Word of the Day
Osage (OH-sayj)
1. North American River
2. Indigenous people of North America
Common clues: Tributary of the Missouri; Lake of the Ozarks river; Relative of an Omaha
Crossword puzzle frequency: 4 times a year
The Osage River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 360 mi (579 km) long, in central Missouri in the United States. The largest river entirely in Missouri, it drains a rural area of 15,300 sq mi (39,600 km²) on the north edge of the Ozark Mountains west to east across Missouri, with its watershed stretching into eastern Kansas. It is impounded in two major locations such that most of the river has been converted into a chain of two reservoirs, the Harry S. Truman Reservoir and the Lake of the Ozarks.
The Osage Nation is a Native American tribe in the United States, which is mainly based in Osage County, Oklahoma, but can still be found throughout America.
The Osage called themselves Wazházhe, Children of the Middle Water. The name Osage comes from a French corruption of the tribal name.
Their Osage language belongs to the Siouan branch of the Hokan-Siouan stock of Native American languages, now spoken in Nebraska and Oklahoma. They originally lived among the Kansa, the Ponca, the Omaha, and the Quapaw in the Ohio Valley. The tribe probably separated from the closely-related Kansa not long before Europeans first encountered them. The Osage developed a typical Plains Indian culture with a distinctive tribal division between meat-eating Wazhazhe and vegetarian Tsishu.
Many of the Osage had migrated to the Osage River in western Missouri by 1673, living near the Missouri River. Alongside the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache, they dominated over western Oklahoma. They also lived with the Quapaw and Caddo in Arkansas.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Osage River" and “Osage Nation”
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