Osage

The Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma by the mid-17th century. At the height of their power in the early 18th century, the Osages had become the dominant power in their region, controlling the area between the Missouri and Red rivers. They are a federally recognized tribe and based mainly in Osage County, Oklahoma. Members are found throughout the country.

The nineteenth-century painter George Catlin described the Osage as

the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being few indeed of the men at their full growth, who are less than six feet in stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.

                                                 Osage warrior painted by George Catlin

Lewis and Clark reported in 1804 that the peoples were the Great Osage on the Osage River, the Little Osage upstream, and the Arkansas band on the Vermillion River[disambiguation needed ], a tributary of the Arkansas River. The tribe then numbered some 5,500.

At four in the afternoon of June first, 1804, the expedition arrived at the mouth of the Osage River, one of the major Indian trail intersections on the lower Missouri. The explorers recorded the respective tribes' names for themselves, with phonetic transliterations carefully spelled out. They paid attention to linguistic connections among the nations. They noted each tribe's customary homelands, and market-places. They calculated the prospects for fitting each into the larger trade network of the West.¹ The Grand Osages were first on their list; the Little Osages second.

Name

Osage traditions state that the tribe originally called themselves Ni-U-Kon-Ska, which means Little Children (or People) of the Middle Waters. By the late 17th century, the Osage were calling themselves Wah-Zha-Zhe.

 The earliest record of European - Osage contact is a 1673 map by French Jesuit priest and explorer Jacques Marquette. He noted the people he encountered as the Ouchage, his way of expressing the sound of the name with French spelling. A few years after the Marquette expedition, French explorers discovered a Little Osage village and called it Ouazhigi.

 French transliterations of the tribe's name settled on a spelling of Osage, which was also used by European Americans.

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Here you can read a very exiting facts about the culture and religion of Osage:http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Osage_Nation
Having read this peace of information you will know more about this expedition:http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2524