Osage Nation

The Osage Nation (, OH-sayj) (Osage: 𐓏𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓁𐓣𐓤𐓘𐓯𐓣‎, romanized: Wažaže Nikaši, lit. 'People of the Middle Waters') is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma. They are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains historically from the Midwestern United States. The tribe began in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 1620 along with other groups of its language family, then migrated west in the 17th century due to Haudenosaunee incursions. The term Osage is a French version, from eau sage, of the tribe's name, which can be roughly translated as 'calm water'. The Osage people refer to themselves in their Dhegihan Siouan language as (𐓏𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟‎, Wazhazhe, 'Middle Waters'). By the early 19th century, the Osage had become the dominant power in the region, feared by neighboring tribes. The tribe controlled the area between the Missouri and Red rivers, the Ozarks to the east and the foothills of the Wichita Mountains to the south. They depended on nomadic buffalo hunting and agriculture. The 19th-century painter George Catlin described the Osage as "the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being ... many of them six and a half, and others taller than seven feet [198, 213 cm]." The missionary Isaac McCoy described the Osage as an "uncommonly fierce, courageous, warlike nation" and said they were the "finest looking Indians I have ever seen in the West". In the Ohio Valley, the Osage originally lived among speakers of the same Dhegihan language stock, such as the Kansa, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw. Researchers believe that the tribes likely diverged in languages and cultures after leaving the lower Ohio Country. The Omaha and Ponca settled in what is now Nebraska; the Kansa in Kansas; and the Quapaw in Arkansas. In the 19th century, the Osage were...