Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present

Winner of the 2024 Missouri Conference on History Book Award and Honoree for the 2024 Society of Midland Authors Award for History

The history of Indigenous people in present-day Missouri is far more nuanced, complex, and vibrant than the often-told tragic stories of conflict with white settlers and forced Indian removal would lead us to believe. In this path-breaking narrative, Greg Olson presents the Show Me State's Indigenous past as one span­ning twelve millennia of Native presence, resilience, and evolu­tion. While previous Missouri histories have tended to include Indigenous people only during periods when they constituted a threat to the state's white settlement, Olson shows us the con­tinuous presence of Native people that includes the present day.

Beginning thousands of years before the state of Missouri exist­ed, Olson recounts how centuries of inventiveness and adapt­ability enabled Native people to create innovations in pottery, agriculture, architecture, weaponry, and intertribal diplomacy. Olson also shows how the resilience of Indigenous people like the Osages allowed them to thrive as fur traders, even as settler colonialists waged an all-out policy of cultural genocide against them.

Though the state of Missouri claimed to have forced Indigenous people from its borders after the 1830s, Olson uses U.S. Census records and government rolls from the allotment period to show that thousands remained. In the end, he argues that, with a cur­rent population of 27,000 Indigenous people, Missouri remains very much a part of Indian Country, and that Indigenous history is Missouri history.


Author: Greg Olson
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 08/01/2024
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Paperback
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.80d
ISBN: 9780826223203

About the Author
Greg Olson served as the Curator of Exhibits and Special Projects at the Missouri State Archives from 2000-2018 and is the author of six books, including: The Ioway in Missouri; Voodoo Priests, Noble Savages, and Ozark Gypsies: The Life of Folklorist Mary Alicia Owen; and Ioway Life: Reservation and Reform, 1837-1860.