Separation of the Arkansas Band from the Grand Osage is best understood, not as a direct result of interference by traders, but

In 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.

Although there are more recent historical portraits of the Osage, the work of Gilbert C. Din and A.P. Nasatir remains the standard reference on the period surrounding the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to the United States. Near the end of their book, The Imperial Osages: Spanish-Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley, the authors state:

Although the tribe had once been a proud and even arrogant warrior society, they made no final gallant stand against the changes thrust upon them by circumstances. Instead, they quietly accepted their fate of confinement to Indian Territory and adjusted, however reluctantly, to another mode of existence.[2]

While the authors thoroughly document the events leading up to removal from Missouri and Arkansas, they do not explain why the Osages appeared so powerless to do anything about it. This study uses that question as a starting point, and suggests the apparently sudden collapse of the Osage empire after 1803 had less to do with the coming of American authority to Louisiana than with the continuing interplay of factors already in motion prior to the American purchase of Louisiana. Economic and social changes forced upon the Osage by a group of largely St. Louis-based traders, and fragmentation of the tribe, left the splintered nation vulnerable to manipulation. Of particular importance was the separation of the Arkansas Band sometime prior to 1803, leaving the Osage Nation divided roughly in two. This fragmentation is important to understanding why the Osage were not able to resist encroachments and demand for land cessions after 1803.

Separation of the Arkansas Band from the Great Osage is best understood, not as a direct result of interference by traders, but rather as an indirect result. Interference by traders, sometimes acting under authority of the Spanish government, had undermined the power of the Non-hon-zhin-ga. As members of the nation increasingly began to follow individual leaders rather than the society, fragmentation was inevitable. By the time the Corps of Discovery ascended the Missouri River, the break had apparently become more pronounced. Corps of Discovery commander Meriwether Lewis wrote about the Great Osage in a report to President Thomas Jefferson, stating, “The principal part … have always resided at their villages, on the Osage River, since they have been known to the inhabitants of Louisiana.” He stated that a breakaway faction, led by a warrior named Big Track, had emigrated to a village on the Arkansas River some three years earlier. Lewis estimated the dissident faction at “nearly one half of this nation.” Meanwhile, another band, the Little Osage, had lived in a village on the Missouri River, “but, being reduced by continual warfare with their neighbors, were compelled to seek the protection of the Great Osage, near whom they now reside.”[3]

One of the earliest reports of an Osage village on the Arkansas River appeared in a 1785 letter from Esteban Mirò, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, in which he places a settlement on the upper Arkansas River. His report described them as an offshoot of the Little Osage, whereas later information about the Arkansas Band described them as having broken off from the Great Osage.[4] José María Cortés y de Olarte, a Spanish army officer writing in 1799, also described a Little Osage village on the upper Arkansas River.[5] It is possible that these descriptions refer to a hunting camp. Large hunting parties were organized three times a year, with nearly every able-bodied man, woman, and child of a village traveling together for buffalo hunts in the spring and fall, and smaller groups spreading out in the winter to hunt deer and small game.[6]

The group that came to be known as the Little Osage is called U-Dse‑Tsa, or “Down Below People,” in their language. The name refers to one of the five principal divisions of the tribe, said to have originated after an ancient flood caused the Osages to scatter. Scholars place the break between the Great and Little Osage bands at some point in the early eighteenth century, when the Little Osage were apparently lured away from their ancient village site on the Marais de Cygnes River to a place near the kindred Missouri tribe, a Chiwere Siouan group which resided along the river named for them.[7] John Law’s Company of the Indies established Fort Orleans near the Missouri and Little Osage villages in 1723, and the availability of trade and French protection no doubt played a role in the splintering of the tribe. The fort was abandoned in 1730,[8] and the wayward Little Osage returned to a site near the Great Osage village for protection in 1773.[9] Like the Little Osage, the Arkansas Band may have begun as one of the five principal divisions. John Joseph Mathews refers to this group by the name Co’n-Dse-U-Gthi’n, the “Upland Forest People.” He speculates this band began as a group of hunters who were familiar with the site. He notes that members of the Panther and Black Bear clans, to which the Arkansas Band’s first leader, Big Track, belonged, had used the site where the band settled as its base of operations prior to the split with the Great Osage. He also states that members of this group “were certainly at home here and had been for some years.”[10]

