While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Osage
(corruption by French traders of Wazhazhe, their own name). The most
important southern Siouan tribe of the western division. Dorsey classed
them, under the name Dhegiha, in one group with the
Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw, with
whom they are supposed to have originally constituted a single body living
along the lower course of the Ohio river.
Geographically speaking, the tribe consists of three
bands: the Pahatsi or Great Osage, Utsehta or Little Osage, and
Santsukhdhi or Arkansas band. These appear to be comparatively modern,
however, and the Osage recognize three more closely amalgamated divisions
which seem, from the traditional account of them, to represent as many
formerly independent tribes. According to this account, as gathered by J.
O. Dorsey, the beings which ultimately became men originated in the lowest
of the four upper worlds which Osage cosmology postulates and ascended to
the highest where they obtained souls. Then they descended until they came
to a red-oak tree on which the lowest world rests and by its branches
reached our earth. They were divided into two sections, the Tsishu, or
peace people, who kept to the left, living on roots, etc.; and the
Wazhazhe (true Osage), or war people, who kept to the right and killed
animals for their food. Later these two divisions exchanged commodities,
and after some time the Tsishu people came into possession of four kinds
of corn and four kinds of pumpkins, which fell from the left hind legs of
as many different buffaloes. Still later the tribe came upon a very
warlike people called Hangka-utadhantse, who lived on animals, and after a
time the Tsishu people succeeded in making peace with them, when they were
taken into the nation on the war side. Originally there were seven Tsishu
gentes, seven Wazhazhe gentes, and seven Hangka gentes, but, in order to
maintain an equilibrium between the war and peace sides after adopting the
Hangka, the number of their gentes was reduced to five and the number of
Wazhazhe gentes to two. In camping the Tsishu gentes are on the left or
north side of the camping circle, and the Hangka or Wazhazhe gentes on the
right or south side, the entrance to the circle being eastward. Beginning
at this entrance the arrangement of gentes is as follows:
Tsishu gentes (from east to west):
l, Tsishusintsakdhe;
2,Tsedtukaindtse;
3,Minkin;
4, Tsishuwashtake;
5, Haninihkashina;
6, Tsetduka;
7, Kdhun.
Hangka gentes (from east to west):
8, Washashewanun;
9, Hangkautadhantsi;
10, Panhkawashtake;
11, Ilangkaahutun;
12, Wasapetun;
13, Cpkhan;
14, Kanse.
The gentile organization appears to have been very
similar to that of the Omaha and other southern tribes of this division,
involving paternal descent, prohibition of marriage in the gentes of both
father and mother, and probably gentile taboos. The functions of the
various gentes were also differentiated to a certain extent. Matters
connected with war were usually undertaken by the war gentes and
peace-making by the peace gentes, while it was the duty of the chief of
the Tsishuwashtake gens to defend any foeman who might slip into the
camp-circle and appeal to him for protection. The Tsishu gentes are also
said to have had the care and naming of children. Heralds were chosen.
from certain special gentes, and certain others monopolized the
manufacture of moccasins, war standards, and war pipes. On the death of a
head-chief the leading man called a council and named four candidates,
from whom the final selection was made. Seven appears as a sacred number
in the social organization of the Osage, but from the war and other
customs of the tribe it appears that the sacred ceremonial number was
usually four (Dorsey in Am. Nat., Feb. 1884).
