Indigenous Waterways and the Boundaries of the Great Plains

Abstract:In the decades leading up to the Civil War, American officials established multiple reservations on the west bank of the Missouri River and used it to delimit land for Indian Removal. They expected the wide Missouri to contain Indigenous peoples in the Great Plains to the west of the river, dividing them from white settlers on the east bank. Yet throughout this period, Siouan-speaking peoples in the central Plains—Omaha, Otoe, and Missouria peoples—fought to uphold their navigation rights on the river and preserve access to homelands on its east side. Enlisting Indigenous navigational technologies, they continued traveling on the river and landed repeatedly on its east bank, where they carried out hunting expeditions along eastern tributaries into northwest Missouri and western Iowa and confronted soldiers and settlers attempting to enforce the river boundary of Indian Territory. In doing so, Omahas, Otoes, and Missourias sustained their own deep histories of mobility and communication on Indigenous waterways that spanned American boundaries in the Great Plains. This article addresses how they resisted American authority across the Missouri watershed in the early to mid-nineteenth century.