Like their northern neighbors the Kansa, the Osage already inhabited parts of Kansas at the time of European contact, although their main settlements were in western Missouri. They likely had migrated to the region from the Ohio River Valley centuries before to escape the expanding Iroquois Confederacy. Also like the Kansa, the Osage practiced a mixed economy of farming and hunting. Women cultivated corn, beans, and squash in river valleys and gathered nuts, roots, and fruit, including wild persimmons. Men ventured onto the Plains to hunt bison, but they also stalked and snared woodlands game like elk, deer, bear, and beaver, as mentioned in the original text.

The Osage lived in villages of longhouses, which were timber-framed and covered with reed mats, bark, or animal skins. By the 18th century, these villages served as important hubs that connected eastern and western tribes in elaborate trade networks. European fur traders who entered the region found alliances with the Osage essential since the tribe controlled many of the navigable waterways in the area, including significant portions of the Missouri River.

Although the Osage had established a mostly positive relationship with the French in the early 1700s, their interactions with Europeans and Euro-Americans soured over the following century, in particular following the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Taking advantage of its newly acquired territory, the U.S. began forcing eastern tribes westward in the early 19th century. Many of these removed Indigenous peoples settled on Osage hunting grounds, which brought them into direct conflict with the Osage who saw them as invaders. The Osage-Cherokee Wars were a particularly violent outcome of U.S. removal policies: in 1817, more than 80 Osage men, women, and children died at the hands of the Cherokee during the Massacre at Claremore’s Mound.

During these years, the U.S. also forced the Osage to sign a series of land cession treaties, which drastically reduced their holdings in what are now Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In 1825, they regrouped on the Osage Diminished Reserve in Kansas, a 50 by 150-mile strip.  This move brought new challenges—not only from White missionaries who were determined to change tribal culture, but also from western tribes who now viewed the Osage as invaders. As discussed in the original text, the Osage engaged in extensive warfare with Plains peoples like the Comanche and Pawnee in the mid-19th century.

Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, white settlers poured into Kansas and often squatted on Osage land. Rather than remove these interlopers, the federal government compelled the Osage to sign further land cession treaties in the 1860s. Finally, Congress ratified the Drum Creek Treaty in 1870, which forced the tribe to relocate to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

Like much of the acreage set aside for Indigenous people by the federal government in the late 19th century, the Osage reservation was seemingly barren, undesirable land. In 1897, however, prospectors discovered oil on the reservation. After the federal government allotted Osage lands in preparation for Oklahoma statehood in 1907, each enrolled Osage received a headright to oil production royalties. As discussed in the original text, these royalties made the Osage wealthy, especially as the oil market expanded with industrialization and the mass adoption of new technologies like automobiles. In 1923 alone, the tribe earned more than $30 million—the equivalent of more than $400 million today.

Not mentioned in the text, however, is the way that some White Americans in Oklahoma endeavored to profit from Osage wealth. In 1921, the federal government passed a law that required courts to appoint “guardians” to supervise the financial assets of each Osage of half-blood or more in ancestry. This law was based on the racist assumption that Indigenous people were incapable of managing their own affairs. Many local White lawyers and businessmen took advantage of the ruling to steal Osage land, headrights, and royalties. Between 1921 and 1925, more than 60 wealthy full-blood Osage died under suspicious circumstances, leaving intermarried White men or other “guardians” to inherit their rights. Most of these murders went unsolved. After a federal investigation revealed extensive corruption in the Osage guardianship program, Congress passed a new law in 1925 that prohibited non-Osage from inheriting headrights.

Today, the Osage Nation includes more than 20,000 enrolled citizens, who continue to pass down headrights to tribal descendants.  In the early 21st century, the Osage Nation launched a lawsuit against the United States for mismanaging its trust funds and mineral resources. The federal government settled the litigation in 2011, providing the Osage with $380 million in compensation and promising to institute new procedures to protect tribal assets in the future.