Ni Okašką

Ni Okašką is a name of the Osage people, whose homeland encompassed the river valleys, prairies and wooded hills between the Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. Osage communities cultivated fields near their villages and travelled widely to hunt. Their name for themselves is associated with the waters that frame their country.

French travellers learned of Osage villages on the river later named for them in the seventeenth century. Trade and diplomacy brought the Osage into contact with French settlements, while their hunting grounds extended far beyond any single village. In the early nineteenth century the United States sought treaties with the Great and Little Osage and the Arkansas band. These agreements formed part of a growing pressure on Osage lands as American settlement advanced westward.