Date of Graduation
Spring 2015
Degree
Master of Arts in History
Department
History
Committee Chair
John Chuchiak
Abstract
This thesis seeks to discover the social and political factors that explain Osage violence by identifying the geographic locations of territorial expressions of violence employed by the Osage against their neighbors. Using specific primary source documentation of Osage aggressions from 1763-1803, this study lists and maps their locations in order to facilitate further analysis of patterns in the Osage deployment of violence as a form of social and political diplomacy. The finding of this thesis challenges the notion that Native Americans did not possess concepts of territory or borders, and it sheds new light on how the Osage utilized violence in response to native constructions of kinship in differing forms dependent on the kinship status they held with different neighboring settlements, both native and European.
Keywords
Osage, borderlands, territoriality, Native American violence, cultural conflict, Spanish Louisiana, kinship, social construction
Subject Categories
History
Copyright
© Stephen Edouard Barnett
Recommended Citation
Barnett, Stephen Edouard, "This Is Our Land: Osage Territoriality and Borderland Violence, 1763-1803" (2015). MSU Graduate Theses/Dissertations. 1172.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/1172
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