Osage
The Osage Indians are a people with a rich history. They refer to themselves as the Wazhazhe. When Europeans first met the Wazhazhe, using rough French phonetics, they translated the name of one division of the tribe, the Wazhazhe, into the word "Osage." Osage has been the name that the European-Americans have used to identify the tribe.
The Osage also called themselves by their ancient name, NiuKonska, which may be translated as "Little Ones of the Middle Waters." The traditional history of the Osage puts them in the Mississippian culture situated in central and eastern North America, existing for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. The Osage lived in permanent villages along the Missouri and Osage Rivers in Missouri, building hunting camps on the Great Plains. The tribe grew corn, squash, and pumpkins to supplement the buffalo and venison, the mainstay of their diet. The Osage developed a highly complex culture that reflected an intellectual tradition equally sophisticated and imaginative as any in Europe.
The Osage were often described as war-like since they guarded their land with such ferocity. The ability to obtain firearms at an early date gave the Osage a major advantage in their conflicts with those who intruded upon their lands. The Osage occupied a strategic location between the tribes to the west and the advancing European-American frontier. They were able to control the trade between these tribes and the Europeans until the nineteenth century.
The tribe began a period of treaty-making with the United States in 1809. This period lasted until 1870 and resulted in the minimization of the Osage homeland. The Osage gave up over 100 million acres of land during this period. They moved to the new reservation in 1872 and settled in three main areas that corresponded to the ancient divisions of the tribe. The main settlement areas were at Pawhuska, Hominy and Gray Horse. The capitol of the nation was established at Pawhuska and remains there today. This movement to a new reservation fulfilled an ancient prophesy that included the prediction that the new land would provide immense wealth. This prophecy came true and the Osage prospered throughout the twentieth century.
The Osage had a very unique social structure designed to maintain social balance and control. The basic structural units of the tribe were its twenty-four patrilineal clans, called ton-won-gthon or u-dse'-the ("fireplaces"). Clans were both social and religious units. Every clan had a set of zho'-i-the, or "life symbols," which included animals, plants, celestial bodies, and natural occurrences such as storms and thunder. Although tribal clans are commonly referred to by specific names, Osage clans did not have specific names like other tribes, but could be referred to by direct or metaphoric reference to any of their life symbols. As a result, there were different terms or names for every clan. Based on the basic belief that the cosmos is divided into two parts, the Sky (Father) and the Earth (Mother) clans were divided into two groups or "moieties". Nine clans were grouped as the Sky People, and fifteen clans were grouped as the Earth People. Together they symbolically represented all of the forces of the earth.
Each clan was divided into sub-clans, each in turn associated with some particular life symbol of the clan and called by reference to this life symbol. There was some ranking of sub-clans and they frequently differed in their ritual significance. One sub-clan in each clan was designated as the "Sho-kah" sub-clan whose members acted as the official messengers for the clan. Clan membership was of great significance in that an individual was Osage by virtue of membership in a clan. Each clan had its own set of personal names usually, but not always, a reference to one of the clans life symbols. Also, each clan had its own specific ritual in which a clan name was given to each individual.
Clan membership regulated marriage. A person had to marry a member of one of the other or opposing moieties. A member of one of the nine Sky clans had to marry a member of one of the fifteen Earth clans and vise versa. Just like all life was the product of the interaction between the sky and the earth, so every Osage child was the product of a union of the Sky People and the Earth People. |
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