The Sky People clans
lived on the north side of the road, and the Earth people clans lived on the
south side. Council lodges for town meetings were also constructed in the
larger villages.

Osage houses were rectangular and

sheltered several families. Measuring
up to 100 feet long, they were
constructed of saplings driven into
the ground and bent over and tied at
the top. Horizontal saplings were
interwoven among the uprights, and
the framework was covered with
hides, bark sheets, or woven mats,
with smokeholes left open at the top.
Detail from "Osage Dreams," by Charles
Banks Wilson. Courtesy of the artist.
Most houses had an entrance at the
eastern end. A leader's house had
entrances at both ends.

Village life followed rules and customs established by a group of elders

known as the Little Old Men. To join the ranks of the Little Old men,
serious-minded individuals had to undergo training that began during
boyhood and lasted for many years. Little Old Men passed through seven
stages of learning, at each stage acquiring mastery of an increasingly
complex body of sacred knowledge.

Ceremonies were performed for important activities and events, including

hunting, war, peace, curing illnesses, marriages, and mourning the dead.
Many ceremonies required elaborate preparations and participants would
often wear special clothing and ornaments or paint elaborate designs on
their bodies. Each clan had specific ceremonial duties that in combination
served to sustain the wellbeing of the tribe.

Osage lands in Arkansas and Missouri were taken by the U.S. government
in 1808 and 1818, and in 1825 an Osage reservation was established in
southeastern Kansas. Today there are about 10,000 Osages listed on the
tribal roll, many of whom live in and around Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

The Osage

Preliminaries to 2 June 1804

On Friday, 1 June 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at

the mouth of the Osage River, a dozen days after leaving St.
Charles, Missouri.  Seeing the "best land he had ever seen," a
member of the Corps of Discovery wrote in his journal that "the
Osage nation of Indians live about two hundred miles up this
River" and "are of a large size and well proportioned, and a very
warlike people." 

Lewis and Clark had little to fear from the Osage, however,
because they were the most important fur-trading tribe in Missouri
for forty years prior to the Louisiana Purchase. When St. Louis was
founded in 1764, the Osage were the original "Gateway to the
West," using their talents and knowledge to make the fur trade
profitable and western exploration possible. 

The Osage leaders met Lewis and Clark long before the Expedition
began and gave valuable information about Missouri River tribes. 
When the Corps of Discovery passed by the Osage River, Lewis
and Clark did not meet with the Osage chiefs who were traveling
on an official visit to Washington, D.C.  President Thomas
Jefferson wanted to meet members of this valuable and helpful
tribe because he knew they were "the great nation South of the
Missouri."

The Osage called themselves Ni-U-Kon-Ska ("Children of the

Middle Waters"), but were known as "Wah Sha She" by most
whites.  They spoke a Dhegihan ("Ta-gee-han") Central-Sioux
language, along with the related, neighboring tribes of  Kansa,
Omaha, Ponca, and Quapaw.  Long before French explorers found
them in 1673, the Osage had moved onto the central prairie-plains
with those other tribes from an old homeland in the Ohio Valley.

In Missouri, the Osage were divided into two branches.  The "Big"
or Grand Osage built hilltop villages along the headwaters of the
Osage River near the Kansas-Missouri border. Their large and
well-protected capital was at Marais des Cygnes  ("Marsh of
Swans") near Pleasanton, KS.  The "Little" or Petit  bands preferred
to live along the banks of the Missouri River.  One of their village
sites can be seen today in Van Meter State Park near Miami, MO. 

In 1700 some 8,000 Osage lived in several permanent villages of

thatched longhouses.  Men and boys hunted a wide variety of
abundant animals – deer from the forests, beaver from the
streams, buffalo from the plains, and black bears from the Ozark
Mountains.  Women and girls tanned the furs and planted fields of
maize, beans, and squash (the "sacred triad" preferred by many
Indians).  All the Osage people, young and old, collected water lily
roots, persimmons, nuts, and berries to supplement their meat
and vegetable diet.

Located midway between the Mississippi River and the Great

Plains and between Canada and New Orleans, the Osage became
Missouri's greatest Indian traders since the Cahokian Civilization
some 500 years before.  They sold horses, buffalo meat and hides,
and captured Indians from Spanish territories in the West to
colonists in Illinois and traded a great variety of furs to French
Canadians.  Because they were the "best fur producers" south of
Canada, the Osage received European metal weapons, wool
blankets, and glass beads, tobacco from Virginia or Brazil, and
Chinese vermilion (mercury sulphide face-paint).

