CHAPTER IV

GRAND OSAGES AND HARMONY MISSION -- HOME OF THE OSAGES -- CHARACTERISTICS -- FAILURE OF MISSION -- PIKE'S EXPEDITION -- LOCATION -- RECENT OBSERVATIONS -- THEIR RELIGION -- FIRST MARRIAGE IN OSAGE COUNTRY -- LAST OF HIS LINE

In connection with Harmony Mission, the location, character, and general conduct of the Grand Osages becomes interesting; and in a history of Bates county, something must be said of these original occupants of this fair country. We have elsewhere shown that when history took note of them they occupied the vast territory between the Missouri and the Arkansas rivers north and south, and from the mouth of the Osage river as far west as the country was known to white men. But not much was known of them in this section of Missouri until the expedition of Gen. Zebulon B. Pike, who visited this section in 1806, one hundred and twelve years ago. At that time this was an unexplored region except so far as it may have been known to the French-Canadians, and the half-breed voyageurs, hunters, and trappers. The Osages were a restless, vagrant, nomadic people. They lived in temporary villages easily moved, or easily rebuilt, after the abandonment of a village. They roamed the country over during the hunting season and lived in so-called villages in considerable numbers only in the winter season. Often when afflicted with contagious disease whole villages would suddenly remove to some other locality. From all accounts the Osages were among the most intelligent and best developed physically of any of the numerous tribes which inhabited this country. They were not a fierce and war-like tribe; yet they were brave and strong in war when so engaged with other tribes. So far as white men were concerned they were not hostile, and always disposed peaceably towards the whites. Mentally and morally they never had risen much above the average Indian tribe. When the missionary came among them they treated them kindly and the chiefs and more elderly among them expressed great desire to learn the ways and life of the white people -- their methods of agriculture, the making of tools, and farm implements, and seemed disposed to adopt the white man's life. But their moral darkness was complete, from our viewpoint, and the Missionaries at the numerous stations found it very difficult to make any progress with them in a religious or educational way. It cannot be said historically that the Mission schools were in any substantial sense successful, though they may have done some good. All the evidence obtainable of results at Harmony Mission school in this county go to show that the ten years' earnest effort that was put forth in their behalf was poorly rewarded. Indeed, it may be said that the school was a flat failure.

When General Pike came up the Osage river in the fall of 1806 according to his report, he found one of the principal Osage villages near the junction of the Marmiton and the Little Osage river, which was five or six miles south and four or five miles west of Harmony. He never explored what he called the "north fork" of the Osage, or the Marais des Cygnes, and did not know whether an Osage village existed on the Marais des Cygnes river very near where Harmony station was established in 1821, about fifteen years after he passed that way on his expedition to the West. It does not seem reasonable that the intelligent Missionaries seeking to preach the gospel to them and to establish a school for their children, would have located Harmony ten or twelve, or as some early writers have said, fifteen miles away from the principal Osage village. Our best investigation leads to the belief that the body of the Grand Osage lived in 1821, on the high lands very near the site of Harmony -- the principal village being within a mile or two of the school. Nor does it seem reasonable that the chiefs, with full knowledge of the purposes of the Missionaries would have endorsed or acquiesced in the choice of a site made by the Missionaries before the arrival of the chiefs and warriors from the hunt, as it seems they did if it were twelve or fifteen miles from the principal village of the tribe. This view is confirmed by tradition and by the oldest and best informed citizens now living, who unite in saying that they always understood that the principal Osage village was on the high land just north of the present village of Papinsville, and only a mile or two to the east of Harmony site. This is fortified by a letter written by Mr. George Sibley from Fort Osage, old Ft. Clark, on the Missouri river, dated October 1, 1820, less than one year before Harmony was located, (page 203, Morse's "Report on Indian Affairs") the second paragraph of which reads, "The Great Osages, of the Osage river. They live in one village on the Osage river seventy-eight miles (measured) due south from Fort Osage. I rate them at about one thousand two hundred souls, three hundred and fifty of whom are warriors and hunters, fifty or sixty superannuated, and the rest are women and children." At that time he may well have referred to the Marais des Cygnes as the Osage, or a continuation of the Osage river, as the name Marais des Cygnes river had not appeared upon any explorer's or official map, and did not so appear for some years later. Mr. Sibley had been in charge of Ft. Osage prior to the War of 1812, when it was abandoned for a time, and he returned there when it was re-established. The government survey of the Osage nation boundary line, running south from Ft. Osage, to the Osage river, was made by a Mr. Brown in 1816, and George Sibley, a government officer, doubtless knew what he was talking about when he wrote the letter on October 1, 1820, and said the Osage village was seventy-eight measured miles directly south from where he was then writing. Our investigation shows that seventy-eight miles measured directly south from Ft. Osage (now the town of Sibley, in Jackson county, Missouri,) will not cross the Osage river at any point but will reach as far south as Harmony or possibly a little further; and Rand, McNally & Co., the map makers of Chicago, say: "Papinsville is seventy-seven and one-half miles from Sibley (old Ft. Osage) in a straight line and about two miles above the mouth of the Marais des Cygnes river where it enters the Osage river."