American officials, after taking over the governance of Louisiana, attempted to reconcile the Osage factions. Lewis, in his report to Jefferson, wrote, “I think the two villages, on the Osage River, might be prevailed on to remove to the Arkansas … and leave a sufficient scope of country for the Shawnese, Delawares, Miamies, and Kickapoos.”[11] Lewis was made governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1807. The next year he drafted a treaty that again required reconciliation and a gathering of all Osage to one place, but this time sought to gather them back to the Missouri River, to a place he and fellow Corps of Discovery officer William Clark had selected for a trade factory and military outpost during their expedition. This was to be a forced reconciliation, with sanctions against those who refused to comply. Writing to treaty commissioner and St. Louis trader Pierre Chouteau, who had already developed an extensive trade relationship the tribe, Lewis wrote, “Those who neglect to do so, either themselves, or by the head of their family, must not under any pretext whatever, be supplied with merchandise, either from the factory, or by individual traders.”[12]

The Osage Treaty of 1808 speaks of animosities between the other inhabitants of Louisiana and “the Osage nations.” The language is interesting, because while the treaty specifically states “Great and Little Osage nations” throughout much of its text, in this passage, only the term “the Osage nations” is used. Lewis had already described the Osage as a nation divided between Osage River and Arkansas River factions in his letter to Jefferson in 1804. Nowhere else does the phrase “the Osage nations” appear in the treaty. In fact, an addendum is included in which the Arkansas River band acknowledged, “being a part of the Great Osage nation.”[13]

Lewis died before the treaty was sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification, and the duty of putting his affairs in St. Louis back in order fell to Clark. In a letter of 20 February 1810 to Secretary of War William Eustis, Clark states that when he spoke with Lewis about the Osages, the late governor had told him, “a large proportion of the Osage nation of Indians were disposed to hostility, and had taken a number of horses, robbed and plundered the inhabitants in different parts of the territory, &c …” Lewis, he stated, “had made a regular and unsuccessful demand of the property which they had taken.” When questioned, the principal Great Osage chief, White Hair, had told Lewis that he “could not restrain his band from those acts of violence and pillage which they had been in the habit of practicing on the frontiers.”[14] There are two possible interpretations for this. One is that “his band” was not responsible. The other is that, even if members of White Hair’s band were responsible, he could not restrain the actions of these individuals. Clark explained that he was tasked with finding a suitable site for a post and factory, and that he sent “Captain Boon” (likely Nathan Boone, who lived outside St. Charles) and an interpreter to the Osage villages. They returned, along with “the principal chiefs and considerable men of the Great and Little Osage bands” on 12 September 1808. Clark said he was told by the chiefs that “all their nation, except the band on the Arkansas,” and a delegation sent to St. Louis, were on their way to the Fire Prairie, where the fort was to be constructed. Clark said the Osages with whom he spoke “expressed much anxiety to become more closely under the protection of the United States than they had been” and hoped “that their whole nation might not suffer for the bad conduct of a part.”[15]

Upon his return to St. Louis, however, Clark stated that he was informed, through Lewis and Chouteau, that the Osages who had come to St. Louis “objected to the treaty, and he expressed his regret for fear a measure so necessary to the peace and quiet of the territory, and advantageous to the United States, should not be confirmed by the Osages.” Lewis wrote a new treaty, which he sent via Chouteau, to Fort Clark, where the Great and Little Osage had moved. Clark said it was this treaty that was signed 10 November 1808, and forwarded to the Senate. A deputation from the Arkansas Band, accompanied by chiefs and warriors of the Great and Little Osage, came to St. Louis the following summer, and approved the treaty on 31 August 1809.

In his instructions to Chouteau, Lewis told him his first task was “to restore peace and friendship between our people and the Great and Little Osages, from whom we have of late suffered so many violations of our laws, and depredations on our frontiers.” Lewis apparently gave Chouteau a document to take with him, having stated, “The draught of a treaty, you will observe, contemplates something more than the restoration of peace; it give to the Great and Little Osages more efficient security, in our power to bestow; it assures them, for their exclusive use, the lands west of the boundary line …” The fact that the Osage Nation already had as much exclusive use of this land as their 1,500 warriors (to use Lewis’ own 1803 estimate) could provide for them, and that a small garrison of American soldiers stationed on the extreme eastern fringe of this land could likely do very little to bring additional “efficient security” to the tribe, apparently didn’t enter into Lewis’ calculations.[16]

