The Osage governed themselves village by village. Each had its peace chiefs from the two grand divisions, the Tzi-zho or Sky People and the Hun-ga or Land People, its war leaders, and the elders called the Little Old Men, who kept the customs. No single chief spoke for all of them. In the 1790s the Big Osage town stood in present Vernon County, near the Osage River, and its hereditary peace chief was Clermont.
Traders and a title
In 1795 Spain gave the St. Louis merchants Auguste and Pierre Chouteau a monopoly on the Osage trade, and they built a post near the Big Osage villages. Pierre spent long seasons there and worked village politics for the business. Clermont resented it. Chouteau backed Clermont's rival and kinsman, Pawhuska, white-headed eagle, whom the French called Cheveux Blancs and the Americans White Hair.
When Clermont died around 1796, White Hair claimed to be head chief of all the Osage, and the Chouteaus had Spain confirm the title. Clermont's son, also Clermont, said the peace chief's office was his, and he and his followers left to join a breakaway band on the Arkansas River, the first of many to go. In 1804 Pierre Chouteau took White Hair to Washington, where Thomas Jefferson accepted him as head chief, though the title did little for him at home.
Signatures
The United States made use of him anyway. In November 1808, after a speech the State Historical Society's encyclopedia calls abjectly humble, White Hair signed the Fort Osage treaty giving up most of the Osage homeland in Missouri and Arkansas. Clermont II boycotted the council and refused to move his people to the fort, and when officials insisted he agreed to the revised treaty of 1809 while denying he had sold any land. Governor Meriwether Lewis called his band hostile and invited its enemies to attack it.
The Orator
The Little Osage had their own voices. Big Soldier, a war leader born about 1773 near the Missouri in present Saline County, was called the Orator. He generally spoke for the treaties, and generally told officials when they broke them. He told the factor George Sibley that the Americans were afraid of Chouteau and dared not oppose him.
White Hair died around 1809, and his son took the name and the role of government chief. In 1822, the year the trading house at Fort Osage closed, the son signed a treaty releasing the government from its promises of 1808. In 1825 he signed the treaties that gave up what the Osage still held in Missouri and granted a road through the rest for the Santa Fe trade. At the Chouteaus' urging he moved his village to the Neosho in present Kansas.
In 1837 Missouri militia attacked hunting parties of Osage, Shawnee and Delaware still in the state and drove them out. Clermont's band on the Arkansas agreed to removal in 1839.