submitted photo Atop Halley's Bluff, left to right are Dan Gayman, Vernon County Northern Commissioner Neal Gerster, Presiding Commissioner David Darnold, Historical Society president Gary Marquardt, State Parks supervisior Pam Meyers, Patrick Brophy and Tom and Terry Ramsey of the Bushwhacker Museum; and Eddy Red Eagle, Jr. [Click to enlarge]

Leading Vernon Countians took advantage of an unseasonably pleasant Nov. 18 to tour Osage Indian and other historical sites in the county's northeast comer.

The occasion was a visit by Eddy Red Eagle, Jr., a fullblooded Osage who's director of "Wa Zha Zhi," a tribal cultural center under development in Pawhuska, Okla.

The tribe's removal from Missouri, about 1825, was so traumatic the Osages deliberately blotted from their communal consciousness all memory of their Missouri days, said Red Eagle. The existing Osage Tribal Museum deals almost wholly with their Oklahoma years.

The time has come, Red Eagle believes, to fill in the blank. Younger Osages are showing more interest in the remote past, and Red Eagle's visit was a preliminary look at the surviving archeological and historical resources for telling the tribal story in full.

It was also a personal pilgrimage. Typically tall, like most Osages, Eddy Red Eagle is a passionate and intelligent man, deeply committed to his Osage cultural heritage, though he found it hard reconciling that with life in the white man's world as an accountant for Citgo.

Word of the proposed excursion spread, and the expedition eventually included: County Commissioners David Darnold and Neal Gerster and Connie Gerster; and Gary Marquardt, Terry and Tom Ramsey, and Pat Brophy of the Bushwhacker Museum.

Pam Myers, who's in charge of the Osage Village State Historic Site, north of Walker, as well as other area State Parks sites, guided the trekkers at that, their first stop.

Located on a high hill a couple of miles west of Fair Haven, the site was first reported by French explorers Marquette and Joliet in 1673, and the Osages were still there in 1719 when the first official French visitor, Claude Charles du Tisne, arrived. He described a settlement of some 100 lodgetype dwellings, with a population of perhaps 1,000.

The state's "selfguided tour" is based on the findings of University of Missouri archeologists who worked on the site in the 1960s. Officials hope soon to improve both the site itself, by brushcutting and controlled burns, and interpretation, by an updated brochure and signage.

The site affords spectacular views of other features on the itinerary.

Just a couple of miles north lies Blue Mound, or Mounds, depending on whether you see it as two hills or just one. The higher point is the traditional burial place of Pawhuska, or White Hair, the Osages' most famous chief.

At his death (in 1825, says the county history) he was laid to rest in a rock cairn; but within 25 years the rude tomb was razed by a lootseeking white man, and reportedly the chief's oversize skeleton sent to a medical institute.

Blue Mound was a bare, grassy hill as late as the 1920s, though covered today with thin timber which obstructs another otherwise spectacular view.

Both Blue Mound and Halley's Bluff just to the north are today owned by the Church of Israel. Visitors are welcome, but are asked to check in at the church office first.

Pastor Dan Gayman himself accompanied Eddy Red Eagle and the others on their trek to the famous cachepits just beneath the bluff behind the church complex, and to the highest point on the bluff, where perhaps the grandest view of all is obtained.

The cachepits, a row of half a dozen cisterns cut in a sandstone ledge, have always suggested that Halley's Bluff was the site of Ft. Carondelet, the Chouteau trading and military post established under Spanish rule in 179 1. The pits would have served to store furs safe from wild animals and Indian pilferage till they could be shipped downriver to St. Louis. This theory was confirmed in the 1960s by Missouri's premier archeologist Dr. Carl H. Chapman who excavated postmolds pointing to a semicircular stockade around the top of the bluff.

In the late 1700s the Osages began drifting away from the present Osage Village Site to a new village some seven miles west. Here their first American visitor, Capt. Zebulon Pike, found them in 1806, and here they remained till the Treaty of 1825 removed them from all of Missouri. Nearby Old Town Branch takes its name from this Osage "old town." Eddy Red Eagle and party found little to see at the site, now back in native prairie grass, but they did get a rundown on its geography and history from the present landowner, Gary Balk. First excavated by University of Missouri archeologists in 1940, it's still referred to by them as the Carrington Site, after the landowner of that time.

The last stop was to have been the Little Osage Site, also of 1806, east of Arthur, now on Department of Conservation land. University archeologists also dug here in the early 1960s, and it was here they held their general open house to show the public their findings.

So great were the changes in 40 years, however, that it proved impossible on short notice to locate the site, walking in along no longer discernible lanes.

Eddy Red Eagle wasn't disappointed, however. At all the stops, he was pleased, he said, just to be able to see how the land lies in a region that was once home to his ancestors. Sensitive to the overall ambiance, he hoped to be able to transfer these feelings to the timeline and exhibits he plans to create in the projected cultural center. Among his hopes and plans is that of someday bringing groups of Osage schoolchildren on excursions back to tour and experience this world of their forebears, where their culture took shape and endured for hundreds of years.

It was an equally enjoyable outing for all the white folks who tagged along. Many deer were sighted, and nature still shone in all her autumn glory.

And it was a reminder, if anybody needed reminding, that Vernon County's abundant historical sites are among its most important assets, certain to be of increasing interest to coming generations of professionals and ordinary tourists.

Not another Missouri county can boast Osage Indian sites to match those of Vernon. No other can look forward to such a mutually fruitful partnership as that foretold by Eddy Red Eagle and his coming Osage cultural center.

It's up to us to make the most of it.