FOWKE] ANTIQUITIES OF MISSOURI 5 
The earliest history or tradition we have of this region shows it 
was inhabited by the Siouan Indians. Unless they may have made 
their interments in the manner set forth, we must forever remain 
ignorant concerning the people to whom these graves are due. 
Under the title ‘Omaha Sociology,’’ J. Owen Dorsey says: 
When the ancestors of the Omahas, Ponkas, Osages, and several other cognate 
tribes traveled down the Ohio to its mouth, they separated on reaching the Mississippi. 
Some went up the river, * * *. The rest went down the river * * *. The 
tribes that went up the Mississippi were the Omahas, Ponkas, Osages, and Kansas. 
Some of the Omahas remember a tradition that their ancestors once dwelt at the place 
where Saint Louis now stands; and the Osages and Kansas say that they were all 
one people, inhabiting an extensive peninsula, on the Missouri River. 
It is also said that ‘“‘on this peninsula was a high mountain;”’ 
Dorsey supposed the location to be in the northern part of Saint 
Louis county. Several large mounds are situated on top of the 
bluffs a short distance above the mouth of the Missouri; one of them 
is low and flat topped, as if designed for an assembly place, or for the 
foundation of a large building. 
Subsequently, these tribes ranged through a territory, including Osage, Gasconade, 
and other adjacent counties of the state of Missouri, perhaps most of the country 
lying between the Mississippi and the Osage Rivers. The Iowas were near them; but 
the Omahas say that the Otos and Missouris were not known to them. The Iowa 
chiefs, however, have a tradition that the Otos were their kindred, and that both 
tribes, as well as the Omahas and Ponkas, were originally Winnebagos. * * * 
At the mouth of the Osage River the final separation occurred. The Omahas 
and Ponkas crossed the Missouri, and, accompanied by the lIowas, proceeded 
arth) * > *..6 
According to Dorsey’s map, the Osage went up the Osage river, 
on whose course, near the Missouri-Kansas line, they were living 
after the Louisiana Purchase. The Kansa Indians followed the 
Missouri river; and it is along their route, as given by Dorsey, that 
the stone vaults have been found. The “Indian House,”’ and the 
two similar vaults in Pike county (p. 73), all that are known at 
present away from the immediate neighborhood of the Missouri, 
may owe their origin to a temporary colony from that stream, whether 
Kansa or others. Warrensburg (p.74) is only about 30 miles south 
of the Missouri. 
On Marquette’s original map of his voyage of 1673 and later ° the 
Osage, Missouri, and Kansa are placed in about the same localities 
where they are noted by later explorers; that is, at the mouths of 
the Osage, the Grand, and the Kaw, respectively. 
Bradbury says:¢ 
The Missouri Indians, from whom the river takes its name, were a prominent tribe 
of Siouan stock, who appear to have lived originally at the mouth of the river; but 
an the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 211, 1881-2, Washington, 1884. 
b Op. cit., 212. 
¢ See copy in Shea’s The Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, New York, 1852. 
d Travels in the Interior of North America (in Thwaites’s Early Western Travels, v, 56 (note), Cleve- 
land, 1904). 
