Indigenous Missourians

Argues that the history of Indigenous people in present-day Missouri is far more nuanced, complex, and vibrant than the often-told tragic stories of conflict with white settlers and forced Indian removal would lead us to believe.

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In Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present, historian Greg Olson argues that the history of Indigenous people in present-day Missouri is far more nuanced, complex, and vibrant than the often-told tragic stories of conflict with white settlers and forced Indian removal would lead us to believe. In this path-breaking narrative, Olson presents the Show Me State’s Indigenous past as one spanning twelve millennia of Native presence, resilience, and evolution. While previous Missouri histories have tended to include Indigenous people only during periods when they constituted a threat to the state’s white settlement, Olson shows us the continuous presence of Native people that lasts up to the present day.

Beginning thousands of years before the state of Missouri existed, Olson recounts how centuries of inventiveness and adaptability enabled Native people to create innovations in pottery, agriculture, architecture, weaponry, and intertribal diplomacy. Technological advances made it possible for Native people to build Cahokia, one of the largest cities on the planet during the eleventh century. Located just across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Cahokia was an amazing example of centralized power and technological know-how.Olson also shows how the resilience of Indigenous people like the Osages allowed them to thrive as fur traders in the face of French and Spanish colonization. Even as settler colonialists waged an all-out policy of cultural genocide against them, Native people persevered.

Though the state of Missouri claimed to have forced Indigenous people from its borders after the 1830s, Olson uses U.S. census records and government rolls from the allotment period to show that thousands remained, often passing as blacks or whites. Removed from their tribal communities, these Indigenous Missourians came together to create intertribal social networks to celebrate Native culture in new ways.
In the end, Olson argues that, with a current population of 27,000 Indigenous people, Missouri remains a part of Indian Country and that Indigenous history is Missouri History.