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Osage [archive]
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Osage
The ancient name of the Osage (o-sa-ga) is NiuKonska, which may be translated as "Little Ones of the Middle Waters." 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 Euro-Americans have used to identify the tribe.
Traditions:
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 traditionally had a very unique social structure 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.
History:
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.
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