INDIANS OF THE OZARKS 
by Jeannie Jones 
for the Rattler

Transcribed by Wanda Lee (Brink) Gines

Have you ever been out in the serene and beautiful Ozarks woods on a warm spring day and feel you are the first person to tramp in this very spot? As old as these hills are you can be sure someone has been there before, and there is much evidence that Indians have spent time here.

The author of the book, "The Ozarks: Past and Present, Edgar Hulse, writes that his theory is that the Osage Indians were in the Ozarks during the Stone-Age period. Father Marquette and Joiliot found them here in 1673 when those Frenchmen came down the Mississippi on an exploring trip.

The Osage tribe left this area "under the treaty of 1808, 135 years after the French found them at the mouth of the Missouri River."

The next tribe in the Ozarks were the Delaware who came in from the east coast. By 1820, while Missouri was still a terrifory, Delaware Indians had arrived at Kaskaskia in the side of the Mississippi river on their way to James Fork (James River) in southwest Missouri. They are the first of the immigrant Indians to enter Missouri. These people called themselves Lenni-Lenape which means "original people", "men among men", or "men of our kind" in Indian tongue but the colonists named them after their Governor, de la Warr.

Under pressure from the powerful Iroquois tribe and the white man's superior fire power, the Delaware Indians moved west. While they were at Kaskaskia, William Gillis was inducted into the tribe and Gillis took to himself number of Indian wives. Joseph Philibert (whose descendants are in the Shell Knob area) became friends with Gillis. The Delawares were joined by other branches of their tribe at the confluence of the James Fork and Wilsons's Creek and probably totaled several thousand. The Indians had accepted this Ozark land in exchange for property in Indiana sight unseen. The territory offered them was seventy miles east and west and forty-four miles north and south. This land was said to have included the present counties of Barry and Stone and parts of Christian, Green and Lawrence.

The main Indian trading post built by William Gillis was east of the James River a short distance from the bridge on Hwy 14. Philibert had joined Gillis in 1822 and worked with him until 1830. The Indians left in 1830 and went to Oklahoma where they purchased a tract of land from the Cherokees and joined tribes with them.

The Kickapoo, Wandot, Ottawa, Seneca-Cayuga, Chickasaw and other tribes came through our area on their trek to Oklahoma but none stayed to farm the land and make their homes as the Delaware tribe did.