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Siouan peoples who migrated from the Atlantic coastal region and settled in the central portion of the North American continent long before the arrival of Europeans are now known as Osage. Because the Osage did not possess a written language, their myths and cultural traditions were handed down orally through many generations. With time, only those elements deemed vital were preserved in the stories, and many of these became highly stylized. The resulting verbal recitations of the proper life of an Osage—from genesis myths to body decoration, from star songs to child-naming rituals, from war party strategies to medicinal herbs—constitute this comprehensive volume. Osage myths differ greatly from the myths of Western Civilization, most obviously in the absence of individual names. Instead, “younger brother,” “the messenger,” “Little Old Men,” or a clan name may serve as the allegorical embodiment of the central player. Individual heroic feats are also missing because group life took precedence over individual experience in Osage culture. Supplementing the work of noted ethnographer Francis La Flesche who devoted most of his professional life to recording detailed descriptions of Osage rituals, Louis Burns’s unique position as a modern Osage—aware of the white culture’s expectations but steeped in the traditions himself is able to write from an insider’s perspective.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, “one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NOW A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE “A shocking whodunit…What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?”—USA Today “A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery.” —The Boston Globe In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!
Louis Burns draws on ancestral oral traditions and research in a broad body of literature to tell the story of the Osage people. He writes clearly and concisely, from the Osage perspective. First published in 1989 and for many years out of print, this revised edition is augmented by a new preface and maps. Because of its masterful compilation and synthesis of the known data, A History of the Osage People continues to be the best reference for information on an important American Indian people.
The Osage empire, as most histories claim, was built by Osage men’s prowess at hunting and war. But, as Tai S. Edwards observes in Osage Women and Empire, Osage cosmology defined men and women as necessary pairs; in their society, hunting and war, like everything else, involved both men and women. Only by studying the gender roles of both can we hope to understand the rise and fall of the Osage empire. In Osage Women and Empire, Edwards brings gender construction to the fore in the context of Osage history through the nineteenth century. Edwards’s examination of the Osage gender construction reveals that the rise of their empire did not result in an elevation of men’s status and a corresponding reduction in women’s. Consulting a wealth of sources, both Osage and otherwise—ethnographies, government documents, missionary records, traveler narratives—Edwards considers how the first century and a half of colonization affected Osage gender construction. She shows how women and men built the Osage empire together. Once confronted with US settler colonialism, Osage men and women increasingly focused on hunting and trade to protect their culture, and their traditional social structures—including their system of gender complementarity—endured. Gender in fact functioned to maintain societal order and served as a central site for experiencing, adapting to, and resisting the monumental change brought on by colonization. Through the lens of gender, and by drawing on the insights of archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and oral history, Osage Women and Empire presents a new, more nuanced picture of the critical role of men and women in the period when the Osage rose to power in the western Mississippi Valley and when that power later declined on their Kansas reservation.
The grandson of an Osage Indian, author Louis Burns wrote this primer to help persons of Osage descent trace their paternal lineage and to introduce researchers to Osage culture and the nuances of its language. The book opens with a discussion of the Osage dispersion from Missouri to Oklahoma and Kansas from about 1800 to 1870. Mr. Burns provides very helpful maps showing the concentration of the various tribal bands in each state. Next comes a summary of the richest sources of 19th-century Osage heritage, namely, Jesuit records, a great source of information concerning baptisms, marriages and interments; U.S. Government Annuity Rolls; and Osage Mission records, the best source of Osage family data. The aforementioned is followed by a list of tribal towns, as extracted from Jesuit records, and a list of Osage bands as found in the Annuity Rolls of 1878. When these sources are used in conjunction with the author's detailed listing of clans and their members, which furnishes names in both phonetic Osage and English, researchers stand a good chance of tracing their Native American heritage from about 1800 to the present. The balance of this carefully crafted volume focuses on aspects of the language, some knowledge of which is indispensable for successful research. Featured are an index to Osage names in Osage and in English, a listing of and indexes to kinship terms, a critical pronunciation key to Osage, and a conversion table for Osage Indian syllables. Mr. Burns' seminal work concludes with a bibliography of tribal literature.
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE * Named a Best Mystery and Thriller Book of all Time by Time A haunting epic following a Native American government official who investigates the murder of Grace Blanket: an Osage woman who was once the richest person in her territory until the greed of white men led to her death and a future of uncertainty for her family. When rivers of oil are discovered beneath the land belonging to the Osage tribe during the Oklahoma oil boom, Grace Blanket becomes the wealthiest person in the territory. Tragically, she is murdered at the hands of greedy men, leaving her daughter Nola orphaned. After the Graycloud family takes Nola in, they too begin dying mysteriously. Though they send letters to Washington DC begging for help, the family continues to slowly disappear until Native American government official Stace Red Hawk ventures west to investigate the terrors plaguing the Osage tribe. Stace is not only able to uncover the rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder that led to the deaths of Grace Blanket and the Greycloud family, but also finds something truly extraordinary—a realization of his deepest self and an abundance of love and appreciation for his native people and their brave past.