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

2. Osage Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains

c Osage Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains You see the Arkansas [Quapaw], who cannot go hunting on the prairies without having their throats cut by the Osages. They as well as we are obliged to hunt roebuck on the Mississippi, while the Osages make themselves masters of all the hunting country. The Osages, my Father, are at war with all men, white and red, steal the horses, and kill all the white men they find. The white men of Illinois carry goods to them,Ah! my father, if the Osages had only their arrows and they were not given any merchandise, we could soon finish them. —Thomas, Chickasaw Chieftain, 1793 1 Neither the Protestants nor the Roman Catholic missionaries who ventured onto the Osage prairies in the 1820s knew of such charges made against the Osage; indeed they knew little of the people they sought to save. The leaders of their societies heard a brief description presented by the superintendent of Trade, Thomas McKenney, but it is not clear whether that brief bit of information was shared with the missionaries out in the field. Both the New England Protestants and the Flemish Catholics thought the Osage were heathen savages who possessed little worthwhile culture or history.Hence they never really knew whom they were trying to convert. That ignorance, combined with a general lack of interest, hindered their pursuits to bring about any meaningful conversions in Osage lives. 2 When the UFMS missionaries arrived in 1820, the Osage were confronting enormous challenges to their lives. The missionaries’ presence was only peripheral, and although sometimes annoying, it was 23 of little consequence to them. For the first time since they had moved onto the western prairies-plains they were facing a growing threat from two rapidly advancing NativeAmerican frontiers.This was a new and uncomfortable position for the Osage, who had dominated the region since their migration there two hundred years before. In the early seventeenth century a large group of Dhegian-Siouan speakers composed of Quapaw, Osage, Kansa, Omaha, and Ponca people, pressed by the violence of the Beaver Wars, left the eastern forests of the Ohio Valley, migrated across the Mississippi River, and moved north along the Missouri River Valley. 3 The Osage broke away from this larger group and established villages along the Great Plains prairiesneartheheadwatersof theOsageRiver,whereFatherMarquette encountered them. 4 Living along the prairies, the Osage created a new way of life that incorporated their older woodland cultural traits with new elements that better suited their prairie life. They planted familiar crops on the forest edges, and after planting their gardens they left to huntbuffalooutontheshortgrassplainsalongtheArkansas,Cimarron, and Smoky Hill Rivers. Caddoan-speaking peoples, however, occupied these shortgrass plains. North of the Arkansas along the Platte, Republican, and Loup Rivers were the four bands of Pawnee: Republican, Skidi, Tapage, and Grand.Along the Arkansas Valley and south to the Red River were the Pawnee’s Caddoan kin: the Guichitas, Taovayas, Tawakonis, Iscanis, and Kichais collectively known as the Wichita. 5 South of the Red River were the Caddoan Hasinai, Caddohadacho, and Natchitoches tribes often referred to collectively as the Caddo. The Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo were large groups and posed a potential barrier to any Osage expansion west. They also, however, provided great raiding opportunities for the Osage, for the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo villages were occupied by thousands of women and children and were filled with Spanish horses and agricultural products from the village gardens. In the seventeenth century the Osage maintained a brief peace with the western Caddoans. 6 This harmony ended, however, when French traders from Canada came among the Osage in the late seventeenth century, and the prairie-dwelling Osage became eager participants in the growing trade. When they acquired metal tools and muskets, the seventeenth-century peace between the Osage and the Caddoans quickly gave way to forceful Osage expansion, fueled by their new acquisitions. 24 ❙ Chapter Two By the 1680s the Osage were mounted on horses; with the advent of French settlements in Illinois, Missouri, and Louisiana they became better armed and began hunting and raiding in the south and west for goods to trade to the French. 7 Henry Tonty,traveling among the Caddo along the lower Red River, reported Osage raiding for horses in 1698. 8 They began hunting buffalo on the Wichita hunting grounds along the Arkansas and deer in the southern Ozark and Ouachita...