David W. Eaton, now with the United States Department, a man familiar with government surveys, in a letter to the author says that: "It is sixty miles from Sibley to the standard line just south of Butler," between Mt. Pleasant and Lone Oak townships; and by actual count of the sections south of that standard line it confirms the distance stated by Rand, McNally & Co. All which goes to prove that the "one Osage village" as stated by George Sibley was north of the Osage river in 1820-21, and within the present limits of Bates county; and this all corroborates the knowledge of our oldest inhabitants and the traditions coming down to us from reasonably trustworthy sources.

This is historically important because of the prevalent view of historians who have written about the Osage. They have all taken their cue from Pike's report and map. Even Mr. Coues' notes on Pike are at fault in this particular. It is not disputed here that General Pike found a Great Osage village where he indicates it on his official map, nor that Chief White Hair resided at a village in that vicinity, in 1806 and afterward. But the contention that in 1820-21, and thereafter, until the Osage moved further west, under the treaty of 1825, the "one Osage village" and the body of the tribe, lived north of the Osage and northeast of the Marais des Cygnes river, is historically correct and sound.

The author recently visited the site of Harmony Mission in company with J. N. Barrows of Rich Hill, who was born within a mile and a half of Papinsville in 1847, and who as a boy drank from the great well digged by the Missionaries at Harmony, and ate apples from the trees they planted there, and we walked over the very sites of the log cabins and the great school building, all of which he remembers having seen before destroyed or removed. Nothing remains to mark the site except a large sink hole where the well once was (doubtless still is if cleaned out), and stumps of large black locust trees planted by those God-fearing men. Bits of crockery and glass, lie scattered about and a few brick-bats.

The location is all that was described in the "Journal" and in the letters of the Missionaries. The soil is not so good about the immediate location as they thought it, and the stone coal referred to by some of them is a very thin stratum of poor coal outcropping at the very bottom of the river. The timber to the east and to the west is still there in limited quantities. We did not learn where the dead who died there lie buried, or whether any stone marks the resting place of the faithful who died in that consecrated work.

Harmony was the first settlement in what is now Bates county. Forty-one made up the family that went aboard the keel boats at Pittsburg on April 19, 1821, thirty-nine of them arrived at Harmony Station August 25th of the same year. After about eleven years of habitation, and fruitless labor, the Mission was abandoned and the living scattered to the four quarters of the country. Dr. Amasa Jones established a home near old Germantown, Henry county, and died there at a ripe old age, full of honors and usefulness. Dr. W. C. Requa came up from Union Mission and settled in Lone Oak township a few miles north of Harmony, reared his family and died there in 1886 at the ripe old age of ninety-one. But the story of these, and other worthies of the pioneer age of our county, will be found elsewhere in this volume.

