Life For The Osage Indians
Ava Stanley
Watch Out For The Indians
You may not have realized this but the Osage Indians are like you and I in a way. They do chores, have weapons, and just like us, they do eventually get sick. But, we also have some differences. They wore different clothes, hunted differently, and had very different ceremonies.
Height
The Osage Indians can grow to 6 feet and sometimes 7 feet tall! They usually run up to 60 miles a day. Did you know that they called themselves “The Little Ones’’ even though they were really tall?
Body Painting
Osage Indians put paint on their faces for special occasions or ceremonies. They put patterns of war paint on their faces for battle. For the face painting, everyone could paint their faces and body.
Homes
The Indians lived in houses called wickiups (WIK- ee-ups). A wickiups house was shaped like a dome. It was made from willow or hickory for a frame and tied saplings together with strips of cloth. Then covered that with animal skins or canvas.
Sky and Earth People
The two groups of the Osage Indians are the Sky and Earth people. A dirt road ran east to west. The Sky people lived on the north side of the road and the Earth people lived on the south side.
Clothing
For clothes, the men wore breech cloths with leggings and wore moccasins for footwear. The women wore deerskin dresses and leggings. The women decorated their clothes in beads and ribbons.
Hunting
The Osage went on lots of hunts. In the winter they stayed home. During the hunting, they collected walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, grapes, papaws, roots, and acorns during the cold weather. For meat, they hunted bison, elk, bear, deer, and small game. To eat, the women did the crops, skinning the animals, and preparing the food.
French Traders
In the 1670s, French traders met with the Indians. At first, the Osage didn't like the traders but they soon got along with them. In the 1880s, the United States government started forcing the Indians off their land to move west.
Big Discovery
In 1894, oil was discovered in their reservation land, Oklahoma. They desisted to split the money with each family. Those people were called allottees. The share was called headrights. But there were many greedy people. Some of them weren't fare in deals. There were also Osage men who married Osage women and killed their wives!
Difficulties
In conclusion, the Indians had a life like our own. The Osage had some difficult times but they eventually got through it.