The supply of flintlock muskets and sharp tomahawks and knives

made the Osage the leading military power in Missouri.  Some
1,200-1,500 Osage warrior-hunters defeated neighboring tribes to
protect their huge and valuable hunting territory of 100,000
square miles.  Some Europeans compared Osage warriors to
conquering Roman legions or medieval knights.  Jefferson called
their warriors "gigantic" – averaging well over 6 feet in height.
(One Osage chief was 7 feet tall and weighed 300 pounds!)  
Warriors were very hardy and could travel 60 miles a day – on
foot!   It must have been a scary sight to see hundreds of these
red-painted, nearly-bald warriors riding at full gallop on their
decorated war ponies, holding long lances, French muskets, sharp
scalping knives, and the famous, strong bows made of Osage
Orangewood. 

Despite their fierce reputation, however, the Osage were always

friendly with the French and later American residents of St. Louis. 
They were happy to advise Lewis and Clark and never waged war
against the United States.  Unfortunately, however, the Louisiana
Purchase quickly changed the Osage way of life.  Because the
Corps of Discovery found such a huge number of rich furs in the
Far West, Osage lands soon became more valuable to white
farmers than Osage pelts were to white merchants. 

In 1808, the Osage signed the Treaty of Fort Osage, giving 50,000
square miles of their territory – almost all of Missouri – to the
United States.  Lewis and Clark originally discovered the site of
Fort Osage on the "Fire Prairie" – where the Osage were now
forced to live – on 23 June 1804.  In 1808, it was Governor Lewis
and General Clark who told the Osage to move there if they
wanted payment for their furs. (The U.S. trading post and military
garrison at Fort Osage was called a fur "factory"—a place where a
"factor," or merchant/accountant, bartered with Indians.) 

After another treaty in 1825 (signed in Clark's backyard), the

Osage left their old Missouri homeland forever. For the next 50
 years, they moved to a series of reservations in "Indian Territory"
(first in Kansas and later in Oklahoma).  As betrayed old friends,
the Osage saw American farmers enjoying the fertile, never-
plowed lands of their hunting grounds--the source of their fame
and fortune when they were the original  "Gateway to the West."

Osage Delegations
 Soldierly And Serious
 

 First Delegation
 

 Straight Talk
 

 Third Try
 

 Cross-Purposes
 

 Osages Today

Osage Warrior
Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware. Accession No. 54.19.3
Watercolor by
Charles Balthazar Julien Févrét de Saint-Mémin2
based on a physiognotraced likeness by the same artist. Washington, D.C., 1807. Actual size: 7½ x 6¾.
The man's eyelids, cheeks, and torso are painted orange-red. His eyebrows and facial hair have not been shaved but
plucked, as has the hair on his head, except for the crest, or roach, which has also been dyed with vermilion
(powdered cinnabar mineral), while the queue down his back retains its natural color. His headdress, colored blue-
green with verdigris (ver-dih-gree), features the head of a small raptor and several waterfowl beaks, as well as
hummingbird skins. At his ear is a tuft of swan's down dyed with powdered cinnabar. The black scarf and breast-
band may be intended to suggest his respect for Anglo formality. His metal armband, perhaps a gift from his hosts,
is engraved with the figure of an eagle holding the seal of the United States.

Soldierly And Serious

Move to top

Meriwether Lewis had no personal contacts with any Osage Indians until he returned to St. Louis after the
expedition. Consequently, detailed descriptions of the Osages' appearance like those he wrote of the
Mandans, Shoshones, Nez Perce, and Clatsops had to await the visit of Victor Tixier (1815-1885), a
French physician who spent a year in America more than 30 years later. The description of the Osage men
in his Voyage aux prairies osages, Louisiane et Missouri, 1839-40 were fully as thorough as Lewis's
would have been, and they show that the Osage nation still was as strong and viable as when Jefferson
had entertained their leaders:

The men are tall and perfectly proportioned. They have at the same time all the physical qualities which denote skill
and strength combined with graceful movements. . . .

. . . their ear[lobe]s, slit by knives, grow to be enormous, and they hang low under the weight of the ornaments with
which they are laden. There is a complete lack of beard and eyebrows on their faces, for they carefully pull out the
little hair which happens to grow there.

Their calm, dignified faces show great shrewdness; there is something soldierly and serious about the expression.
Their hair is black and thick. The Osage shave their heads, except for the top, from which two strands of hair branch
off and grow straight back to the occiput, where they form a tuft which falls to the lower part of the neck; between
these strands grow two braids, the beauty of which consists in their length. . . .

