The tribe began in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 1620 A.D along with other groups of its language family, then migrated west in the 17th century due to Iroquois incursions.

The 19th-century painter George Catlin described the Osage as "the tallest race of men in North America, either red or white skins; there being ... many of them six and a half, and others taller than seven feet [198, 213 cm].

Studies of their traditions and language show that they were part of a group of Dhegihan-Siouan speaking people who lived in the Ohio River valley area, extending into present-day Kentucky.

According to their own stories, common to other Dhegihan-Siouan tribes, such as the Ponca, Omaha, Kaw and Quapaw, they migrated west as a result of war with the Iroquois and/or to reach more game.

[7] They attacked and defeated indigenous Caddo tribes to establish dominance in the Plains region by 1750, with control "over half or more of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas," which they maintained for nearly 150 years.

From their traditional homes in the woodlands of present-day Missouri and Arkansas, the Osage would make semi-annual buffalo hunting forays into the Great Plains to the west.

Names of clans included Red Cedar (Hon-tse-shu-tsy), Travelers in the Mist (Moh-sho-tsa-moie), Deer Lungs (Tah-lah-he) and Elk (O-pon).

Ceremonies, although very elaborate served basic functions such as requesting aid from Wakonda for continued tribal existence and the blessing of a long life through children.

[10] In 1673, French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet were among the first Europeans documented to contact the Osage, traveling southward from present-day Canada in their journey along the Mississippi River.

In return for the Chouteau brothers' building a fort in the village of the Great Osage 350 miles (560 km) southwest of St. Louis, the Spanish regional government gave the Chouteaus a six-year monopoly on trade (1794–1802).

Having lived with the Osage for many years and learned their language, Jean-Pierre Chouteau traded with them and made his home at present-day Salina, Oklahoma, in the western part of their territory.

"[19] But the goal foremost pursued by the U.S. was to push the Osage out of areas being settled by European Americans, who began to enter the Louisiana Territory after the U.S. acquired it.

The Choctaw chief Pushmataha, based in Mississippi, made his early reputation in battles against the Osage tribe in the area of southern Arkansas and their borderlands.

Honoring this special relationship, as well as Catholic sisters who taught their children in schools on reservations, numerous Osage elders went to the city of St. Louis in 2014 to celebrate its 250th anniversary of founding by the French.

They participated in a mass partially conducted in Osage at St. Francis Xavier College Church of St. Louis University on April 2, 2014, as part of planned activities.

[citation needed] Following the American Civil War and victory of the Union, the Drum Creek Treaty was passed by Congress on July 15, 1870, and ratified by the Osage at a meeting in Montgomery County, Kansas, on September 10, 1870.

It provided that the remainder of Osage land in Kansas be sold, and the proceeds used to relocate the tribe to Indian Territory in the Cherokee Outlet.

[40] The reservation, of approximately 1,470,000 acres (5,900 km2),[41] was purchased in 1872[42] and is coterminous with present-day Osage County, Oklahoma, in the north-central portion of the state between Tulsa and Ponca City.

The BIA granted the request on March 16, 1896, with the stipulation that Foster was to pay the Osage tribe a 10% royalty on all sales of petroleum produced on the reservation.

In addition to breaking up communal land, the act replaced tribal government with the Osage National Council, to which members were to be elected to conduct the tribe's political, business, and social affairs.

[51] In 2004, Congress passed legislation to restore sovereignty to the Osage Nation and enable them to make their own decisions about government and membership qualifications for their people.

[52] In March 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that the 1906 Allotment Act had disestablished the Osage reservation established in 1872.

[40] The act stated that all persons listed on tribal rolls prior to January 1, 1906 or born before July 1907 (allottees) would be allocated a share of the reservation's subsurface natural resources, regardless of blood quantum.

Although the Osage Allotment Act protected the tribe's mineral rights for two decades, any adult "of a sound mind" could sell surface land.

Tens of thousands of oil workers arrived, more than 30 boom towns sprang up and, nearly overnight, Osage headright holders became the "richest people in the world.

His uncle William "King of Osage Hills" Hale, a powerful business man who led the plot, and brother Byron hired accomplices to murder Kyle family heirs.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017) by David Grann was a National Book Award finalist; a related major motion picture was released in October 2023.

[41] Beginning in 1999, the Osage Nation sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims (dockets 99-550 and 00-169) for mismanaging its trust funds and its mineral estate.

[71] The settlement includes commitments by the United States to cooperate with the Osage to institute new procedures to protect tribal trust funds and resource management.

In 2004, President George W. Bush signed Public Law 108–431, "An Act to Reaffirm the Inherent Sovereign Rights of the Osage Tribe to Determine Its Membership and Form a Government.