And now, a little history lesson by Kerry
And now, a little history lesson by Kerry
You might be disappointed, but Chief Little Bear was not really Chief Little Bear. Long before the arrival of we palefaces, he was known by his native Little Osage name of Me-tso-shin-ca, especially to his companions such as No-pa-wah-la and Pa-tha-hun-kah. And don't go saying it all slowly, like those dashes are commas, ok? He was Metsoshinca. Or as he and his friends signed their names, X.
Here is a description of the Chief by Watson Stewart, a man
that knew him fairly well soon after Neodesha was settled:
Little Bear was a fine appearing man, of large physique, and I
would have felt as safe under his protection as under that of any man. I
regarded him as a man of honor, sincere and honest; he died in the seventies, in
a village near Neodesha, and was buried on the top of a high mound near that
town.
Click this text to read much more about the Chief as told by Watson Stewart
So now, if you just read Mr. Stewart's account, you know a little about the only Little Osage Chief for miles. Sorry, wrong again. The Chiefs friend, Nopawahla, was Second Chief and his friend Pathahunkah was Little Chief. So we really had 3 Little Osage Chiefs and that is about it, right. We already have 2 more than we ever heard of, so that should be it. Done. Finished. All the chiefs.
Oops. I guess we forgot a few miles upstream, huh? The Osage Indians actually had 4 divisions, the other 3 being White Hair's Osage. White Hair, or Pahu-cka, was Principal Chief. Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was named after him. His 3 districts, or 'towns' each had a chieftain. Tawashehe, Beaver and Clermont. Plus a handful of minor chiefs. It seems we, the United States Government, were following the expansion of the West, and buying up land from the more peaceful Indian tribes. So they were slowly being forced West and South by selling their lands. Nobody was really there moving them out (unlike the Nez Perce Cherokee Trail of Tears), so they sort of drifted into town. White Hair and his group came down from counties north of Wilson, and the Little Osage came from the nearby rivers and woods. I am still amazed that with that many Indians running around (almost 4,000 of them, a few hundred of us), that someone would have taken a picture of a few of them. Especially with Chiefs a dime a dozen. But these Indians did not wear the big headdress. That may have been the problem. I still find it hard to believe we have a city formed on an Indian campground and no one took a picture of them for a good 20 years or so.
Now I would have thought that when Neodesha was formed, the Indians were all living up there on Little Bear's Mound. Have you ever walked around up there? Nice place to visit, but a bit rocky. I mean, half of it is a quarry! They liked the very same places we did, down by the rivers and grasslands. Gee, that sort of presented a problem. OK, so eventually we have the Treaty of the Canville Trading Post and after wrangling around, the Osage, including Metsoshinca and White Hair, signed it, we got them to agree to sell the land and the money from the resale of the land put into a trust. Sort of like selling your house on consignment. And they got 6 months to clear out. And Oklahoma is a nice place to live, or should I say, for you to live. White Hair went to Oklahoma and bought land from the Cherokee's.
Mr. Stewart said they were to get $800,000, however they got $300,000 in the Canville Treaty and it was placed in a trust and they were allowed to draw 5% interest off of it per year. And of that, the first $80,000 that came in from the land sales was set aside for a school fund. Considering years later the county courthouse was built for about $30k, that was a considerable sum. And that was the first $80,000 from the sale of the land to the settlers who paid $125 per acre. Mr. Stewart was happy to report that the government sold part of the land for one million dollars after acquiring it for a mere five hundred dollars.
Article 17, inserted last by the lawyers, essentially allowed the government to pick and choose whichever parts of the treaty they liked and discard the rest. The remainder was still in force. As far as I can tell, the treaty was not changed.
Here is an American Indian site which details the
treaty:
TREATY OF CANVILLE TRADING POST
And since it is a bit hard to understand, here is how each
part of it came about:
INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES. TREATY WITH THE OSAGE, 1865.
In Joe Allen's book, Che O-Nee to High Iron, he gives a lot of information on the history of the city. I hope to add information from this and other resources. In the mean time, read pages 18-34 and answer every other question on page 35.
Contents of these pages are expressly my own, and may or may not have a great deal of credibility!