The [Osage Indians] seldom go out without painting themselves; the colors they use are, first, vermillion, then
verdigris [greenish-blue], and then yellow, which they buy from the trader; lacking these, they use ochre, chalk, or
even mud. . . . The Osage always paint red that part of their head around their hair, the eye-sockets, and their ears;
these are the national colors, the war-time paint. The other colors, indifferently put on the other parts of their bodies,
depend upon their individual fancy.3

"The Osages are so tall and robust as almost to warrant the application of the term gigantic: few of
them appear to be under six feet, and many are above it. Their shoulders and visages are broad,
which tend to strengthen the idea of their being giants."
—John Bradbury1

First Delegation
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T hey were "certainly the most gigantic men we have ever seen," Jefferson wrote to Secretary of
the Treasury Albert Gallatin on 12 July 1804. A dozen Osage men and two boys, the first of three
Indian delegations to visit Mr. Jefferson during his two administrations, had arrived in Washington
City the previous day, escorted by Peter Chouteau, a prominent St. Louis fur trader and the
government's first agent to the Osages. On the 13th the President wrote to Secretary of the Navy
Robert Smith, "They are the finest men we have ever seen. They have not yet learnt the use of
spiritous liquors."4 Pursuant to Jefferson's explicit orders, Lewis had arranged their trip to
Washington City through Chouteau before leaving St. Louis. Upon their arrival in Washington City,
the President addressed them with earnest expressions of friendship and cooperation: "We are all
now of one family, born in the same land, & bound to live as brothers." Stressing the motives of
"commerce & useful intercourse," he announced, "You have furs and peltries which we want, and we
have clothes and other useful things which you want. Let us employ ourselves then in mutually
accommodating each other."5 In October, after touring Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia, the
Osages returned to their homes at the Place-of-the-Many-Swans beyond the Ozarks in the valley of
the Osage River.
It must have been a satisfying experience for Jefferson; he seemed to be achieving the goal he had set
for his administration. "The truth is," he had written to Secretary of the Navy Smith on 13 July 1804,
"they are the great nation South of the Missouri, . . . as the Sioux are great North of that river. With
these two powerful nations we must stand well, because in their quarter we are miserably weak."6
Straight Talk
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T he second Indian delegation, with Captain Amos Stoddard in charge, consisted of chiefs from
twelve tribes living along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, left St. Louis in October of 1805 and
returned the following summer.7 Among this group, much to the distress of their hosts, were a few
who were excessively fond of whiskey; one chief died, apparently from an overdose. Moreover,
Stoddard's budget was wrecked by the Indians' appetites for beef—up to 12 pounds per man per day.
On the other hand, in Boston the Osage Chief Tatschaga delivered an ardent testimonial with
profound effect before the Massachusetts Senate: "Our complexions differ from yours, but our hearts
are the same colour, and you ought to love us for we are the original and true Americans."8
Victor Tixier left a description in his journal that helps us imagine the sound of the visitors' oratory:
The Osage language is poor in nouns but rich in endings which modify or change their meanings.
Therefore, according to what the traders say, it is very difficult to speak it well. One of the
interpreters has assured me that Mr. Ed. Chouteau was the only white man who spoke it like an
Osage. It is . . . sung, so to speak, and the slow delivery of each syllable will give the word a great
force of expression. An adjective is put to the superlative by lengthening its last syllable. . . . The
pronunciation is soft, and guttural sounds are made almost harmonious.9
Jefferson, in his speech to the second Indian delegation, on 4 January 1806, told the assemblage he
had sent "our beloved man Capt. Lewis one of my own family" to talk with all the Indian nations
along the Missouri. Upon his return Lewis would ultimately "inform us in what way we could be
useful to them." The new "factory" system of trading, he assured the Osage chiefs, would not be
profit-driven. They would buy American goods at cost, and receive for their furs and pelts "whatever
we can get for them again."
"My children,"10 Jefferson continued in a firmer tone, "we are strong, we are numerous as the stars in
the heavens, & we are all gun-men. Yet we live in peace with all nations; and all nations esteem &
honour us because we are peaceable & just."11 The Osage chief who delivered the delegation's
response did not mince any words:
Fathers: Meditate what you say, you tell us that your children of this side of the Mississippi hear your
Word, you are Mistaken, Since every day they Rise their tomahawks Over our heads, but we believe
it be Contrary to your orders & inclination, & that, before long, should they be deaf to your voice,
you will chastise them. . . .
You say that you are as numerous as the stars in the skies, & as strong as numerous. So much the
better, fathers, tho', if you are so, we will see you ere long punishing all the wicked Red skins that
you'll find amongst us, & you may tell to your white Children on our lands, to follow your orders, &
to do not as they please, for they do not keep your word. Our Brothers who Came here before told us
you had ordered good things to be done & sent to our villages, but we have not seen nothing. . . .