It seems to be generally agreed by the writers that the Osages universally believed in a God whom they called the Great Spirit. But it seems also that their conception of a God came from the manifestation of the forces of Nature as exemplified in the storm and lightning. That which they could not understand they attributed to the Great Spirit. But there is no evidence that they had any concept of a God of love and care. Hence, they feared the Great Spirit, because they recognized in it the power to injure and destroy. Their form of worship was indefinite and variant with the customs or whims of the few old men who were entrusted with religious secrets. Only a few old men were custodians of the religion and traditions of the tribe; and they transmitted both to younger men only after they had accomplished some exploits which, in the opinion of the old men, entitled them to receive such instructions. It may be safely said that the Missionaries at their several stations, after long years of patient efforts, and faithful teaching, made little impress on young or old. They were simply incapable of comprehending intellectually the teachings of Jesus as presented by the Missionaries, and morally they could not be affected by teaching or preaching. In fact the Christian God was to them unthinkable, and the doctrines of the Christ so foreign to every instinct, intuition and tradition of the race that it was impossible to make any serious or lasting impression upon the mind and heart of even the young. They believed, in a sense, in rewards and punishment beyond this life. It is clear they believed in immortality -- in a life beyond death here. This is shown in the universal custom of burying with the deceased the things he owned and loved on earth, so that when he arrived at the "happy hunting ground" --which seemed to be their conception of Heaven beyond -- he would have all the things necessary to continue the enjoyment of them over there. This is a very beautiful though child-like thought. Washington Irving relates a story of the death of a beautiful daughter of a warrior. She was devotedly attached to a pretty pony, and when she died the pony was killed and buried with her so that she should have her pretty pony over there. It is a touching story and it fairly presents their customs and beliefs in the Hereafter. Irving had an Indian guide, hunter, and interpreter, whose name was Beatte, and we cannot forbear quoting one paragraph from Irving's "Tour of the Prairie":

"The Osage, with whom Beatte had passed much of his life, retain their superstitious fancies and rites in much of their original force. They all believe in the existence of the soul after its separation from the body, and that it carries with it all the mortal tastes and habitudes. At an Osage village in the neighborhood of Beatte, one of the chief warriors lost an only child, a beautiful girl, of a very tender age. All her playthings were buried with her. Her favorite little horse, also, was killed, and laid in the grave beside her, that she might have it to ride in the land of spirits."

Thus we see that their religion was full of the human; that it was just what might be expected to prevail among the children of the forest and prairie. We have no reason to say they did not get comfort and hope from their beliefs, even as we are comforted and made hopeful by our beliefs. At least their view of the life of the soul beyond was so strong in the Osage that the devoted Missionaries could not shake them or get them to accept the Christian view. Hope leads to many beliefs, yea, to what we call convictions. The very soul of man hungers for a life beyond this. It is the most appealing thought in the world to the old -- to those who approach the end in sadness and decrepitude. Knowing that he is going man rebels at the idea that he is to be blotted out. He naturally indulges the story that the boatman on the Styx must land him somewhere on the other shore; and he hopes to continue life over there with friends under more pleasurable environment than was his lot on this side. And it has always appeared to me that the very poor, the lame, the halt, the blind, the unfortunate, on this side, must have, in the nature of the mind, a stronger hope and conviction and certainty about the matter than those more blessed in this world. Hence, the eternal appeal of the Christ doctrine and the Christ promises to the poor, the meek and the humble.

So whatever we may think of the heathen Osages we cannot deny to ourselves a certain respect for their religious conceptions and customs. They are beautiful, tender and sincere. Who among us is competent to say certainly how far or in what respect their customs, beliefs and philosophy were wrong?

In conclusion of this subject we quote the following excerpt from a letter of Rev. E. Chapman to the domestic secretary, March 4, 1822 (from Union), discussing the difficulties of learning the Osage language: "There are no adequate interpreters, the most skillful are ignorant of it, except so far as relates to trade and common domestic business. Nothing, or very little, that relates to their devotion or superstitious notions and practices is understood by the interpreters, or even by most of their chiefs, warriors and common people. This knowledge is confined to two or three old men in each village. These preserve and communicate part of their doctrines of religion and traditions from time to time to those who can pay sums proportioned to the importance of their lessons, after they have performed such a number of exploits as will entitle them to this privilege. The language which the interpreters have acquired is such as is used by women and the most degraded of the community with whom they have associated, and theirs is a different dialect from that which is used by the majority, and the most respectable part of the nation. I have never been able by the help of an interpreter to communicate divine instruction."

Although the Missionaries came to Harmony a year after the Missionary family was sent up the Arkansas river, to Union, Harmony in Bates county, Missouri, is entitled to the credit and honor of the first wedding solemnized in all that vast territory known as the Osage country, although the groom came from Union station. On the 21st of August, Reverend Chapman and Brother Fuller arrived from Union Station. This was before all the family had removed from the boats on the Osage river to Harmony Station on the Marais des Cygnes, and the family was living in tents at Harmony -- those who had left the boats. On Lord's day, September 19th, the annals show that they "held public worship under the shade of some oak trees. Brothers Dodge and Prixley preached here, and Brother Montgomery at the boats." But on August 25, they had finished unloading their boats and all the family had left the boats and were dwelling in tents at Harmony. This is the last mention of the boats and it is not recorded what disposition was made of them; but the boats never ascended the Marais des Cygnes river to Harmony Station, and a reasonable presumption is that they were sold to traders and returned to St. Louis. On Lord's Day, August 26, 1821. Brother Chapman, of Union, preached at Harmony in the morning and Brother Dodge in the afternoon; and at the close of the exercises they were visited by a number of Indians. Nearly everybody was down with the fever and ague; and the next day the annal reads: "The chastisement of the Lord is upon us."

