ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

By Michael Dickey – Former Site Director, Arrow Rock State Historic Site, Missouri Department of Natural Resources from a Program: April 25, 2015  Conflicted Perspectives Symposium, St. Charles County College

In 1803, the 6,000 strong Osage Nation was the largest, most powerful Native American nation immediately west of the Mississippi River. Adding to that image of power, Osage men averaged over six feet in height, some even reaching seven feet, such as Chief Black Dog painted by western artist George Catlin in 1834. In contrast, the average height of a white American male was only 5 ft. 8 in., strengthening “the idea of their being giants.”[1] The Osage were divided into three bands; the Big Osage on the Osage River, the Little Osage on the Missouri River until about 1795 but now on the Osage River, and the Arkansas Osage on the Verdigris River in northeast Oklahoma. The Osage dominated the region from northern Missouri to the Red River and from the Mississippi valley to the western plains of Kansas and Oklahoma: about 1/8 of the Louisiana Territory.[2]

They aggressively defended their territory against all intruders, Indian and white alike. The Osage could bring all of their 1,250 veteran warriors to bear on a single target in a “grand war movement” a feat that few Indian nations in North America could accomplish.[3] In contrast, the United States had only about 250 soldiers available on the western frontier. Following a meeting with Osage leaders in 1805 President Thomas Jefferson wrote, “…in their quarter, we are miserably weak.”[4] The Osage delegation also visited Boston early in 1806 where Chief Tatschaga delivered a testimonial before the Massachusetts State Senate on how the Osage saw themselves in relation to the United States: “Our complexions differ from yours, but our hearts are the same color, and you ought to love us for we are the original and true Americans.“[5]

By 1808, the Osage became restive as displaced eastern tribes and whites increasingly encroached on their territory. Pawhuska or White Hair the so-called “principal chief” or “grand chief” of the Big Osage was pro-American. The position of the chiefs (actually called headmen) was hereditary; if they lived up to the task for a bad chief could be deposed simply by his people ignoring him.   But the real political and spiritual power of the tribe lay with the Non-hon-zhin ga or Little Old Men, a select group of elders imbued with sacred knowledge and tribal history. Chiefs followed the leading and advice of the Little Old Men. European traders and officials interfered with this traditional tribal government by giving gifts and medals to individuals they believed would influence the tribe on their behalf. Pawhuska was not a hereditary chief. St. Louis fur traders Pierre and Auguste Chouteau as representatives of the Spanish government had awarded him medals around 1795. This may have helped further a political schism that was already causing some Big Osage to break away and form the Arkansas Band. [6]

Dissidents to Pawhuska’s leadership harassed American settlers by stealing their horses and killing their cattle. Meriwether Lewis, now the Governor of Louisiana Territory ordered the cessation of all trade with the Osages and invited the Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Ioway and Miami and Potawatomi to wage war on them.[7] Those tribes did not require much goading because they desired to possess the Osage country which was still rich in wild game, while the wildlife resources in their own territories were rapidly becoming depleted.

Jefferson wrote Lewis that military force should be a last resort, so the attack was called off. “Commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them & not war”[8] he told Lewis. Jefferson’s strategy was to create Osage dependence on American commercial trade, thereby creating indebtedness within tribes that they would pay off by ceding land. Reducing their hunting territory in this manner, he believed, would force them to become farmers out of necessity and they would be gradually assimilated into American agrarian society a process taking 50 or more years. He was encouraged by the progress he saw then occurring with southeastern tribes such as the Lower Creeks and Cherokees. But Jefferson failed to understand just how rapidly the frontier would advance and how resistant to cultural change the Osage would be. Furthermore, Missouri frontiersmen did not share Jefferson’s ideals about assimilating the Osages into American society.

Endnotes

• [1] Bradbury, John. Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1819 p. 11
• [2] Burns, Louis A History of the Osage People University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa AL 2004, pp. 27-37
• [3] Osage elder Jim Red Corn cited in “The Osages at Home in the Center of the Earth – Wa sha she U ke Hun ka U kon scah” an exhibit held in conjunction with Osage Tribal Museum at Arrow Rock State Historic Site, 2004-2005.
• [4] Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West Simon and Schuster, 1996, p. 342
• [5] The Smithsonian Journal of History, John C. Ewers, Chiefs of the Missouri and Mississippi Vol. I, 1966 p. 22
• [6] Burns, pp. 129-131
• [7] Lewis to Dearborn July 1, 1808 Indian Claims Commission 733 Docket No. 105 The Osage Nation of Indians, 1962 p. 858 http://digital.library.okstate.edu/icc/v11/iccv11bp812.pdf
• [8] Jefferson to Lewis August 21, 1808. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Published by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association Washington, D.C. 1904 p. 142

From the Gilchrist Museum: Title(s): Chief White Hair, Pawhuska, Oklahoma, Creator(s): Unidentified (Author),Culture: Native American, Osage,Date: 1850 – 1900,Classification: Photographs, Object Type: Photographic Print, Accession No: 4326.4129, Previous Number(s): 72949, Department: , Archive Collection: , Oklahoma Native American Photographs Collection.

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