But from these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the United States, viz.: The restriction of our population to some certain limits, and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontiers will, through necessity, be constrained to limit their extent on the west to the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi, while they leave the prairies incapable of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country.
The Osage appear to have emigrated from the north and west; from their speaking the same language with the Kans, Otos, Missouries, and Mahaws, together with their great similarity of manners, morals, and customs, there is left no room to doubt that they were originally the same nation, but separated by that great law of nature, self-preservation, the love of freedom, and the ambition of various characters, so inherent in the breast of man. As nations purely erratic must depend solely on the chase for subsistence, unless pastoral, which is not the case with our savages, it requires large tracts of country to afford subsistence for a very limited number of souls; consequently, self-preservation obliges them to expand themselves over a large and extensive district. The power of certain chiefs becoming unlimited, and their rule severe, added to the passionate love of liberty and the ambition of young, bold, and daring characters who step forward to head the malcontents, and like the tribes of Israel, to lead them through the wilderness to a new land—the land of promise which flowed with milk and honey, alias abounded with deer and buffalo—these characters soon succeed in leading forth a new colony, and in process of time establishing a new nation. The Mahaws, Missouries, and Otos remained on the banks of the Missouri river, such a distance up as to be in the reach of that powerful enemy, the Sioux, who, with the aid of the smallpox, which the former nations unfortunately contracted by their connection with the whites, have reduced the Mahaws, formerly a brave and powerful nation, to a mere cipher, and obliged the Otos and Missouries to join their forces, so that these now form but one nation. The Kanses and Osage came further to the east, and thereby avoided the Sioux, but fell into the hands of the Iowas, Sacs, Kickapous, Potowatomies, Delawares, Shawanese, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Chactaws, Arkansaws, Caddoes, and Tetaus; and what astonished me extremely is that they have not been entirely destroyed by those nations. But it must only be attributed to their ignorance of the enemies' force, their want of concert, wars between themselves, and the great renown the invaders always acquire, by the boldness of their enterprise, in the minds of the invaded.
Their government is oligarchical, but still partakes of the nature of a republic; for, although the power nominally is vested in a small number of chiefs, yet they never undertake any matter of importance without first assembling the warriors and proposing the subject in council, there to be discussed and decided on by a majority. Their chiefs are hereditary, in most instances, yet there are many men who have risen to more influence than those of illustrious ancestry, by their activity and boldness in war. Although there is no regular code of laws, yet there is a tacit acknowledgment of the right which some have to command on certain occasions, whilst others are bound to obey, and even to submit to corporeal punishment; as is instanced in the affair related in my diary of [July 29th], when Has-ha-ke-da-tungar or Big Soldier, whom I had made a partisan to regulate the movements of the Indians, flogged a young Indian with arms in his hands. On the whole, their government may be termed an oligarchical republic, where the chiefs propose and the people decide on all public acts.
The manners of the Osage are different from those of any nation I ever saw except those before mentioned of the same origin, having their people divided into classes. All the bulk of the nation being warriors and hunters—with them these terms being almost synonymous—the remainder is divided into two classes, cooks and doctors; the latter of whom likewise exercise the functions of priests or magicians, and have great influence in the councils of the nation by their pretended divinations, interpretations of dreams, and magical performances. An illustration of this will be better given by the following anecdote of what took place during my stay at the nation, in August, 1806: Having had all the doctors or magicians assembled in the lodge of Ca-ha-ga-tonga, alias Cheveux Blancs, and about 500 spectators, they had two rows of fires prepared, around which the sacred band was stationed. They commenced the tragicomedy by putting a large butcher-knife down their throats, the blood appearing to run during the operation very naturally; the scene was continued by putting sticks through the nose, swallowing bones and taking them out of the nostrils, etc. At length one fellow demanded of me what I would give if he would run a stick through his tongue, and let another person cut off the piece. I replied, "a shirt." He then apparently performed his promise, with great pain, forcing a stick through his tongue, and then giving a knife to a bystander, who appeared to cut off the piece, which he held to the light for the satisfaction of the audience, and then joined it to his tongue, and by a magical charm healed the wound immediately. On demanding of me what I thought of the performance, I replied I would give him 20 shirts if he would let me cut off the piece from his tongue; this disconcerted him a great deal, and I was sorry I had made the observation.