We are Conscious that we must speak the truth, truth must be spoken to the ears of our fathers, & our
fathers must open their ears to truth to get in.12
All too soon, American justice would prove to be simply racist, and its peaceableness a hollow
promise. The Osages could see it coming.
Third Try
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T he third group of Indian representatives to visit the President consisted of the Mandan chief,
Sheheke, and his family, who accompanied Lewis and Clark from their Knife River village to St.
Louis, on to Virginia and thence to Washington City. At the same time, Pierre Chouteau led six
Osage chiefs direct from St. Louis to Washington, and later conducted all the Indians back to St.
Louis. In the summer of 1807, belligerent Arikara warriors on the middle Missouri blocked the first
attempt, to return Sheheke to his home. The second effort, in 1809, required a major military force to
fulfill the obligation.13
Since early colonial times Indian visitors and tribal emissaries had been welcomed formally in the
Eastern seats of government and culture. By 1800 the purposes and protocols for such events were
essentially formalized, while the objectives—beyond satisfying public curiosity about the
"savages"—the official intention to impress them with the white man's numbers, wealth, military
power, and organized urbanity had begun to backfire among the native nations. To the extent that
Indian visitors were impressed by what they saw, they were reviled in equal measure by their own
people when they returned home. Finally, Jefferson's determination to keep government spending to
a minimum compelled him, following the fiasco of the third delegation's visit, to suspend the practice
for the duration of his administration.
Cross-Purposes
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M eanwhile, in August of 1808 General Clark oversaw the establishment of Fort Osage, the first
trading post in his western plan, near today's Sibly, Missouri. Principally, it would facilitate trade
between the U.S.and the Osages, Otos, and their friends, and also ensure them of the protection of the
U.S. Army from the tribes that the government had encouraged to move west of the Mississippi, as
well as from the truculent Sioux. At virtually the same moment, however, the persistence of
internecine warfare between the Osages and their neighbors had led Governor Lewis to announce
that the Osage nation was no longer under the protection of the United States, and that the Shawnees,
Delawares, Kickapoos, Sioux, Sauks, and others were free to settle their differences with the Osages
in their own way, provided they would do so "with sufficient force to destroy or drive them from our
neighborhood."14 The governor's ire heated to a full boil. He declared to Secretary of War Dearborn
that the Osages had "cast off all allegiance to the United States," and that war appeared inevitable. "I
have taken the last measures for peace," he declared. Dearborn was out of town when the letter
arrived at the War Department, so it was forwarded to the President, who immediately reminded
Lewis that "commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them, & not war."15 Might the
President not have sensed that his "beloved man," who was to die by his own hand within another
three months, was already feeling mortal hopelessness eating at his heart and soul?
Worse yet, Jefferson's plan to reserve Louisiana for the Indian nations had already begun to dissolve
in frustration, despair, and racial antagonism on the part of all parties concerned. By 1819 the Osages
were refusing to make the hundred-plus-mile trip from the Marais des Cygnes ("Marsh of the
Swans") to the trading center Clark had built for them on the Missouri. A military presence was no
longer needed to protect the Osages, so the army was permanently withdrawn from the Fort. By 1822
the trading house was closed. In 1825 the factor, George Sibley, was reassigned to lay out a road
from Fort Osage to New Mexico—the Santa Fe Trail—and Americans' ambitions followed a
different road for a while.
Osages Today
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W hen the first Europeans landed in New England the tribe lived in the Ohio River valley. It
consisted of two bands, the Wazhazhe or meat-eaters, and the Tsishu or vegetarians. When the first
delegation of Osage chiefs met with Jefferson in 1804, their homes were near the forks of the Osage
River. Their homeland extended from the Missouri River on the north to the Arkansas River on the
south, and from the Mississippi to the Great Plains. Lewis, in fact, sent a map of it to Jefferson
from Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805.
Clark witnessed the signing of a treaty with the Osages on November 10, 1808. Among other things,
the treaty substantially diminished the size of their homeland by ceding some 30 million acres of
what Clark termed "excellent country": "beginning at fort Clark, on the Missouri, five miles above
Fire Prairie, and running thence a due south course to the river Arkansas, and down the same to the
Mississippi; hereby ceding and relinquishing forever to the United States, all the lands which lie east
of the said line, and north of the southwardly bank of the said river Arkansas, and all lands situated
northwardly of the River Missouri."16
Subsequently, treaties signed in 1818, 1822, 1825, 1839, and 1865 removed the Osage tribe
permanently to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) reducing their land to a reservation of 2,296 square
miles. Today 4,000 of the tribe's 18,000 citizens live on the Osage Reservation there, along with
about 6,500 Indians from other tribes. The Osages presently consist of three bands, the Pasueli or
Great Osage; Wahakolin or Little Osage; and Sansueli or Arkansas Band. The reservation
headquarters are in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

