Native American History

Do you dig Prehistoric Native American Artifacts? Are you an arrowhead aficionado? A pottery person? Whether you’re an admirer, collector, or just curious, you won’t want to miss an incredible artifact show happening on Saturday, May 6

Two groups with distinct cultures emerged from our region’s first residents to dominate this land. Worshipful and warlike on an untouched landscape, the Osage and the Missouria did more than live here. For centuries, they ruled.

Robert de La Salle took possession of this Louisiana Territory, which included modern day Missouri, for France and named the area for King Louis XIV.

The last American Indian lands in Missouri were given up on this day. The Kickapoo Tribe surrendered over 2 million acres in Missouri for about one third that much in Kansas. They also got $18,000.

St. Regis Seminary opened. This was the first Roman Catholic institution in America to be founded for the higher education of American Indians.

Dominated by the new US government, Missouri’s indigenous groups struggled against efforts to marginalize them—and sometimes against the indifference of their own young people. The native groups are gone from here now. But they—and their heritage—survive.

A conversation with Heather Payne, Otoe-Missouria Tribe public information officer, based in Red Rock, Oklahoma.

At a time when the nations of Europe were competing for global control of trade and land, the New World offered the ideal opportunity to fill European coffers and expand their empires. The only problem was that someone already lived here.