The Osage Peoples
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Traditional Osage culture was typical of many Plains Indians and involved a combination of village-based agriculture and nomadic bison hunting. Other important game animals were deer, bear, and beaver.
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Osage villages consisted of longhouses covered with mats or skins and arranged irregularly about an open space used for dances and council meetings. Tepees were used during the hunting season. Osage life centered on religious ceremonies in which clans were divided into symbolic sky and earth groups, with the latter further subdivided to represent dry land and water. The Osage were remarkable for their poetic rituals. Among them was the custom of reciting the history of the creation of the universe to each newborn infant.
The Osage were the last Native people to camp along the Meramec River before The Louisiana Purchase and their relocation to Oklahoma in 1808. The Osage, and people before them, left pottery, spear and arrow points behind them as evidence of centuries of use of the verdant Meramec Valley.