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Recent Works:Fragmentation of the Osage Nation, 1803-1818In the beginning, according to Osage traditions, there was disorder among the people. In the Dhegiha Siouan language spoken among them, and among the kindred Kansas, Omaha, Ponca, and Quapaw tribes, this disorder was called ga-ni-tha. Disorder, they believed, was the natural state of the earth. In ancient times, a group of elder priests began meeting to create a more orderly way of life, based on the predictability they observed in the sky. This group, the Non-hon-zhin-ga, or “Society of Little Old Men,” came to control all aspects of Osage life by regulating the customs that governed them.[1] Starting in the eighteenth century, however, the order maintained by the Non-hon-zhin-ga began to break down. Intentional and unintentional efforts of outsiders subverted the influence of the Non-hon-zhin-ga, and the resulting ga-ni-tha, or disorder, led to the downfall of the once-powerful Osage nation. https://theiowaeye.tripod.com/osage.html/ The Osage Nation in Spanish Louisiana, 1763-1803 Each of the Spanish governors who ruled Louisiana between 1763 and 1803 sought to restrain the powerful and aggressive Osage nation. Many indigenous nations from elsewhere in the former Spanish Empire have stories in their histories of subjugation at the hands of conquistadors, but things were different in Louisiana. Officials tried everything from rewarding Osage leaders with promises of friendship and favorable trading conditions to threatening them with a Spanish-led war of extermination. No measure was ever completely effective, however, and the unintended consequences of Spanish policy would have a far greater effect on the Osage than the intentions of colonial rulers. Using historical and anthropological sources, this paper attempts to show how the unintended results of Spanish policy contributed to the eventual downfall of the mighty Osage. First, this paper will consider the intentions of Spanish leaders and the results of their policies. Second, while it may not be customary to think of the actions of Native American tribes as the reflection of coherent policy, this paper will demonstrate how the Osage had traditions and specific interests that ran counter to the will of Spanish rulers. Third, this paper will show how trends that proved detrimental to the Osage in the years after the American purchase of Louisiana were rooted in actions taken during the Spanish period. https://theiowaeye.tripod.com/spanish.html/ Osage Culture and Change, 1673 – Present Since their first contact with Europeans in the seventeenth century, the Osage have gone from being the most powerful American Indian nation in the central portion of the present-day United States, to being the most wealthy people in the world, per capita, to, like many native peoples, being a nation in search of rebirth and attempting to reassert the traditional culture. Through it all, the Osage have displayed a remarkable capacity for adapting to new situations, new technology, and new environments. The best and most complete body of information about the Osage was recorded by Francis LaFlesche, a member of the kindred Omaha tribe who began working for the Indian Service in 1881, studied under anthropologists James Owen Dorsey and Alice Fletcher, and joined the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1910. By the time LaFlesche began his formal study of the Osage, the tribe had been twice subjected to removal. The first removal came after migrant Cherokees obtained title to lands held by the Osage in 1818, and the Osage were forced from the Arkansas River valley into present-day Kansas. The second came in 1870, when officials sought to remove the Osage from the path of transportation interests and settlers and herded them back into what was then Indian Territory. Although the Dawes Act provided for the sale of land beyond what was needed to provide individual allotments, the tribe continues to hold in common mineral rights to its 1.47 million-acre former reservation in Osage County, Oklahoma. https://theiowaeye.tripod.com/culture.html/ |