Utsehta

Utsehta is a name for the Little Osage, one of the principal historic divisions of the Osage people. Their villages lay in the river country of western Missouri, near the Little Osage River and the settlements of the Great Osage. They cultivated fields and hunted in the surrounding prairie and woodland, maintaining ties with other Osage communities.

French traders formed relationships with the Osage during the eighteenth century, exchanging goods through a network that reached the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In 1808 the Little Osage joined the Great Osage and the Arkansas band in a treaty with the United States. Their leaders signed as representatives of distinct communities, whose villages and hunting grounds had long formed part of the Osage homeland.