History of Omaha, Nebraska - White Contact With Native Americans

White Contact With Native Americans

Omaha's location near the confluence of the Missouri River and Platte River has long made the location a key point of transfer for both people and goods. Since the 17th century, the Pawnee, Otoe, Sioux, and Ioway all variously occupied the land that became Omaha. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries when they were the most powerful Indians along the stretch of the Missouri River north of the Platte, the Omaha nation moved on the western edge of present-day Bellevue, Nebraska.

Prior to European-American establishment of the city, numerous Indian tribes had inhabited the area, including the Pawnee, Otoe, Sioux, the Missouri and Ioway. They had developed a semi-nomadic lifestyle necessary for survival on the Great Plains. The Pawnee and Otoe tribes had inhabited the region for hundreds of years by the time the Siouan-language Omaha tribe had arrived from the lower Ohio valley in the early 18th century. Translated, the word "Omaha" (actually U-Mo'n-Ho'n) means "Dwellers on the Bluff". Usually the word is translated "against the current" but in those cases without quoting any source.

After a smallpox outbreak, and suffering cultural degradation, disease, the elimination of the buffalo, and continued property loss, in 1856 the Omaha sold the last of their claims and relocated to their present reservation north in Thurston County, Nebraska.