WERE THE OSAGES MOUND BUILDERS? 



By Dr. J. F. Snyder, Virginia, Cass Comity, Illinois, 



A reported instance of mound building by the Osage Indians, near 

 the close of the last century, has been cited by numerous writers on 

 American ethnology in proof of the otherwise well-authenticated fact 

 that the custom of erecting mounds over their distinguished dead was 

 practiced by some of our Indian tribes down to comparatively recent 

 times. The instance referred to was related by Dr. Beck, in his "Gaz- 

 etteer of Missouri and Illinois." When writing of the Osage River he 

 says: "Ancient works exist on this river as elsewhere. The remains 

 of mounds and fortifications are almost everywhere to be seen. Oue 

 of the largest mounds in this country has been thrown up on this stream, 

 within the last thirty or forty years, by the Osages, near the great Osage 

 village, in honor of oue of their deceased chiefs. This fact proves con- 

 clusively the original object of these mounds, and refutes the theory 

 that they must necessarily have been erected by a race of men more 

 civdized than the present tribes of Indians." * 



This was written in 1822. In the fall of 1834, Mr. Featherstonhaugh, 

 the noted English geologist, when in the vicinity of St. Louis, Missouri, 

 heard a similar statement in regard to the erection of a large mound, by 

 the Osages, in the same locality, which he relates as follows : "We 

 therefore walked into the country a mile and a half, to a Major Sibley's, 

 to whom I had a letter. - - - He had resided many years amongst 

 the western Indians as agent of the United States, and had been one 

 of the commissioners appointed to lay out the Traders' Road to Santa 

 F6, in New Mexico. We soon got into conversation about the lofty 

 mounds I had seen, when he stated that an ancient chief of the Osage 

 Indians (corrupted by the French from Whashash) informed him, whilst 

 he was a resident amongst them, that a large conical mound (which he. 

 Major Sibley, was in the habit of seeing every day whilst he resided 

 amongst them) was constructed when he was a boy. That a chief of 

 his nation, who was a distinguished warrior, and greatly belo%'ed by the 

 Indians, and who was called Jean Defoe by the French, unexpectedly 



*A Gazetteer of the States of Illinois and Missouri. By Lewis C. Beck. Albany 

 N. y., 18-^:}, p. 308. 



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