Their territory started at the Missouri River and extended west, including to parts of present-day Arkansas.

In 1796 Jean Pierre Chouteau, a French trader from St. Louis, established the first trading post in 1796 at the junction of the Grand/Neosho River and Saline Creek for business with the Osage.

Remembered today as one of the first permanent "white" (European-American) settlements in present-day Oklahoma, at that time the area was part of the Spanish Louisiana.

By 1817, keelboats were landing goods at Salina from Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and the area was considered part of what was known as "Indian Territory" of the United States.

That year, Chouteau's son Auguste Pierre and his partner Joseph Revoir received an exclusive license from Spanish authorities to trade with the Osage.

Chouteau convinced the Osage tribe, under the leadership of Cashesgra ("Big Trek"), to migrate into Indian Territory near the trading post, and ensured the survival of the business.

In 1820, the United States Department of War authorized Epaphras Chapman to establish the Union Mission near the mouth of Chouteau Creek to educate and convert the Osage.

The Indians boiled salt from the water rising from limestone rock about a mile south of the trading post.

A Cherokee, Captain John Rogers, began making salt from the springs and named them Grand Saline.

Drilling for salt water, in 1859 Ross accidentally hit the first vein of oil in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

In 1862 during the American Civil War, Union soldiers came down unopposed on the Grand River to Salina and set all slaves free.

The soldiers ransacked the Ross home, had the slaves load everything on wagons, and hauled the goods across the border to the free state of Kansas.

The Cherokee chief Samuel Houston Mayes established a ferry and mercantile business on the Grand River in 1906.