The first historical notice of the Osage appears to be
on Marquette's autograph map of 1673, which locates them apparently on
Osage river, and there they are placed by all subsequent writers until
their removal westward in the 19th century. Douay (1686) assigns them 17
villages, but these must have been nothing more than hunting camps, for
Father Jacques Gravier, in a letter written in 1694 from the Illinois
mission, speaks of but one, and later writers agree with his statement,
though it must be understood as applying only to the Great Osage. Gravier
interviewed two Osage and two Missouri chiefs who had come to make an
alliance with the Illinois, and
says of them: "The Osage and Missouri do not appear to be so quick witted
as the Illinois; their language does not seem very difficult. The former
do not open their lips and the latter speak still more from the throat
than they" (Jes. Rel., lxiv, 171, 1900). Iberville in 1701 (Margry, Dec.,
iv, 599, 1880) mentions a tribe of 1,200 to 1,500 families living in the
region of Arkansas river, near the Kansa and the
Missouri, and, like these,
speaking a language that he took to be Quapaw. The name of this tribe
through errors in copying and printing became Crevas, but the description
indicates the Osage. In 1714 they assisted the French in defeating the
Foxes at Detroit. Although visits of
traders were evidently quite common before 1719, the first official French
visit appears to have been in that year by Du Tisné,
who learned that their village on Osage river then contained 100 cabins
and 200 warriors. The village of the Missouri was higher up, and a short
distance south west of the latter was another Osage village which from
later maps is shown to have been occupied by the Little Osage. Then, as
always, the tribe was at war with most of the surrounding peoples, and La
Harpe witnesses to the terror in which they were held by the
Caddoan tribes. The Illinois were
also inveterate enemies, though at one time, when driven west of the
Mississippi by the Iroquois,
they fled to the Osage for protection. Charlevoix met a party of Osage at
the Kaskaskia village on Oct. 20, 1721. Regarding them he wrote: "They
depute some of their people once or twice every year to sing the calumet
among the Kaskasquias, and they are now actually here at present." The
French officer Bossu met some Osage at Cahokia in 1756. About 1802,
according to Lewis and Clark, nearly half of the Great Osage under a chief
named Big-track migrated to Arkansas river, thus constituting the Arkansas
band. The salve explorers (1804) found the Great Osage, numbering about
500 warriors, in a village on the south bank of Osage river, the Little
Osage, nearly half as numerous, 6 miles distant, and the Arkansas band,
numbering 600 warriors, on Vermilion river, a branch of the Arkansas.
On Nov. 10, 1808, by a treaty with the United States
concluded at Ft Clark, Kansas, near Kansas City, Mo., the Osage ceded to
the United States all their lands east of a line running due south from Ft
Clark to Arkansas river, and also all of their lands west of Missouri
river, the whole comprising the larger part of what is now the state of
Missouri and the north part of Arkansas. The territory remaining to them,
all of the present state of Oklahoma north of Canadian and Arkansas
rivers, was still further reduced by the provisions of treaties at St
Louis, June 2, 1825; Ft Gibson, Indian Territory, Jan. 11, 1839; and
Canville, Kans., Sept. 29, 1865; and the limits of their present
reservation were established by act of Congress of July 15, 1870. This
consisted (1906) of 1,470,058 acres, and in addition the tribe possessed
funds in the Treasury of the United States amounting to $8,562,690,
including a school fund of $119,911, the whole yielding an annual income
of $428,134. Their income from pasturage leases amounted to $98,376 in the
same year, and their total annual income was therefore about $265 per
capita, making this tribe the richest in the entire United States. By act
of June 28, 1906, an equal division of the lands and funds of the Osage
was provided for.
Estimates of Osage population later than that of Lewis
and Clark are the following: Sibley, 1,250 men (including 400 Great Osage,
250 Little Osage, and 600 of the Arkansas band); Morse (1821), 5,200
(including 4,200 Great Osage and 1,000 Little Osage) ; Porter (1829),
5,000; U.S. Indian Office (1843), 4,102; Schoolcraft (1853), 3,758
(exclusive of an important division known as Black Dog's band). According
to the Indian Office census of 1877, they numbered 3,001; in 1884, 1,547;
1886, 1,582; 1906 (after the division of the tribal lands and trust funds
had been provided for), 1,994.
The following villages were occupied by the Osage at
different time:
Big Chief,
Black Dog,
Heakdhetanwan
Intapupshe
Khdhasiukdhin
Little Osage Village
