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Chapter 4 An Empire in the West, 1700–1777 The Quapaws were not the only people living near the Mississippi River who maximized their own French trade at the expense of their enemies to the west. In 1719, the year of La Harpe’s only successful visit to the central Arkansas Valley, the Osage Indians enthusiastically welcomed trader Claude Charles Du Tisné and his interpreter into their towns on the Osage River, north of the Arkansas. As with the Quapaws, the Osages’ welcoming tone changed when their visitors voiced their intention to continue their mission by journeying south to the Taovaya towns of the central Arkansas Valley. After much discussion, the Osages consented to a compromise. They allowed the two men to make the trip but with only three guns, so that the Osages could be fairly confident that Du Tisné was not trading guns to their rivals. The Osages did not stop there. They secretly sent a courier ahead to the Taovayas with an alarming message—two Frenchmen were coming to entrap and enslave them.1 Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Osage people used their relatively large numbers and location between French traders on the Mississippi and the resources of the near western prairies and plains to develop one of the largest trading systems in North America and to wield enormous power over both their Indian and European neighbors. Like the Quapaws, the Osages controlled their relations with Europeans and used them for their own ends. But the Osages chose a different path. The Quapaws enhanced their security in a limited space, employing diplomatic more often than military means and avoiding armed conflict except under the least risky conditions . In contrast, the Osages used their connections with the French trading empire to forcibly expand, taking military risks to gain advantages over their neighbors. When the Spanish took over the administration of Louisiana from the French in the 1760s, the Osages compelled them to continue facilitating Osage dominance and thwarted Spain’s attempts to establish its own rule. The Osages proved far more successful than either France or Spain at building a mid-continental empire. Throughout the eighteenth century, they expanded their native ground and became the region’s primary economic and military power. * * * The earlier history of the Osages has some similarities with that of the Quapaws . Both are Dhegiha Siouan speakers who probably moved west from the Ohio Valley around the same time. As with the Quapaws, some versions of Osage pre-colonial history contend that they were a Hopewellian or Mississippian society east of the Mississippi, perhaps Cahokia. Others believe the Osages had lived in their homes south of the Missouri River for centuries before 1700. Some have suggested that Osage ancestors included the Escanxaques , the people who tried to enlist Juan de Oñate against the Great Settlement in 1601. In any case, in the eighteenth century, the Osages lived along the Missouri and Osage rivers in what is now the state of Missouri. They called themselves Niukonska, the Little Ones of the Middle Waters. Their population totaled about 10,000, much larger than any of their neighbors.2 Osage expansion would dramatically change living patterns of Caddoan peoples in the central Arkansas and Red river valleys. By the late 1700s, the Osages would expel the Taovayas, Tawakonis, Iscanis, Guichitas, and Panis Noirs (most of whom eventually became the Wichitas) from the central Arkansas Valley and the Kadohadacho alliance (a part of the future Caddo Confederacy) and the Kichais from the Great Bend of Red River. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Osages intimidated their neighbors. They must have been terrifying, with their faces painted red, their heads shaved except for one lock pulled straight skyward, most over six feet tall, swooping in on their horses.3 Osage expansion would prove the greatest force of the eighteenthcentury mid-continent, but, as historian David La Vere has pointed out, the Osages began the century with nothing to trade. Osage women farmed, but so did their Wichita neighbors to the southwest. Therefore, they had no interest in giving the Osages the products that they hunted on the Plains, which the Osages could have sold east. Instead of forging alliances with the Osages, these peoples of the central Arkansas Valley blocked Osage access to wild horses and opportunities to trade with or raid the Spanish by attacking the Osages when they hunted along the Arkansas, much as they did the Quapaws . If the Osages did...

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