It is somewhat remarkable that Lewis never made specific mention of the Arkansas Band, even in his private instructions to Chouteau. He does, however, refer to, “Those of the Great and Little Osages who refuse to sanction this treaty,” saying they “can have no further hopes that their pretensions to those lands, now claimed by them, will ever be respected by the United States.” The boundary line provided for in the treaty ran from near the site of Fort Clark, just east of the Osage villages, to a site on the Arkansas River near present-day Fort Smith.[17]

The treaty, and Lewis’ instructions, called for all of the Osage to relocate near Fort Clark. The instructions called for each “chief warrior, or man of consideration” who signed the treaty to be given a certificate “recommending him to the friendly offices of the citizens of the United States,” which alone would permit trading privileges at the fort. If sufficient numbers were to sign the treaty, then Chouteau was to allow free trade. If not, even trade in powder for those who did sign it was to be restricted to a pound for each hunter or warrior. The treaty also called for a blacksmith’s shop and a mill somewhere near the villages.[18] If the letter written by Lewis to President Jefferson on 15 December 1808 is to be believed, the strategy worked. The governor stated that the “Osage nations” were “reduced, in the course of a few months, to a state of perfect submission” through the withholding of merchandise.[19]

The strategy of requiring reconciliation between the Osage factions did not work, however, as indicated by statements made by members of the Arkansas Band. In the journal of Jacob Bright, a merchant who moved his company from the Chickasaw Bluffs to Arkansas Post in 1804, are recorded the words of Claremont, a young chief of the Great Osage who apparently came to the Arkansas village after Big Track began attracting followers. In his entry of 4 August 1806, Bright describes being visited by “the two head chiefs” of the Arkansas village.[20] Under the traditional Osage system, day-to-day governance of each village was left to a dual chieftainship that placed one leader in charge of hunting and war, and the other in charge of trade and peace. Big Track, as a member of the Hon-ga, or earth division, would have been eligible only for leadership of hunting and war. Claremont, meanwhile, belonged to the Tsi-zhu, or sky division, and would have traditionally been eligible only for chieftainship of trade and peace.

Under the dual chieftainship structure, the Tsi-zhu and Hong-ga chiefs were equal within their respective realms. If approaching in peace, an outsider was greeted and dealt with by the Tsi-zhu chief. Hostile outsiders, although they would not likely have come close enough to realize it, were greeted by warriors commanded by the Hon-ga chief. As the Osage increasingly became dependent upon interaction with outsiders, however, and as the production of furs and skins became the dominant economic activity, the Tsi-zhu chief’s role acquired greater importance. The Tsi-zhu chief was the principal intermediary with the outside world.[21] As the Tsi-zhu chief’s position became more important, both within and outside the tribe, the power and position of the Non-hon-zhin-ga began to wane. Traders and government officials often gave medals to favored tribal leaders, providing tangible signs of their economic and political importance. Among the Osage, the Tsi-zhu chieftainship eventually evolved into the role of principal chief in later Osage governance.[22]

Bright relates Claremont’s story of having been robbed of his hereditary position as chief by Chouteau, who confirmed the principal chieftainship on his uncle, White Hair, through the granting of a medal and the making of trade arrangements through him.

… (H)e has repeatedly observed to me that he was intitled (sic) to the highest rank in his nation and that under the Spanish government they withheld it from him telling him that we was too young and at the same time give the great medal to the White Hair who had no claim to it. He says it is true when his father died he was young but has now come to an age old enough to take care of himself and his people …[23]

Bright’s journal and a letter to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, which Bright sent to the War Department along with an excerpt from his journal, show that Claremont harbored deep feelings of hostility toward Chouteau and others who had been officials during the Spanish regime. The young Osage chief asked for a medal from the Americans, to be delivered by “any other person except Mr. Chouteau.”[24]

