Note I-45 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: UP THE MISSOURI AND OSAGE RIVERS, AND THROUGH KANSAS TO THE PAWNEE VILLAGE ON THE REPUBLICAN RIVER, JULY 15TH-SEPT. 30TH, 1806.

The village of the Little Osage Indians was about 6 m. higher up and on the other (west) side of the river of the same name. Marmiton r. falls in between where the two villages were. These were so well-known to the traders and others in Pike's time that he does not take the trouble to say exactly where they were; nor are we favored with the precise location of Camp Independence, "near the edge of the prairie." But there is of course no question of the exact site of a village which stood for more than a century: see for example Holcombe's Hist. Vernon Co. Hundreds of Osages were buried on the mound, to which their descendents used to come from Kansas to cry over them, as late at least as 1874. Among the remains rested those of old White Hair himself, until his bones were dug up and carried off by Judge C. H. Allen of Missouri. In the vicinity of the upper village is now a place called Arthur, where the Lexington and Southern Div. of the Mo. Pac. R. R. comes south from Rich Hill, Bates Co., and continues across both Little Osage and Marmiton rivers; a mile W. of its crossing of the former, on the S. of that river, is the present hamlet called Little Osage. All Pike's positions of Aug. 18th-Sept. 1st are in the present Osage township.