Descriptions of the Osages
George Catlin
The famous Indian artist, George Catlin, captured several Osage Indians on canvas at Fort Gibson in 1834. He stated: “The Osages have been formerly, and until quite recently, a powerful and warlike tribe: carrying all their arms fearlessly through to all these realms; and ready to cope with foes of any kind that they were liable to meet. At present, the case is quite different; they have been repeatedly moved and jostled along, …” He noted that despite their reduction in numbers caused by every tribal move, war and smallpox, the Osages waged war on the Pawnee and Comanche. Catlin believed the Osages “ to be the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being few indeed of the men at their full growth, who are less than six feet in stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.”
Louis Cortambert
In 1836, Louis Cortambert, a French writer, observed that the Osage men “ carefully pull the hairs from their faces, even their eyebrows, and shave their heads, leaving on the top a tuft of hair, which terminates in back in a pigtail.”
Victor Tixier
In 1840, a young Frenchman named Victor Tixier described the Osages: “The men are tall and perfectly proportioned. They have at the same time all the physical qualities which denote skill and strength combined with graceful movements.”The Osages loved to decorate themselves, often suspending beads and bones from their ears and tattooing their bodies, Tixler observed: “Their ears, slit by knives, grow to be enormous, and they hang low under the weight of the ornaments with which they are laden.”
