Osage Nation

Osage Nation. . Two hundred and fifty years ago the river you see here flowed through the homeland of one of the most powerful Indian nations in the center of the continent. They called themselves "Wah-Zha-Zhe." Early French explorers spelled their name "Ouchage." Osage people lived and hunted from the woodlands and rich river bottoms of present-day Missouri and Arkansas to the open plains of Kansas and Oklahoma 250 miles to the west., Changes came fast and furious after France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803. Thousands of Cherokee had already moved into this region because white settlers were flooding into the Cherokee lands in Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Fighting broke out. Then the U.S. Army set up a garrison here at Fort Smith to try to keep the peace., Osage leaders worried that crowding would lead the U.S. Government to demand that they give up more lands to make room for Indians being removed from the East. In less than a generation, their tragic forecasts became true., In 1808 the Osage received $7,500 in trade goods for giving up claim to 200 miles of Missouri and Arkansas., The pressure increased. Years later the Osage ceded more lands in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas., After 1872 the Osage reservation shrank to the size of a single county in the northeast of Indian Territory., Today more than 16,000 Americans identify themselves as Osage. About 10,000 are enrolled members of the tribe. While looking to the future, the Osage Nation still remembers its past, a crucial part of American history.