Standing on Osage Land in Southwest France

Abigail Scott (Sias Graduate Fellow, History)

MON, APR 13, 12:00 - 1:30 PM

In 1827, two French merchants abducted six Osage people to Le Havre, France. The town’s

population rushed to the port for a glimpse of the Osage (named Little Chief, Black Spirit, Big Soldier, Little Soldier, Hawk Woman, and Sacred Sun). Over the next three years, these merchants exploited the Osage for personal financial gain. Scott explores how, through aggressive memorialization projects, French conservatives rewrote France’s colonial past to justify their perception of being a benevolent colonial power among the world’s competing empires in the nineteenth century.

Her presentation aims to answer three questions: How did this exploitation fuel the French imagination of its former colonies in North America? Second, how did this abduction spur French conversations about the invasion of Algiers? Finally, why does the Osage Nation of Oklahoma own land in Montauban, France?