Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/99

 HISTORY OP SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 39 verse and unstable character of their fellows. Many of their chiefs retained their hold upon their men bj' cunning and a practice of all the arts of the political demagogue. Brack- enridge, says of Sans Oreille, chief of the Little Osages, that he was, "as usual with the ambitious among these people, the poor- est man in the nation ; for to set the heart upon goods and chattels was thought to in- dicate a mean and narrow soul. He, there- fore, gave away everything he could get, even though he should beg and rob to procure it : and this to purchase popularity. Such is ambition. Little they knew of this state of society, who believe that it is free from jeal- ousies, from envy, detraction, or guilty am- bition. No demagogue, no Cataline, ever used more art and finesse, ever displayed more policy than this cunning savage. The arts of flattery and bribery by which the un- thinking multitude is seduced, are nearly the same everywhere, and passion for power and distinction seems inherent in human nature." (Brackenridge "Journal," p. 58), In person the Osages were perhaps the most finely developed of any of the Indians of North America. They were tall, above the average height of both whites and Indians. Few of the men were under six feet and the- were large and strong in proportion to their great height. They were comely in appear- ance for Indians, and evoked the admiration of most travellers among them. They pos- sessed great powers of endurance. Nuttall ("Journal," p. 246) speaks of their hunting and foraging expeditions extending for three hundred miles or more, and says that it was not uncommon for them to walk from their camp on the Verdigris river in Arkansas to the trading post on the Arkansas in a single da.v. This is a distance of sixty miles. As we have said, these Indians established themselves on the Osage river in Missouri. They early separated into three bands tin- Great Osages living on the Osage and num- bering at time about one thousand warriors; the Little Osages who dwelt further west, numbering from two hundred and fifty to four hundred ; and the Arkansas band, which settled on the Verdigris, a tributary of the Arkansas river. These last were induced to make settlement there by Pierre Chouteau of St. Louis. One DeLisa had secured from the government of Spain a monopoly of the In- dian trade in Missouri, and Chouteau induced a part of the Osages to emigrate to Arkansas that he might trade with them. While thus the main camps of these Indians were out side the territory of Southeast Missouri as here defined, they had much to do with the historj' of this section of the state, for they roamed over all this territory and were for many years the dread of all the inhabitants. The French were accustomed to deal with the utmost leniency with the Indians, and this policy was inherited by the Spanish when they came into possession here. As a consequence the Indians were not forced to submit to the authority of either government and for years committed many depredations upon the inhabitants. They were especially troublesome in the matter of horse-stealing. Their fondness for horses, as noted else- where, caused them to take possession of good horses without regard to the ownership of them. They had a custom, too, of resenting any intrusion on their chosen hunting grounds, and many a white hunter and trap- per was beaten, his property seized, or de- stroyed, because he was found by the Osages within territory which they claimed as their own. Often, too, these outrages did not stop short of the murder of the luckless hunter or trapper. This was almost certainly the fate