All about the ancient tribes
Historically, the tribe lived in bands near the mouth of the Grand River at its confluence with the Missouri River; the mouth of the Missouri at its confluence with the Mississippi River, and in present-day Saline County, Missouri. Since Indian removal, today they live primarily in Oklahoma.
What types of Indians lived in Missouri?
There are no reservations in Missouri; in Kansas, the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie tribes have federally recognized reservations. The Wyandot tribe, whose original lands extended along Lake Ontario, had steadily moved west following a bloody conflict with the Iroquois.
The Missouria. The second tribal group to settle the region we know as Missouri called itself the Niutachi. Its members were also of the Sioux nation but spoke the Chiwere-Siouan tongue, as did such related tribal groups as the Ioway, Otoe, and Ho Chunk.
Chiwere (also called Iowa-Otoe-Missouria or Báxoje-Jíwere-Ñút’achi) is a Siouan language originally spoken by the Missouria, Otoe, and Iowa peoples, who originated in the Great Lakes region but later moved throughout the Midwest and plains. The language is closely related to Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago.
Today a majority of American Indians and Alaska Natives live somewhere other than the reservations, often in the larger western cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles. In 2012, there were over 2.5 million Native Americans, with 1 million living on reservations.
The Cherokee Indians lived in eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and northern Alabama. During the years soon after 1800 many of the Cherokees began moving west on their own. They crossed the Mississippi River and came into the area of southwest Missouri.
American Indian burial mounds abound in mid-Missouri, especially along the blufftops of the river. Many date back 2,000 years or more to what is called the Woodland Period, from about 500 B.C. to about A.D. 900.
During Mississippian time, Missouri was covered in a shallow sea, much like the area near the Bahamas today. The entire sea floor consisted of an underwater forest full of an animal called crinoids, which built tubular calcite shells that rooted the organisms to the sea floor.
The Osage were the largest tribe of the Southern Sioux people occupying what would later become the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.
When it became a state in 1821, Missouri had a Native American population estimated at around 20,000. Native peoples within the state included the Kickapoo, Shawnee, Ioway, Otoe, Delaware, and Osage. Most of these nations had been driven to Missouri from the east by growing numbers of white inhabitants.
The Otoe Indians were big game hunters. During the spring and summer, the Otoe tribe followed the buffalo herds, and their diet consisted mostly of meat. In the fall, the Otoes returned to their villages to harvest corn, beans and squash. In the winter, they ate dried food, hunted small game, and fished in the rivers.
Missouri gets its name from a tribe of Sioux Indians of the state called the Missouris.
Historically, the Otoe tribe lived as a semi-nomadic people on the Central Plains along the bank of the Missouri River in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. They lived in elm-bark lodges while they farmed, and used tipis while traveling, like many other Plains tribes. They often left their villages to hunt buffalo.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The Navajo Nation has by far the largest land mass of any Native American tribe in the country. Now, it’s boasting the largest enrolled population, too.
The New York metropolitan area comprises the largest population of Indian Americans among U.S. metropolitan areas.
List of unrecognized groups claiming to be American Indian tribes