WERE THE OSAGES MOUND-BUILDERS? 595 



and it is reasonably certain that this was the mound pointed out to 

 Major Sibley, by the "old Chief," as the burial place of "Jean Defoe."* 



The singular absence of stone and bone implements in the valley of 

 the Osage can only be explained by the hypothesis that prior to its oc- 

 cupancy by the Osage Indians it was a neutral ground, only occasion- 

 ally visited by hunting- parties of Indians residing on the Missouri, to 

 the north, and on the Arkansas, to the south ; in both of which local- 

 ities evidences of long-continued tenancy before the knowledge of 

 metals are quite abundant. It is altogether probable, too, that when 

 the Osages abandoned their territory on the Missouri and removed to 

 the headwaters of the Osage River — about the close of the seventeenth 

 century — they had secured fire-arms and European implements and 

 utensils, and had adopted many of the methods of life of their French 

 visitors.! 



The manners, customs, and practices of these Indians before their 

 migration to the mounds and streams of Vernon County can now only 

 be conjectured; but there is no reason to doubt that in every respect 

 they were identical with those of other pre-Columbian Indians of the 

 Northwest. We are assured, however, that after that event in their his- 

 tory they no longer employed stone as a material for weapons and tools; 

 and they erected no mounds of earth as monuments over their dead, or 

 for any other purpose. 



Br. Beck, author of the "Gazetteer" before mentioned, may have 

 inspected the Osage Eiver personally before he published the statement 

 that "Ancient works exist on this river, as elsewhere," and that "re- 

 mains of fortifications and mounds are almost everywhere to be seen " 

 there. And, if he did, it is not astonishing that he was led into such 

 an error upon viewing the beautiful, faultless domes and terraces carved 

 upon the great rockj'^ cliffs of the Osage and the Niangua by the ca- 

 pricious elements ; or the isolated natural mounds in the prairie region 

 beyond — enduring monuments, not of a by-gone people, but of a vastly 

 remote glacial force. For when he wrote — sixty-seven years ago — arch- 

 aH)logy had not become a science, and geology was but in its infancy. 



Nor is it surprising that Major Sibley, an intelligent and educated 

 oificer of the Government, who resided lor some years at the base of 

 the great Blue Mound, should have accepted, without doubt or question, 



*The name of this chief is here probably incorrectly writteu. At the period of 

 Lieutenaut Pike's visit, in 1806, Cheveux Blanche was the head chief of the Bi^ 

 Osages, and his son, Jean La Fou — as Pike wrote the name in his journal and official 

 reports — was the second chief in authority. I have thought this orthography may 

 possibly also bo erroneous ; because I I'emember, when a boy at my home near St. 

 Louis, hearing the " eH(/«r7e>-s," recently returned from the Indian country, often 

 mention a chief whom they called Jean Le Fou — " Mad," or "Crazy John" — on 

 account of his peculiar eccentricities. It may be that Jean Defoe, Jean La Fon and 

 Jean Le Fou were identical. 



tAs early as 1G73 Marquette found Indians on the Mississippi, below the Ohio, well 

 supplied with guns, powder, glass bottles, iron hoes, knives, hatchets, etc. 



