Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/162

1 M) A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. significant names of their chiefs, subscribed to a treaty with the United States. Lewis and Clarke appear to have consid- ered the Rapid, Fall, or Paunch Indians, sometimes also called " MInetares of the Prairies," as belonging to the same family. But all the subsequent accounts agree in assigning to them an entirely distinct language. The southern Sioux consist of eight tribes, speaking four or at most live kindred dialects. Their territory originally extend- ed along the .Mississippi, from below the mouth of the Arkansas to the forty-first degree of north latitude. They were, and still are, bounded on the north by the Dahcotas, on the west by the Pawnees, on the south by the Washitta and Red River tribes, on the southwest by erratic nations. Their hunting- grounds extend as far west as the Stony Mountains ; but they all cultivate the soil, and their most westerly village on the Missouri is in about the one hundredth degree of west longitude. The three most southerly tribes are the Quappas or Arkansas, at the mouth of the river of that name, and the Osages and Kansas, who inhabited the country south of the Missouri and of the river Kansas. Both the Osages and the Arkansas were first seen by the French, in the year 1673, and they always remained in alliance with them. It is not known whether Quappa was the true name of the whole nation, or of only one of its tribes ; and it may be that they are those called Pacahas in the relation of De Soto's expedition. The residue of the Arkansas is now known only by that name (Quappas). They consist of only five hundred souls, and still live on the lower parts of the Arkansa. The Osages, properly Wausashe, were more numerous and powerful than any of the neighbouring tribes, and perpetually at war with all the other Indians, without excepting the Kansas, who speak the same dialect with themselves. They were originally divided into Great and Little Osages ; but about forty- years ago almost one half of the nation, known by the name of Chancers or Clermont's Band, separated from the rest, and removed to the river Arkansa. The villages of those several subdivisions are now on the head waters of the river Osage, and of the Verdegris, a northern tributary stream of the Arkansa. They amount to about five thousand souls, and have ceded a portion of their lands to the United States, reserving to themselves a territory on the Arkansa, south of the thirty- eighth degree of north latitude, extending from the ninety-fifth