1. John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, 2nd ed.
(London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819), 50.
2. Believed to be one of at least five small watercolors commissioned from Saint-Mémin by a British
diplomat, Sir Augustus John Foster, who was in Washington from 1804 to 1807. All were copies of
portraits Saint-Mémin had previously drawn with the aid of a physiognotrace. William E. Foley and
Charles David Rice, "Visiting the President: An Exercise in Jeffersonian Indian Diplomacy," The
American West, Vol. 16, No. 6 (November-December 1979), 6.
3. John Francis McDermott, editor, and Albert J. Salvan, translator, Tixier's Travels on the Osage
Prairies, 1844 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), 136-37.
4. Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-
1854, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:199-200. The celebration of their
arrival was overshadowed by the news of Alexander Hamilton's death that morning in a duel with
Aaron Burr at Weehawken, New Jersey.
5. Ibid., 1:201.
6. Ibid., 1:200n.
7. Captain Stoddard had accepted the transfer of Louisiana Territory at St. Louis on behalf of the
United States, then served as the interim military and civil commandant in charge of the Louisiana
Territory for six months until the civil administration was established. Previously he had commanded
a company of artillerists at Fort Kaskaskia in the Illinois country opposite St. Louis, from which
Lewis and Clark recruited several volunteers, including Alexander Willard.
8. Foley and Rice, 12.
9. McDermott and Salvan, 148.
10. That salutation, which is apt to strike the twenty-first-century reader as belittling and insulting,
was merely a counterpart of contemporary Anglo-American forms of address: The comparatively
bland and to this day still acceptable opening salutation "Dear Sir," or simply "Sir," and the often
elaborate closings such as Lewis's to Clark, "With sincere and affectionate regard Your friend &
Humble Se[r]v[an]t." The father-child convention had its origin in the rigid Roman Catholic and
Anglican Church hierarchy, but became more directly a legacy of the Enlightenment's empirical
logic. It seemed obvious that native peoples worldwide were primitive and childlike, having none of
the amenities that civilized people considered necessities —written languages, tools of iron and steel,
wheels, compasses, gunpowder, clocks, printing presses, paper (which the Indians' commissions were
printed on), finely woven fabrics of cotton, linen and wool. From a Christian perspective, their
religions consisted of childish superstitions, as Clark himself observed more than once. Above all,
EuroAmericans regarded as immature the Indians' reliance on warfare to validate their chiefs'
qualifications for leadership. Except for that, Indians at their best were innocents–in Rousseau's
metaphor, "noble savages"–who were as yet unspoiled by the faults of civilization; at their worst,
merely "imps of Satan."
11. Jackson, Letters, 281-82.
12. Ibid., 1:285-87.
13. See "Taking Sheheke Home" and "Lewis Takes Over."
14. Lewis to William Henry Harrison, July 1808, cited in Jackson, Letters, 2:626n. In the captains'
"Estimate of the Eastern Indians"–meaning east of the Rockies–Lewis wrote, "I think two villages on
the Osage river, might be prevailed on to remove to the Arkansas [River], and the Kansas [River},
higher up the Missouri, and thus leave a sufficient scope of country for the Shawnees, Dillewars,
Miames, and Kickapoos." That would have been consistent with Jefferson's original aim of moving
all the eastern tribes west of the Mississippi. By 1808 several bands from those tribes had already
moved onto land the Osages claimed. Another thirty years passed before the policy culminated in the
forced, untimely, and tragic odyssey of the Cherokees' exile from Georgia to Indian Territory on the
infamous "Trail of Tears."
15. Meriwether Lewis to Henry Dearborn, 1 July 1808, and Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis,
21 August 1808, both in Territorial Papers, 14:196-98, 220. Cited in Landon Y. Jones, William
Clark and the Shaping of the West (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 165.
16. Article 6, Treaty with the Osage, "concluded . . . on the tenth day of November, in the year of our
Lord [1808] between Peter Chouteau, esquire, agent for the Osage, and specially commissioned and
instructed to enter into the same by his excellency Meriwether Lewis, governor and superintendent of
Indian affairs for the territory aforesaid, in behalf of the United States of America." Ratified by the
United States Congress on April 28, 1810.