The Indian Village

In living and teaching in Oklahoma, many of my students were Native Americans, primarily from the Cherokee, Osage, and Pawnee tribes. One of my good friends, who had also been a student of mine, was from the Osage Tribe. I visited a few long houses that would be built in the woods and these structures were for the purpose of social gatherings and religious ceremonies. I lived less than a mile from the Osage Indian Reservation which is around a 2,300 square mile wilderness territory. I even ran a training route through the southern section of it and had to be cautious concerning animals such as mountain lions and wild dogs. Just north of where I lived there is a body of fresh water called Silver Lake. It is the largest natural fresh water lake in Oklahoma and is nestled in a remote and quiet place in the woods. Most people do not even know about it. I have walked along the dirt trail going around the lake which was worn down over hundreds of years by the Cherokee natives. A village existed there and in the 1700s trappers, mainly French, traded with the Cherokees. By the early 1800s the Osage Indians began to take over the area and by the late 1800s white settlers took control and made it into a popular swimming area. Now, it is privately owned and quietly sits among the wooded area of Black Jack Oak trees. Villages as depicted in an ink drawing that I did were common in the very early 1900s, but have long since disappeared. The "old frontier" is mainly no longer around with tee pee habitations and long houses, but it has been a force and part of the history of our country.