The record left by Bright reveals that the Arkansas Band, at this point, still practiced the traditional dual chieftainship arrangement. In other records, it can be seen that dealings with European and American traders and officials had eroded the traditional system. Nowhere in the writings of either Lewis or Clark is any reference made to a dual chieftainship, or of a council of elders responsible for long-term policy matters. John Bradbury, who visited the Osage in 1809, wrote of a “regent” who was governing the Great Osage on behalf of White Hair’s six-year-old son.[25] Edwin James, traveling to the Osage villages ten years later, wrote of all three factions being governed by single chiefs.[26] At the time of his visit, James observed that, “All their chiefs, except Claremont, are very weak, and unpopular.” Meanwhile, in the Great Osage village, James notes it was obvious that, “Many of their great war captains are in opposition to the chief,” and that, “Their councils are very much distracted by the jealousies and intrigues of principal warriors, and for want of energy and decision by the chiefs.”[27]

James’ record perhaps reveals most clearly the internal disintegration and spirit of ga-ni-tha that had come to characterize Osage governance. His journal indicates that of the estimated 1,250 men at arms in the Osage nation, some 600 of them had chosen to live among the Arkansas Band. Rather than being bound to a single place, each Osage family was free to follow whichever village’s leadership was thought to be most advantageous to them. However, this system also allowed small groups of warriors to create war parties without sanction from the tribe as a whole. Traditionally, war could only be conducted after an elaborate seven-day ceremony initiated by the Non-hon-zhin-ga. Each clan possessed a part of the ceremony, and the participation of all twenty-four Osage clans was necessary for the rituals to be carried out.[28] Because the war ceremony required so much preparation, they were rarely organized. More commonly, military actions were organized as small parties assembled by members of a single clan. In addition to members of their own clans, capable military leaders might attract a large number of followers from a variety of clans.[29] Among the rituals was one in which moccasins were made by the leader of a war party.[30] Bradbury may have been referring to a small war party when he wrote leaders who, “must travel without mockasons (sic), or even leggings.” Anyone may lead such a party, he said, “providing he can obtain adherents.”[31]

Numerous sources note declarations of war by other tribes after incidents of Osage violence. In his report to Jefferson, Lewis lists the Little Osage as the only Great Osage ally, and vice versa.[32] The Osage had been at war with the Caddoan nations to their west and south, notably the Pawnee, for generations. Archeological evidence suggests these tribes were the original inhabitants of the Ozark Highlands, and were pushed out by encroachment by the Osage and their kindred Siouans.[33] New rivals began arriving from the east in the 1770s. A joint council of the Chickasaws of West Florida and the Quapaws of Arkansas on 29 March 1778 resulted in the first known declaration of war against the Osage by an Eastern tribe.[34] Peter Lorimier, hired by the Spanish as Indian Agent in 1787, persuaded large numbers of Delaware and Shawnee immigrants to settle in present-day Missouri. Groups of Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and others began pouring in to Louisiana as United States policy officially encouraged their removal from the East.

James, who visited the Cherokee after leaving the Arkansas Band’s village, provides an anecdotal example of the combined result of increased friction between the tribes and weakness among the Osage created by the growing fragmentation. In his entry of 7 September 1819, he notes that, at a site on the Illinois River in present-day Eastern Oklahoma, northwest of Fort Smith, “The Cherokee Indians frequently visit this vicinity, on hunting excursions, and our guide informs us, that a hunting party of that nation is at present camped at the mouth of this bayou.”[35] This is deep within the area described by Nicolas de Finiels in 1797 as being the exclusive hunting territory of the Osage, who had, “acquired through war and their substantial numbers a reputation that intimidates the weaker neighboring tribes.”[36]

Two things had changed very significantly between the time of de Finiels’ writing in 1797 and the writing of James’ journal in 1819. First, the “substantial numbers” written of by de Finiels had been reduced in their effectiveness by internal fragmentation, which was in large measure prompted by external maneuvering. Second, the neighboring tribes were no longer weaker. Emigration of had brought thousands of Cherokees and others into Louisiana, creating a rival to the formerly dominant Osage. It is no wonder then, the Grand and Little Osage leaders approved the Osage Treaty of 1808, which justified construction of Fort Clark on the basis of protection “from the insults and injuries of other tribes of Indians, situated near the settlements of the white people …”[37] A few years earlier, however, it would have been hard to imagine that the powerful Osage would need protection from anyone.

