The Osage Nation (‘People of the Middle Waters’) is a Midwestern American tribe of the Great Plains. The tribe began in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 700 B.C. along with other groups of its language family, then migrated west in the 17th century due to Iroquois incursions.

The term “Osage” is a French version of the tribe’s name, which can be roughly translated as “calm water”. The Osage people refer to themselves in their Dhegihan Siouan language as (𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒰𐓓𐒷‎, Wazhazhe, ‘Middle Waters’). By the early 19th century, the Osage had become the dominant power in the region, feared by neighboring tribes. The tribe controlled the area between the Missouri and Red rivers, the Ozarks to the east and the foothills of the Wichita Mountains to the south. They depended on nomadic buffalo hunting and agriculture. The 19th-century painter George Catlin described the Osage as “the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being … many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.”

Resources: “The Osage”. Fort Scott National Historic Site. National Park Service. Archived from the original on March 8, 2009. Retrieved February 25, 2009.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Nation