The Osage River and the People It Was Named For
Near Lake Of The Ozarks, Missouri
The lake all around you began as the Osage River, and the river carries the name of the people who once dominated this whole country. They called themselves the Ni U Ko n Ska, which means the People of the Middle Waters. French traders and mapmakers wrote the name down as Osage.
For generations before Missouri was a state, the Osage were the great power of these hills and prairies, controlling the land between the Missouri and the Red rivers and feared by neighboring nations. They were part of the Dhegiha Siouan family of peoples, hunters of buffalo and growers of corn, who according to their own histories had migrated west from the Ohio River valley long before Europeans arrived. But power did not protect them from settlement.
After Missouri became a state in eighteen twenty one, thousands of Osage were pressured westward into what was then called Indian Territory. By eighteen seventy two, they had been forced to give up nearly all of their remaining homeland and relocate to Pawhuska, in present day Oklahoma, where the Osage Nation is centered today. So when you hear the word Ozark, listen closely.
Beneath the tourist name is an older truth. This water, this valley, and this whole region still carry the name of the People of the Middle Waters.
