The People the Expedition Met Here

The People the Expedition Met Here. . Oto and Missouri Indians first settled here in the early 1700s, moving from the Great Lakes area of present-day Michigan. They often traded with French, Spanish, and British people who visited their villages. In 1725, members of the tribe even traveled to Paris as an official delegation to the court of Louis XV. , In 1804, when they first said "Aho" (hello) to Lewis and Clark, Oto and Missouri Indians numbered about 1,300 people. The Indians lived in villages near here, along the Platte River. For much of the year their homes were earth lodges in these villages, where women grew corn, beans and squash. Each summer, the tribes left their villages for their annual buffalo hunt, and camped in tepees. , The years between Lewis and Clark's visit and the 1850s brought many changes to the tribe. Buffalo, which the Indians relied on for food and clothing, became scarce from too much hunting, and white settlers wanted Indian land for farming. In 1854, the tribe agreed to sell portions of their land to the United States government and to move to a reservation on the Kansas-Nebraska border. The tribe sold more land and moved again in 1881 to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma, south of the Kansas border. , Today, the tribal headquarters is near Red Rock, Oklahoma. There are about 1,500 enrolled members of the tribe.