Wylie, H

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Volume 38 | Number 2 Article 4
2-1-1957
Omaha, Oto and Missouri
H Wylie
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Wylie, H. "Omaha, Oto and Missouri." The Palimpsest 38 (1957), 43-45.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol38/iss2/4
Omaha, Oto and Missouri
From the Missouri Valley to the Rocky M oun­
tains ranged the Indians of the plains. Siouan they 
were in the main, though several tribes of Al- 
gonkian stock held part of the territory. In west­
ern Iowa and eastern Nebraska lived the Omaha, 
Oto, and Missouri. The Oto and Missouri, with 
the Ioway, formed the Chimere group of the Sioux 
nation: the Omaha were more closely related to 
the Osage. Once upon a time they were woodland 
Indians but in the course of their westward mi­
grations all had acquired the characteristics of 
the plains type.
According to an ancient tradition related to 
Prince Maximilian in 1833, the band which con­
tinued westward on the great Siouan migration 
after the Ioway halted on the banks of the Missis­
sippi eventually reached the Missouri River where 
they were known as the Missouri. In the course 
of time two of the chiefs quarreled on account of 
the seduction of the daughter of one by the son 
of the other, and the tribe separated. One divi­
sion, the Oto, moved farther up the river.
The Omaha came from the mouth of the Ohio, 
where they were located in the seventeenth cen­
tury. The route of their migration lay up the M is­
souri and Des Moines rivers — hence the name
43
44 THE PALIMPSEST
“upstream people“ or “those going against the 
w ind.“ A t last they found a home in the Missouri 
Valley north of the Platte.
The story of these Indians is not a happy tale, 
being little more than a record of their migrations 
and of their struggles against more powerful ene­
mies. Conquered by Sacs and Foxes, and again 
by the Osage, scourged by successive epidemics 
of smallpox, the Missouri dispersed, some going 
to live with the Ioway, but most of them joining 
the O to in their earth lodges near the Platte. In 
1885 only forty individuals of the tribe remained.
Both M arquette and La Salle refer to the Oto 
as being situated at the headwaters of the Des 
Moines. Later, in order to be near the Omaha, 
they moved to the Missouri River, though it would 
seem this was an unfortunate step for there was 
continual friction between them. On a high bluff, 
the present site of Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, Lewis 
and Clark held a council with fourteen Otoes and 
Missouris. The Indians promised peace and re­
ceived medals and presents in return for which 
they gave the white men watermelons.
In truth they were not war-loving peoples. It 
was the O to who, because of their industrious 
agricultural habits had been invited with the Io­
way by Le Sueur to settle near his Fort THuillier 
on the Blue Earth River in 1700. The Omaha 
were continually evading conflict with the Sioux.
O ther troubles fell upon them. Grasshoppers
OMAHA , OTO AND MISSOURI 45
destroyed their crops. W hisky and smallpox, both 
introduced by the traders, reduced the associated 
tribes to a mere remnant of their former strength.
Lewis and Clark spoke of those they saw as be­
ing almost naked, having no covering except a 
breech clout and a loose blanket or painted buffalo 
robe thrown over their shoulders. Maximilian de­
scribed them as pock-marked, with eyes filmed or 
missing, their faces striped with red, and their 
hair hanging disorderly to the neck.
The Omaha were particularly miserable. "U n ­
protected from their old foes, the Sioux, yet for­
bidden to enter into a defensive alliance with 
them, they were reduced to a pitiable handful of 
scarcely more than a hundred families, the prey 
of disease, poverty-stricken, too cowardly to ven­
ture from the shadow of their tepees to gather 
their scanty crops, unlucky in the hunt, slow to 
the chase, and too dispirited to be daring thieves.
The one outstanding figure produced by these 
tribes was Blackbird, chief of the Omaha. The 
fame of his fearsomeness and cruelty endures to 
this day. He it was who poisoned the men who 
were threatening his power, first effectually seal­
ing the lips of the agent from whom he had ob­
tained the arsenic by giving him a dose while a 
guest at dinner. Depressed finally by his life of 
crime he died of hunger. He was buried seated on 
his favorite horse on a hill overlooking the Missouri.
H elen W ylie


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