Part 2: Barnsdall

1754 –1763 FRENCH and INDIAN WAR

King Louis XV

   In North America, fighting began chiefly because both England and France had claimed the land known as the Ohio River Valley in the hopes of expanding their fur trade and English settlements west across the Appalachians. By 1762, as negotiations begin to settle the war, Louis XV of France secretly proposes to his cousin Charles III of Spain that France gives Louisiana to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris ends the war with a provision in which France cedes all territory east of the Mississippi (including French Canada) to Britain. Spain cedes Florida and land east of the Mississippi (including Baton Rouge, Louisiana) to Britain while Spain held control over New Orleans. Osage land falls under Spain’s control.

1800 FRANCE RECLAIMS LOUISIANA

Napoleon Bonaparte

   Napoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after it had been a Spanish colony since 1762. But, the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France in 1803. Osage land falls under France’s control.

 1803 LOUISIANA PURCHASE TREATY

James Monroe

  Robert Livingston and James Monroe closed on the sweetest real estate deal of the millennium when they signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris on April 30, 1803. They were authorized to pay France up to $10 million for the port of New Orleans and the Floridas. When offered the entire territory of Louisiana–an area larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal combined–the American negotiators swiftly agreed to a price of $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase added 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River to the United States, for roughly 4 cents an acre. Osage land falls under United States control.

Robert Livingston

Pierre Chouteau

1804-1808 OSAGE CEDE THEIR LAND UNDER THE FORT CLARK TREATY
  After the Louisiana Territory was purchased from the French, Lewis and Clark began their explorations of the Missouri River in 1804, Pierre Chouteau of the Chouteau fur trading family in St. Louis, Missouri took Osage chiefs to meet Thomas Jefferson who promised to open a government sanctioned trading post (then called the factory, which the Osage could sell their goods at a government set price (ostensibly to keep them from being exploited by individual traders). The trading post would also have a blacksmith to provide utensils for the Native Americans. In early 1808, Meriwether Lewis led a group to the site of Fort Clark (later called Fort Osage) near Sibley, Missouri where they built the fort on a bluff above the Missouri River. Pierre Chouteau went about 150 miles south to Neosho, Missouri where the Osage had their principal village on the Osage River and brought the chiefs to Fort Osage. There they were presented with the terms of the treaty of what would be called the Treaty of Fort Clark or (the Osage Treaty). In this treaty the Osage would cede their land in Missouri and Arkansas and in return receive $800 to the Great Osage nation and $400 to the Little Osage nation annually. Those Osage that put themselves under the protection of Fort Osage and observe the stipulations of the treaty shall be permitted to live and hunt without molestation, on all that tract of country, west of the north and south boundary line, on which they, the said Great and Little Osage, have usually hunted or resided: Provided, The same be not the hunting grounds of any nation or tribe of Indians in amity with the United States; and on any other lands within the territory of Louisiana, without the limits of the white settlements, until the United States may think proper to assign the same as hunting grounds to other friendly Indians. There were protests from the tribe as there were claims that not all the proper representatives signed the document. The Osage for the most part did not move to Fort Osage staying instead at their home in Neosho. Also during this time the United States promised the land of the Osage to the Cherokee, other Indian tribes displaced from their lands east of the Mississippi and to white settlers moving west. Conflicts with the eastern Indians and misunderstanding of the treaty caused more conflicts over territory.

William Clark                Meriwether Lewis