page_title: Osage Nation
section_title: Early French encounters
hierarchical_section_title: Osage Nation / History / Early French encounters
context_page_description: The Osage Nation is a Midwestern Native American tribe of the Great Plains. The tribe developed in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 700 BC along with other groups of its language family. They migrated west of the Mississippi after the 17th century due to wars with Iroquois invading the Ohio Valley from New York and Pennsylvania in a search for new hunting grounds. The nations separated at that time, and the Osage settled near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
  The term "Osage" is a French version of the tribe's name, which can be roughly translated as "calm water". The Osage people refer to themselves in their indigenous Dhegihan Siouan language as 𐓏𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟, or "Mid-waters".
  At the height of their power in the early 19th century, the Osage had become the dominant power in the region, feared by neighboring tribes. The tribe controlled the area between the Missouri and Red rivers, the Ozarks to the east and the foothills of the Wichita Mountains to the south. They depended on nomadic buffalo hunting and agriculture.
context_section_description: In 1673 French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were among the first Europeans to encounter the Osage as they explored southward from present-day Canada in their expedition along the Mississippi River.  Marquette and Joliet claimed all land in the Mississippi Valley for France.  Marquette's 1673 map noted that the Kanza, Osage, and Pawnee tribes controlled much of modern-day Kansas.
  The Osage called the Europeans I'n-Shta-Heh (Heavy Eyebrows) because of their facial hair.  As experienced warriors, the Osage allied with the French, with whom they traded, against the Illiniwek during the early 18th century.
  The first half of the 1720s was a time of more interaction between the Osage and French.  Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont founded Fort Orleans in their territory; it was the first European fort on the Missouri River. Jesuit missionaries were assigned to French forts and established missions to the Osage, learning their language. In 1724, the Osage allied with the French rather than the Spanish in their fight for control of the Mississippi region.
  In 1725, Bourgmont led a delegation of Osage and other tribal chiefs to Paris. The Native Americans were shown the wonders and power of France, including a visit to Versailles, Château de Marly and Fontainebleau. They hunted with Louis XV in the royal forest and saw an opera.  During  the French and Indian War (the North American front of the Seven Years' War in Europe), France was defeated by Great Britain and in 1763 ceded its lands east of the Mississippi River to that nation.  France made a separate deal with Spain, which took nominal control of much of the Illinois Country west of the great river.
  By the late 18th century, the Osage did extensive business with the French Creole fur trader René Auguste Chouteau, who was based in St. Louis; the city was part of territory under nominal Spanish control after the Seven Years' War but was dominated by French colonists. They were the de facto European power in St. Louis and other settlements along the Mississippi, building their wealth on the fur trade. In return for the Chouteau brothers' building a fort in the village of the Great Osage 350 miles (560 km) southwest of St. Louis, the Spanish regional government gave the Chouteaus a six-year monopoly on trade (1794–1802). The Chouteaus named the post Fort Carondelet after the Spanish governor. The Osage were pleased to have a fur trading post nearby, as it gave them access to manufactured goods and increased their prestige among the tribes.
  Lewis and Clark reported in 1804 that the peoples were the Great Osage on the Osage River, the Little Osage upstream, and the Arkansas band on the Verdigris River, a tributary of the Arkansas River. The Osage then numbered some 5,500.
  The Osage and Quapaw suffered extensive losses due to smallpox in 1801-1802. Historians estimate up to 2,000 Osage died in the epidemic.
  In 1804 after the United States made the Louisiana Purchase, they appointed the wealthy French fur trader Jean Pierre Chouteau, a half-brother of René Auguste Chouteau, as the US Indian agent assigned to the Osage. In 1809 he founded the Saint Louis Missouri Fur Company with his son Auguste Pierre Chouteau and other prominent men of St. Louis, most of whom were of French-Creole descent, born in North America.  Having lived with the Osage for many years and learned their language, Jean Pierre Chouteau traded with them and made his home at present-day Salina, Oklahoma, in the western part of their territory.
caption: Shonka Sabe (Black Dog). Chief of the Hunkah division of the Osage tribe. Painted in 1834 by George Catlin
exif: {}