22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



river, and also that on both sides of the Missouri as far as the Big Nemaha. 

 In 1833 Catlin found the Oto and Missouri together in the Pawnee country ; 

 and about 1841 they were gathered in four villages on the southern side of the 

 Platte from 5 to 18 miles above its mouth. In 1880 a part of the tribe removed 

 to the Sac and Fox reservation in Indian Territory where they still remain ; in 

 1882 the rest of the tribe, with the remnant of the Missouri, emigrated to the 

 Ponka, Pawnee and Oto reservation in the present Oklahoma, where in 1890 

 they were found to number 400.*" 



According to Major Green, the earliest reports concerning the Oto 

 in about 1634 locate them in the Blue Earth region, Minnesota. Later 

 accounts place them on the Des Moines River in Iowa and finally in 

 the region of the Platte and Weeping Water in Nebraska. He quotes 

 Chittenden to the efTect that as far back as the middle of the eighteenth 

 century the Oto dwelt on the banks of the Platte about 40 miles above 

 its mouth. (Green, 1930, pp. 176-177.) In 1700 Le Sueur makes the 

 Oto appear as almost omnipresent, since his map locates them in 

 southwestern Iowa and on the Platte, and his account speaks of the 

 Rlue Earth River region in Minnesota as the country of the Western 

 Sioux, the Iowa, and the Oto, although he states that the Iowa and 

 the Oto have just gone to establish themselves on the side of the 

 Missouri River in the neighborhood of the Omaha. Both the Iowa 

 and the Oto are reported as cultivating the soil diligently. ( Shea, 1861 . 

 pp. 1 01 -1 07.) However, for a supposedly sedentary tribe, the Oto 

 seem to have been on the jump, since they are said to have been in 

 southern Minnesota, southwestern and northeastern Iowa, and east- 

 central Nebraska all in the same year. Undoubtedly, various bands 

 of the Iowa and Oto are referred to. but the record is interesting, 1 

 since it shows the general state of flux then prevalent among the I 

 Siouan tribes of the Missouri River region. 



Our selected series of maps (table i) indicate that prior to 1701 

 the Oto were for the most part residents of northern Iowa and 

 southern Minnesota. The earlier maps of Marquette and Joliet locate 

 them south of the Pawnee ("Pana") and apparently somewhere 

 near their later historic range, but these very general locations, based 

 on extremely incomplete geographic knowledge and hearsay evidence, 

 cannot be taken too literally. De I'lsle in 1718 and 1722, as well as 



"" McGee, 1897, p. 195. I can find no verification for McGee's and Dorsey's 

 (1886, p. 214) statements, that Marquette positively located the Oto west of the 

 Missouri River (see French, 1850, and Shea, 1852, p. 39). On his map Mar- 

 quette omits the upper Missouri entirely, while the map of Joliet, though it 

 omits the name " Pekitanoiii " or Missouri, locates the Iowa, Omaha, Pawnee 

 (" Pana"), Oto, and certain Illinois tribes in order from north to south, along a 

 small river to the east of the large river corresponding to the lower Missouri 

 on Marquette's map. 



