Before European contact, the area that today makes up Jasper County was the domain of the Osage Native Americans, who called themselves the "Children of the Middle Waters" (Ni-U-Kon-Ska).

[4] The earliest record of European-Osage contact is a 1673 map by French Jesuit priest and explorer Jacques Marquette.

He noted the people he encountered as the Ouchage, his way of pronouncing the sound of the name with French spelling conventions.

[5] A few years after the Marquette expedition, French explorers discovered a Little Osage village and called it Ouazhigi.

[6] French transliterations of the tribe's name settled on a spelling of Osage, which was later adopted by English-speaking European Americans.

France regained control of Louisiana through the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, but in 1803, following defeat of his troops in an effort to retake the colony of Saint Domingue in the Caribbean, Napoleon Bonaparte I decided to sell his North American territory to the United States in what is known as the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1825, the Osages ceded their traditional lands across present-day Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma (then known as Indian Territory).

By 1819, Arkansas Territory had been created; Wayne County lost some of its area but still consisted of most of southern Missouri: from present-day Wayne County west to the Kansas State Line and bordered on the south by the Arkansas State Line.

[8][9] The Jasper County Court initially divided the area into three townships: North Fork, Center Creek and Marion.

The county court, as a temporary seat of justice, was established on February 25, 1841, in the home of George Hornback.

The courthouse, a one-story single-room wooden structure with a large door in the south, was completed on June 29, 1842.

This courthouse was later replaced by a larger two-story brick-and-stone structure that was completed in 1854; it also had facilities in the building for the county jail.

[11] At the outset of the war Chenault, by then a circuit court judge, moved with his family to Texas.

[12] After leading the 13th Cavalry Regiment into numerous battles, in a command that included two of his sons in first lieutenant and quartermaster ranks, Crawford moved his noncombatant family to Texas for safety.

[13][14] By the start of the American Civil War in 1861, there were several small river mill settlements, some mining camps, and about nine or ten towns (seven platted) in Jasper County, Missouri.

The newer brick courthouse was used as a hospital during the American Civil War and was destroyed by fire during fighting in October 1863.

By the end of the war, Carthage had been evacuated and completely destroyed, and much of Jasper County laid in ruins.

By order of the Governor in 1865, the courthouse was relocated to the pioneer schoolhouse at Cave Springs (near present-day La Russell, Missouri), with John C. Price of Mount Vernon appointed as the circuit court judge.

[27] The Republican Party completely controls politics at the local level in Jasper County.

Jasper County is divided into four districts in the Missouri House of Representatives, all of which are held by Republicans.