White Hair

White Hair or Pawhuska (Osage: 𐓄𐓘𐓢𐓶𐓮𐓤𐓘, hpahúska, lit. 'White Hair') is the name of several Osage leaders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tintype image of White Hair can be seen at the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

The first White Hair, Paw-Hiu-Skah, Pahuska, or Pawhuska, was born about 1763 and died about 1809.^[1] The town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma is named for him. He was the chief of the Thorny-Valley people, a division of the Osage people.^[2] In 1791, Pawhuska is reputed to have fought against American troops under Arthur St. Clair in Ohio.^[3] During the battle, the worst defeat ever suffered by U.S. forces against Indians, Pawhuska attempted to scalp a fallen officer but the man's powdered wig came off in Pawhuska's hand. In the ensuing confusion, the officer escaped. The chief was impressed by how the wig protected its original wearer, so he kept it for the rest of his life and became known as White Hair.^[4]

In the late eighteenth century, the Osage were a powerful tribe on the Western prairies with an empire that reached south from the Missouri River to the Red River. Pawhuska was the most prominent chief and had the closest relationships with French traders, especially the Chouteau family which operated under the rule of the Spanish government. The Osage frequently had skirmishes and battles with the Spanish and other Indian tribes. However, internal dissension weakened the Osage and they split into three main groups. In 1796, the group headed by Clermont (Claremore) and Pawhuska settled near Jean Pierre Chouteau's trading post on the Verdigris River in Indian Territory.^[5]

In 1800, the Marqués de Casa Calvo, the newly appointed governor of Louisiana, accused Osages of stealing from and murdering non-Natives and encouraged Pawhuska and his band of Osages to fight the rest of the Osages. Pawhuska refused.^[6]

One of Pawhuska's daughters married Kaw chief White Plume and thus established a lasting peace between the Osage and Kaw. White Plume's great-great-grandson was Charles Curtis, vice president of the United States, and many present-day Kaw Indians can trace their ancestry back to White Plume and Pawhuska.

The lineage of Pawhuska continued with his son, White Hair II, but he apparently was an ineffective chief, and he was soon replaced by White Hair III, who moved most of the remaining members of the Osage tribe to the Neosho River in Oklahoma in 1822. The Osage subsequently were forced by White and Indian encroachment on their lands to move back to a small reservation in Kansas. White Hair IV (George White Hair) became chief in 1832 and served until his death in 1852, aged 48. His cousin Iron Hawk became White Hair V until his death in 1861, also 48 years old.

Little White Hair (White Hair VI) became the last hereditary White Hair Chief, serving until his death on December 24, 1869.^[7] White Hair VI had been one of the signers of the 1865 treaty that ceded most Osage lands in Kansas to the United States and set the stage for their removal to a reservation (contiguous with Osage County) in Oklahoma in 1871.^[8]

In 1868, the U.S. Indian Commissioner appointed Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe, the chief of the Big Hill clan, Governor of the Great and Little Osage Nation of Indians.^[9] This was due to Little White Hair's refusal to renegotiate with the United States over Osage land in Kansas, the Diminished Reserve. The appointment of a governor did not remove White Hair from office as the principal chief, but after he died on December 24, 1869, it left Joseph the de facto supreme chief of the nation.^[9]

That was the end of the hereditary principal chiefs of the Osage. Starting with "Governor Joe," whose tenure as governor lasted over ten years, the Osage Nation would elect their tribal leaders by a ballot.^[9] The Osage soon bought and occupied some Cherokee land near their former Kansas reservation, formed a government, and elected Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe the new Principal Chief of the Osage, vacant since 1869.

By this time the powerful Osage of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a beleaguered people, but in one sense they had the last laugh. They had sold their old lands in Kansas for a good price in 1870, and then within a few decades, huge pockets of petroleum were found below their new reservation in Oklahoma. Today, descendants of Osage Nation citizens from 1906 are afforded a headright, including the profits of the petroleum wells on the reservation.

• DuVal, Kathleen. The native ground: Indians and colonists in the heart of the continent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8122-3918-8.