Antiquities of central and southeastern Missouri / by Gerard Fowke.

  • Fowke, Gerard, 1855-1933.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Antiquities of central and southeastern Missouri / by Gerard Fowke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/170 (page 5)
    The earliest history or tradition we have of this region shows it was inhabited by the Siouan Indians. Unless they may have made their interments in the manner set forth, we must forever remain ignorant concerning the people to whom these graves are due. Under the title “ Omaha Sociology,^’ J. Owen Dorsey says:® When the ancestors of the Omahas, Ponkas, Osages, and several other cognate tribes traveled down the Ohio to its mouth, they separated on reaching the Mississippi. Some went up the river, * * *. The rest went down the river * * *. The tribes that went up the Mississippi were the Omahas, Ponkas, Osages, and Kansas. Some of the Omahas remember a tradition that their ancestors once dwelt at the place where Saint Louis now stands; and the Osages and Kansas say that they were all one people, inhabiting an extensive peninsula, on the Missouri River. It is also said that “on this peninsula was a high mountain;’’ Dorsey supposed the location to be in the northern part of Saint Louis county. Several large mounds are situated on top of the bluffs a short distance above the mouth of the Missouri; one of them is low and flat topped, as if designed for an assembly place, or for the foundation of a large building. Subsequently, these tribes ranged through a territory, including Osage, Gasconade, and other adjacent counties of the state of Missouri, perhaps most of the country lying between the Mississippi and the Osage Rivers. The lowas were near them; but the Omahas say that the Otos and Missouris were not known to them. The Iowa chiefs, however, have a tradition that the Otos were their kindred, and that both tribes, as well as the Omahas and Ponkas, were originally Winnebagos. * * * At the mouth of the Osage River the final separation occurred. The Omahas and Ponkas crossed the Missouri, and, accompanied by the lowas, proceeded [north] * * *.& According to Dorsey’s map, the Osage went up the Osage river, on whose course, near the Missouri-Kansas line, they were living after the Louisiana Purchase. The Kansa Indians followed the Missouri river; and it is along their route, as given by Dorsey, that the stone vaults have been found. The “Indian House,” and the two similar vaults in Pike county (p. 73), all that are known at present away from the immediate neighborhood of the Missouri, may owe their origin to a temporary colony from that stream, whether Kansa or others. Warrensburg (p. 74) is only about 30 miles south of the Missouri. On Marquette’s original map of his voyage of 1673 and later ^ the Osage, Missouri, and Kansa are placed in about the same localities where they are noted by later explorers; that is, at the mouths of the Osage, the Grand, and the Kaw, respectively. Bradbury says:^ The Missouri Indians, from whom the river takes its name, were a prominent tribe of Siouan stock, who appear to have lived originally at the mouth of the river; but oin the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 211, 1881-2, Washington, 1884. b Op. cit.,212. cSee copy in Shea’s The Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, New York, 1852. d Travels in the Interior of North America (in Thwaites’s Early Western Travels, v, 56 (note), Cleve- land, 1904).