Some scholars have blamed separation of the Arkansas Band on the machinations of Pierre Chouteau, and his brother, Auguste, who were among the principal founders of St. Louis and the most powerful traders in the Missouri River valley during the Spanish and early American period in Louisiana. Even Mathews, who had the oral tradition of the Osage elders to draw from while writing his signature work, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters, repeats this assertion.[38] Others have blamed the division on the efforts of a rival trader, Manuel Lisa, who was granted a monopoly with the Osages late in the Spanish period.[39]

The evidence strongly suggests, however, that the ga-ni-tha that weakened the Osage Nation was not a direct result of these traders’ actions, but an indirect result. The presence of at least semi-permanent habitations on the Arkansas River was documented as early as the 1780s. There is a noted disdain for the influence of St. Louis traders on Osage governance among the Arkansas Band. There is evidence of the retention of traditional patterns of governance among the Arkansas Band past the point at which the other bands appear to have given them up. There is also the popularity of the Arkansas Band among rank-and-file Osage warriors and their families, as demonstrated by the degree to which they voted with their feet. It would appear that if Chouteau and the St. Louis traders did play a role in creation of the Arkansas Band, it was more one of repulsion than of attraction. Regardless of the cause, the result was the same. The Osage Nation was no longer the powerful military force that had dominated the land between the Missouri and Arkansas rivers. Instead, it had become a disorganized collection of separate villages. It no longer acted in concert, guided by the Non-hon-zhin-ga, as it had for centuries. Instead, it had become a divided nation, led by rival chiefs interested in personal position and individual gain. The order created by the elder priests had given way, and the Osage Nation come to be ruled by the chaos warned against since ancient times as the earth’s natural state.

[1] Louis F. Burns, A History of the Osage People (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 6-7.

[2] Gilbert C. Din and A.P. Nasatir, The Imperial Osages: Spanish-Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), 382.

[3] Meriwether Lewis, “Statistical View of the Indian Nations,” Fort Mandan, 7 April 1805, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:707-708.

[4] Dale R. Henning, “The Osage Nation: 1775-1818,” in Osage Indians IV (New York: Garland, 1974), 308.

[5] José María Cortés y de Olarte, Views From the Apache Frontier: Report on the Northern Provinces of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 96.

[6] Burns, 12-17.

[7] Din and Nasatir, 14

[8] James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764-1980 3^rd ed. (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998), 5-6.

[9] Din and Nasatir, 89.

[10] John Joseph Mathews, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 299-300.

[11] Lewis, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:707-708.

[12] Meriwether Lewis, Letter to Pierre Chouteau, n.d., American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765-766.

[13] Treaty between Pierre Chouteau and the Great and Little Osages, 10 November 1808, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:763-764.

[14] William Clark, Letter to William Eustis, 20 February 1810, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765.

[15] Clark, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765.

[16] Lewis, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765-766.

[17] Lewis, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765-766.

[18] Lewis, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:765-766.

[19] Lewis, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 15 December 1808, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:766-767.

[20] Harold W. Ryan, ed., “Jacob Bright’s Journal of a Trip to the Osage Indians,” Journal of Southern History 15, no. 4 (November 1949), 514.

[21] Garrick A. Bailey, Changes in Osage Social Organization: 1673-1906, University of Oregon Anthropological Papers No. 5 (Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1975), 43.

[22] Burns, 495-496.

[23] Ryan, 512.

[24] Ryan, 512.

[25] John Bradbury, Travels Into the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 62.

[26] Edwin James, Account of an Expedition From Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Vol 2. (n.p., Readex Microprint, 1966), 244.

[27] James, 245.

[28] Francis La Flesche, War Ceremony ad Peace Ceremony of the Osage Indians, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 101 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1939), 3.

[29] Bailey, 25.

[30] Louis F. Burns, Osage Indian Customs and Myths (Fallbrook, Calif.: Ciga Press, 1984), 44-45.

[31] Bradbury, 65.

[32] Lewis, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:707-708.

[33] Mathews, 92-93.

[34] Din and Nasatir, 114-115.

[35] James, 256.

[36] Nicolas de Finiels, An Account of Upper Louisiana, Carl J. Eckberg and William E. Foley, eds., trans. Carl J. Eckberg (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 89.

[37] Treaty between Pierre Chouteau and the Great and Little Osages, American State Papers, Indian Affairs 1:763-754.

[38] Mathews, 297.

[39] Eva Mary Simmons, “Cherokee-Osage Relations: 1803-1839” (M.A. thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1940), 13.

Primary Sources

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