Osage Nation

The Osage call themselves Wazhazhe, Middle Waters; Osage is a French rendering. They were one of the few nations to buy their own reservation, about 1,470,000 acres purchased in 1872 with money from the sale of their Kansas lands, and so kept more rights to it, mineral rights among them. Oil found there early in the twentieth century made many Osage wealthy through their headrights, and in the 1920s, the Reign of Terror, outsiders used fraud and murder to take that wealth. In 2011 the nation won a settlement over the government's long mismanagement of its oil funds.

What the plaque says

Osage Nation Originally from the Ohio Valley, the Osages agreed in 1810 to a treaty to relinquish lands in Missouri and relocate along the Neosho River in Kansas. Under the leadership of Chief Pahuska, called White Hair, the Osages lived and hunted on their new reservation where they faced attacks from their rivals, the Cherokees. A trading post was soon established and in 1824 the first Indian mission and school in this area was built. Operated by Presbyterians and associated denominations, it was located about 3.5 miles west of here. The missionaries failed to attract pupils and to convince the Osages to trade a hunting lifestyle for farming. The mission was also unsuccessful in converting the Osages to Christianity and closed in 1829. A Catholic mission established in 1842 found more success than the early mission. During the Civil War, the Osages formed a regiment and helped counter a Confederate attack. The Osages were forced to leave Kansas in 1870. Today the Osage Nation's federal reservation lands (approximately 1.5 million acres) are located in north central Oklahoma. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum — 12 mi
  Chanute's museum of the hometown singer and the jeweler's son who filmed the South Seas, East Africa and Borneo for paying audiences, and of the West African art that now shares their building.
• Big Brutus — 28 mi
  A 16-story electric coal shovel parked in 1974 where it stopped digging, among the flooded strip pits and reclaimed grassland of the Cherokee County coal field.

More markers nearby

• Osage Catholic Mission — 7.7 mi
• The Legend of Greenbush — 16 mi
• Boyhood Home of General Funston — 24 mi
• Opening of the Mid-Continent Oil Field — 27 mi