Three days later, on September 1st, the announcement of the engagement of Brother Fuller and Sister Howell was recorded in these words: "Brothers Chapman and Fuller from the Union Mission are still with us. Sister Howell is about to leave us." You will note that this is only five days after the removal from the boats, and only ten days after the arrival of Brother Fuller. So that it may be concluded that their wooing in the wild, primeval forests of the Marais des Cygnes must have been beautiful, rapid and satisfactory to the love lorn twain. And we can conceive of few situations better adapted to stir the heart and make its emotions more responsive to earnest words of love. The record indicates that the brave groom had come a long journey pony- back from Union across the virgin prairie to supply, if he could, the much-needed "female" help at Union; and the result shows that he lost little time in the pursuit of his object. Miss Howell of Baltimore, educated, refined, dominated by the Mission spirit, of uncertain age -- at least the record does not disclose it; new to her environment in the wilderness of the heathen Osage, possibly was touched by a natural loneliness born of the forests and became an easy prey to the earnest appeals of Brother Fuller for an actual as well as a soul mate, and accepted him on the spot -- we do not mean the spot where Harmony was measured off by the chiefs; for it may have been at some other spot up or down the beautiful Marais des Cygnes or over on the Great Osage, miles away, in some sylvan retreat removed some hundreds of miles from the hearing of any curious white ears. It requires little imagination to see the devoted couple during the brief days of their wooing strolling in the forests or out upon the rolling prairies in those early autumn days, hand in hand, enjoying the surroundings just as God had made them and all unmarred by the trample of human feet, except such slight effect as the occasional passing of the stalking or sulking savage may have left behind. It must have been ideal for a serious courtship, and we indulge the pleasant thought that the cultured Miss Howell surrendered easily amidst such appealing, prompting scenes. "The groves were God's first temples, ere man learned to hew the shaft and lay the architrave," and hence Brother Fuller and Sister Howell must have spent sweet and tender hours in God's temple and as results seem to indicate, with God's approval.

On the afternoon of September 2, the Lord's Day, Brother Fuller and Sister Howell were married. Brother Dodge officiating, presumably in the presence of the whole Missionary family able to be up on that occasion; and on September 11, accompanied by Brother Chapman, they departed a-horseback on a honeymoon trip to their future home at Union, some hundred and fifty miles away, over a treeless and trackless prairie. It must have all been very romantic, and a little wild and weird for the accomplished bride so lately from the cultured circles of beautiful Baltimore. Her name was Eliza but it does not appear what was the Christian name of Brother Fuller. She was one of the five "adult" Misses in this interesting family composed of "ten adult males, fifteen adult females, and sixteen children." Having left Bates county after so short a sojourn we cannot follow her and her mate to other fields of labor for the Lord; but it is assumed they lived "happily ever since."

The historic fact of this first wedding of the then great and unexplored West is important and worthy of record, if for no other reason, because it was solemnized and celebrated within the confines of Bates county, according to Christian customs, in this, the then heathen land; and Brother Dodge, superintendent of the Great Osage Mission, in a letter announcing the marriage of the brethren at Union, among other things says: "The circumstances of the connection formed between Brother Fuller and Sister Howell, may at the first moment surprise you, on account of their short acquaintance; but on a second reflection you may view it as one of the features of Missionary enterprise which marks the present day. Under all circumstances we all consider it the plain dictate of Providence." The "Journal" of the Union Mission says: "We would view the hand of Providence in forming this connection, and be thankful for some additional female assistance, not doubting that the board will approve what has taken place," and we presume it did, as we did not find any investigation of the matter recorded in the minutes of the next annual meeting of the board.