The cooks are either for the general use, or attached particularly to the family of some great man; and what is the more singular, men who have been great warriors and brave men, having lost all their families by disease, in the war, and themselves becoming old and infirm, frequently take up the profession of cook, in which they do not carry arms, and are supported by the public or their particular patron.
They likewise exercise the functions of town criers, calling the chiefs to council and to feasts; or if any particular person is wanted, you employ a crier, who goes through the village crying his name and informing him he is wanted at such a lodge. When received into the Osage village you immediately present yourself at the lodge of the chief, who receives you as his guest, where you generally eat first, after the old patriarchal style. You are then invited to a feast by all the great men of the village, and it would be a great insult if you did not comply, at least as far as to taste of their victuals. In one instance, I was obliged to taste of 15 different entertainments the same afternoon. You will hear the cooks crying, "come and eat"—such an one "gives a feast, come and eat of his bounty." Their dishes were generally sweet corn boiled in buffalo grease, or boiled meat and pumpkins; but San Oriel [Sans Oreille], alias Tetobasi, treated me to a dish of tea in a wooden dish, with new horn spoons, boiled meat, and crullers; he had been in the United States. Their towns hold more people in the same space of ground than any places I ever saw. Their lodges are posted with scarcely any regularity, each one building in the manner, directions, and dimensions which suit him best, by which means they frequently leave only room for a single man to squeeze between them; added to this, they have pens for their horses, all within the village, into which they always drive them at night, in case they think there is any reason to believe there is an enemy lurking in the vicinity.
The Osage lodges are generally constructed with upright posts, put firmly in the ground, of about 20 feet in height, with a crotch at the top; they are about 12 feet distant from each other; in the crotch of those posts are put the ridge-poles, over which are bent small poles, the ends of which are brought down and fastened to a row of stakes about five feet in height; these stakes are fastened together with three horizontal bars, and form the flank walls of the lodge. The gable ends are generally broad slabs, rounded off to the ridge-pole. The whole of the building and sides are covered with matting made of rushes, two or three feet in length and four feet in width, which are joined together, and entirely exclude the rain. The doors are on the sides of the building, and generally are one on each side. The fires are made in holes in the center of the lodge, the smoke ascending through apertures left in the roof for the purpose. At one end of the dwelling is a raised platform, about three feet from the ground, which is covered with bear-skins, generally holds all the little choice furniture of the master, and on which repose his honorable guests. In fact, with neatness and a pleasing companion, these dwellings would compose a very comfortable and pleasant summer habitation, but are left in the winter for the woods. They vary in length from 36 to 100 feet.
The Osage nation is divided into three villages, and in a few years you may say nations, viz.: the Grand Osage, the Little Osage, and those of the Arkansaw.
The Little Osage separated from the Big Osage about 100 years since, when their chiefs, on obtaining permission to lead forth a colony from the great council of the nation, moved on to the Missouri; but after some years, finding themselves too hard pressed by their enemies, they again obtained permission to return, put themselves under the protection of the Grand village, and settled down about six miles off. (See chart.)
The Arkansaw schism was effected by Mr. Pierre Choteau, 10 or 12 years ago, as a revenge on Mr. Manuel De Sezei [Liza or Lisa], who had obtained from the Spanish government the exclusive trade of the Osage nation, by the way of the Osage river, after it had been in the hands of Mr. Choteau for nearly 20 years. The latter, having the trade of the Arkansaw, thereby nearly rendered abortive the exclusive privilege of his rival. He has been vainly promising to the government that he would bring them back to join the Grand village. But his reception at the Arkansaw village, in the autumn of 1806, must have nearly cured him of that idea. And in fact, every reason induces a belief that the other villages are much more likely to join the Arkansaw band, which is daily becoming more powerful, than the latter is to return to its ancient residence. For the Grand and Little Osage are both obliged to proceed to the Arkansaw every winter, to kill the summer's provision; also, all the nations with whom they are now at war are situated to the westward of that river, whence they get all their horses. These inducements are such that the young, the bold, and the enterprising are daily emigrating from the Osage village to the Arkansaw village. In fact, it would become the interest of our government to encourage that emigration, if we intend to encourage the extension of the settlement of Upper Louisiana; but if the contrary (our true policy), every method should be taken to prevent their elongation from the Missouri.