[2] Jacques Marquette, the French explorer, included them on a 1673 map, placing the Otoe near the Des Moines and upper Iowa rivers.
In 1700, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville wrote that the Otoe and the Iowa lived with the Omaha tribe in territory to the west of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
[3] After contact and continued pressure by European-Americans, they migrated to the territory of later Nebraska, settling near the Platte River.
[2] During the 18th century the Missouria people suffered from epidemics of new infectious diseases, especially smallpox, which killed many in the tribe.
Their joined society was patrilineal and comprised seven to ten clans, each with distinct assigned responsibilities.
Tribal members had exogamous marriage practices; young people had to marry outside their clan.
The women processed meat and used hides, bone, horn, and other the parts of the animals for tools, clothing, etc.
But under the Dawes Act, in the 1890s, their communal holdings of the reservation were distributed as allotments to individual heads of households.
[5] The Otoe–Missouria Tribe of Indians is headquartered in Red Rock, Oklahoma, and their tribal jurisdictional area is in Noble and Kay counties.
The Tribal Council consists of seven members elected by secret ballot by qualified voters of the Tribe.
Each Tribal Council member has responsibilities for certain duties, as listed in the Otoe–Missouria Tribe of Indians Constitution.
[1] Shotton has the distinction of being the youngest person to ever serve on the tribal council, being first elected when he was 29 years old.
[12] In 2010, the tribe partnered with Mark E. Curry to create a high-interest payday loan company, American Web Loan, initially using its sovereign status as a defense against state usury laws until that argument was rejected in court challenges.
[14] In October 2016, the tribe paid Curry $200 million for the MacFarlane Group, which had previously assisted with underwriting and call center support for American Web Loan.
[18][16] In July 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had found that the tribe's payday lender could not compel arbitration to defeat a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit brought by the borrowers.
Retrieved 24 Jan 2012. For almost century and a half, since 1881, an annual Otoe–Missouria Encampment is held every third weekend in July near Red Rock, Oklahoma.
It had originally been established in the 19th century in affiliation with the Baptist Church to serve Native American students.