There was a tradition among the Great Osages of a long and ancient line of chiefs which was lost by an incident which occurred at Halley's Bluff in the remote past. Old Chief No-Horse was the reigning chief of all the Grand Osages, and the last of his line, which had come to be regarded as a sort of royalty, and the family No-Horse as a sort of ruling dynasty. He was a worthy son of his line of Great Chiefs, but was getting old and decrepit. He had an only child, a beautiful daughter; many had wooed but none had won her heart. But at last there came a-wooing of her the bold and handsome son of a minor chief of the tribe. The line of succession must continue through No-wa-tah, this only daughter. The old men of the tribe urged her to wife with the handsome He-ta-hah; but No-wa-tah resisted all his Indian blandishments for many moons. Finally old No-Horse sickened and was about to die. He called No-wa-tah and He-ta-hah into his lodge. He made them kneel side by side near him and then with his palsied hands put the hand of No-wa-tah in the strong right hand of He-ta-hah in token of his desire for their union. No-wa-tah resisted no more. She became the squaw of He-ta-hah, according to the customs and ceremonials of the tribe. In a few days old No-Horse died, and then she became, so to speak, queen of the Grand Osages until such time as an heir to the tribe's chiefship should be born unto her. She was happy with her handsome warrior-hunter, and they dwelt in the lodge of her father which was situate in the midst of the big hickory and pecan timber belt lying on the opposite side of the Osage river, and a little northwest of Halley's Bluff. They fished and hunted together up the Marais des Cygnes and down the Osage, and out upon the beautiful prairies. By and by, in the course of nature, surrounded in their lodge by all the trappings of royalty an old aunt could command, one early spring morning a little papoose came to snuggle at No-wa-tah's breast and bring joy to her heart, and to the heart of He-ta-hah; for it was a warrior papoose, heir to the chiefship of all the Grand Osages. The event was duly celebrated according to the customs and traditions of the tribe and Little No-Horse took his rightful place in the life of the tribe as its future Big Chief.

The time for the summer hunt was soon at hand, and when the warriors and hunters were ready, with such squaws and youngsters as desired to go, they were off to the prairies and streams of the limitless West, not to return till early autumn. A few days after He-ta-hah had gone with the rest of the hunters, No-wa-tah and her old aunt, in whose care she and the tiny papoose were left, on a bright warm May morning, strolled down to the Osage to fish in the deep waters opposite the Bluff. Snugly wrapped in his royal furs they took Little No-horse along and laid him gently on the grass beneath a wide-spreading elm on the margin of the river directly west of the forbidding and frowning Bluff. It was only a few yards from the sleeping papoose to the edge of the river, down a short but rather abrupt bank. Mother and aunt became interested in the fine sport. They did not notice that Little No-Horse, as the sun came over the Bluff and warmed him, had kicked off his furs and lay there cooing to the waving branches and twittering birds above him. Nor had their attention been attracted by a large hole near the top of the sheer stone front of Halley's Bluff, where a golden eagle had her eyrie full of well-grown, hungry eaglets. Looking out from her lofty nest in the solid stone front of the Bluff, possibly annoyed and vexed by the cries of her hungry brood, she saw tiny Little No-Horse lying almost naked on the other shore. With a suddenness and swiftness for which this wonderful conqueror of the air is famous, the mother eagle swooped down and struck her talons into the tender baby flesh of Little No-Horse and carried him to her eyrie as food for her hungry eaglets. The cries of the papoose attracted the attention of No-wa-tah instantly; but she was helpless; and wild with fright, she saw him disappearing in the unapproachable hole in the outstanding stone wall in front of her. Realizing her powerlessness, and that the mother eagle was that very moment rending by hooked beak and tearing talons her baby's tender flesh from its bones for food for the eaglets, No-wa-tah plunged headlong into the deep waters in frantic agony. She was a good swimmer, but for some mysterious reason when the waters closed over her head she was lost forever. Her body was never seen afterward. It was the pathetic and tragic ending of the dynasty of Old No-Horse, whose ancestors had so long reigned and ruled over the Grand Osages.

The eyrie or hole is still there to be seen by all curious visitors to this remarkable Bluff; and it is just as unapproachable now, from above or from below, as it was in that remote day when tradition says the line of Old No-Horse became extinct on the day when Little No-Horse was immolated therein to feed hungry eaglets. A view of the cavity from the opposite or west side of the river can but stir the emotions of any one who has heard the sad story. It is so plausible and so in line with other stories we have all heard or read that we are almost ready to accept a mere tradition for an historical fact.