Unaffected by the Gospel: Osage Resistance to the Christian Invasion, 1673-1906: A Cultural Victory

5. Peaceful Resistance and the Co-option of the Protestants: 1821–1839

f Peaceful Resistance and the Co-option of the Protestants: 1821–1839 . . . The reluctance which this people have hitherto manifested in regard to religious instruction, cannot be supposed to arise form any distinct apprehensions of the nature of the gospel.Perhaps it may,in part,be attributed to the doubtful state of their minds on the great question, whether they will adopt the ways of white people, or persevere in their wandering life. In their conceptions, the arts,government,and religion of white people are viewed as a whole, inseparable from one another. All their traditions and ceremonies lead them to this conclusion. We have always found that much pains are requisite in order topreventthemfromconfoundingfarmingwithreligion. While, therefore, their minds are not made up to adopt our customs, and mode of life entire, they appear to consideritnecessarytoresisttheentranceof lightonanysubject ,and to reject every innovation on the ancient system. —Reverend William B. Montgomery, Missionary Herald 1 The southern Osage did not need Christianity; they needed tools and weapons. They needed muskets and gunpowder to fight the Comanche,Wichita,and Pawnee enemies in the west. They needed those same weapons to resist the Cherokee, Creek, Kickapoo, and Shawnee invaders in the east. They 87 needed tools, for knives, awls, axes, hoes, needles, band metal, pots, and pans had all become a necessary part of Osage life, and they could only get the tools and weapons from the American traders. With the establishment of a military outpost in their lands they could not afford to anger or alienate their trading partners, especially when new enemies were arriving every day. They needed allies, and if their wouldbe allies needed land to farm, the Osage were willing to let them move onto their lands. In 1819 there were few whites in the region, and they were not seen to be as great a threat as were the Natives in the area. Confronted with powerful Indian rivals, the Osage were not interested in hearing about their sinful and degraded condition. It is not clear what the Osage expected from the missionaries.They may simply have wanted a buffer group between them and the Cherokee. For years the Osage had used their downstream kin,the Quapaw,as buffers from the eastern Indian attacks.With the Quapaw decimated by disease and forced from their homes, the Osage were in search of new buffers, and the mission farms could serve as such barriers between the eastern tribes and the Osage villages. The Osage, recent victims of a Cherokee attack (Claremore Mound Massacre in October 1817), were willing to invite whites to settle between the Cherokee in Arkansas and their home in Oklahoma. 2 Earlier, in the 1816 Osage land cession known as Lovely’s Purchase, the Osage claimed that they had ceded the land for white settlement,not for Cherokee villages. 3 In addition to a buffer,the Osage may have expected tangible rewards. They certainly expected more from the missionaries than they received. When Sans-Nerf complained to McKenney that if the southern bands had a mission the northern bands deserved one too,it is unlikely that he was requesting boarding schools and the Christian gospel. What he wanted was a grist mill for their corn and a blacksmith to repair their metal tools, both promised by the federal government in 1808. 4 It seems obvious from their later treatment that Sans-Nerf did not invite the missionaries to come to his land to denigrate his culture and make his people give up their way of life. It seems that the Osage, both in the southern and northern band towns, initially expected tangible rewards from the missions. Big Soldier, a prominent member of the northern towns, was an early visitor to Harmony. When he first visited the missionaries in the fall of 1822 he told them “he was glad we had come, because we would teach them to make corn soft; he also inquired whether any of us knew how 88 ❙ Chapter Five to make powder, and expressed a strong desire to have one of his sons taught that business.” 5 The Osage came to the missions and brought food to share with their visitors, and initially the missionaries fed them. Later, when they convinced a few mixed-blood Osage to send their children to the mission schools, they fed and clothed them.Although a pattern of friendship and alliance based on reciprocity...