Otoe-Missouria Genealogy

The Otoe-Missouria genealogy database includes members and descendants of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma, who purchased land and established their last reservation in the Cherokee Strip of what is now north-central Oklahoma in 1881. The database also includes other members of families who married into the Otoe-Missouria tribe. This database is an extension of my research of our own family genealogy of Dewey W. Dailey. I do not live in Oklahoma, so I do not have personal access to interview tribal members or to do research at the Tribal Office or tribal cemetery or local libraries. Consequently, it's doubtful that I could answer anyone else's inquiries with information which is not already posted here. For the spelling of surnames, I tried to use the most common or most recent. However, one surname requires special note: Robedeaux. I recognize that descendants today use several different variations of the name, but to simplify searches in this database, I spelled them all in this way. My research is conducted primarily online. As explained below, census data cannot provide a complete picture of genealogy, so I have to rely on oral history to clarify natural parent–child relationships. I welcome additions to the genealogy database. Those who wish to add their family to the database may contact me using the email link or comment form on the Home page, with these guidelines:

1. The genealogy must include at least one of the original alloted tribal members.
2. Please include as much specific data as possible, including dates of birth and death.
3. Unless you send me digital photocopies of documents, digital photos of tombstones, etc., the source will be noted as family history.

By default, the WorldConnect Project protects the privacy of anyone whose birth date falls after 1930 (the last published census) and who does not have a date of death recorded in the database. However, I will gladly hide or remove other individuals on request. The Otoe-Missouria genealogy database is posted on the WorldConnect Project, part of RootsWeb.com, which is a free ad-sponsored website. The database can be accessed here:

Otoe-Missouria Genealogy Database

A narrative of the tribe's migration is given on the History page, but it is significant to relate their movements to the concurrent governmental changes. Place names in this database use the official designation in effect at the time. In other words, a family may have one child born in Indian Territory in 1889 and another child born in Oklahoma Territory in 1891, even though they were, in fact, born at the same location.

• 1854 - Otoe-Missouria reservation is established at the Big Blue River on the border between Kansas and Nebraska Territories, primarily Gage County, Nebraska Territory.
• 1861 - Kansas Territory becomes the state of Kansas.
• 1867 - Nebraska Territory becomes the state of Nebraska.
• 1881 - Otoe-Missouria reservation is established in the Cherokee Strip of Indian Territory.
• 1890 - Part of Indian Territory becomes Oklahoma Territory.
• 1907 - Oklahoma Territory becomes the state of Oklahoma.

After allotment the Otoe-Missouria Reservation was officially abolished by Act of Congress, and the land was incorporated into Noble and Pawnee Counties. Nevertheless, the tribe continued to refer to the land as the Reservation. In this database, for tribal members born within those counties, I list their place of birth as the Reservation, without regard to actual municipal boundries or property lines. Dates of birth were obtained from several sources: the US Censuses, the Tribal Censuses, the Social Security Death Index, and online cemetery surveys. Quite often these sources contradict each other. For the purpose of this database, I first use the Social Security record or cemetery survey if they exist, then the latest tribal census, and finally an estimate from the US Census. Additional sources are cited on the References page and are duly footnoted in the genealogy database.

Tracing native American genealogy is difficult for many reasons. First of all, there are very few written records prior to the mid-1800's, when the federal government began keeping censuses of native tribes, and of course, some Indians did not use surnames well into the 20th Century. From a practical standpoint, genealogy, in the modern sense, simply was much less important to them. Certainly there were and are generational ties withing clans, and hereditary chiefs were held in high regard, but actual blood lines did not hold the significance to which we attribute them today. For example, an adopted child, whether related by blood or not, was completely accepted into the family, clan, and tribe as a natural child. Because native Americans had a more communal sense of society, the census data provides less information about family relationships than does census data, for example, from the agricultural society of the Pennsylvania Germans. In other words, a household on the Reservation was much less likely to contain a simple father–mother–children unit. Other relatives, even those we would consider distant relatives, often lived in the same household, making it difficult for the researcher to sort them out. Marriage is another matter. In white society, a marriage is defined by a ceremony recorded in a church or civil document. In many native societies, a marriage was a simple agreement between the two individuals and, perhaps, the parents and elders according to the traditions of the tribe. By the same token, a marriage could be dissolved by agreement as well. Certainly part of the aculturation process of the 19th Century was intended to force Indians to abide by the monogamous mores of Christian society. As a result, genealogy data of native Americans can seem like an endless trail of marriages and divorces, with half-siblings and step-children. But that does not mean that the family unit was less important to them. On the contrary, they simply defined family in a broader sense. — s.c.d.

Additional Information

• History of the Otoe-Missouria
  The people who would become the Missouria, the Otoe, and the Ioway once belonged to the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Nation, one of the Siouan tribes of the Great Lakes region. By 1881, in response to dwindling prospects of self-sufficiency and continued pressure from white settlers in Nebraska, the tribe purchased a new reservation in the Cherokee Outlet in the Indian Territory.
• Otoe-Missouria Allotment: 1899 – 1906
  The initial allotment of the Otoe-Missouria Reservation was the long and arduous task of Helen P. Clarke, who was appointed by President Harrison to make allotments on several reservations in Indian Territory. She soon found that the tribe opposed allotment and was determined to resist her efforts.
• The Story of Names
  When researching Indian names, it's important to realize that a name may be spelled in different ways, depending on who recorded it and how they heard it pronounced. Also, individuals usually changed their name throughout their life. By the turn of the 20th Century, most native Americans had English names for the purpose of government records. They aquired their names in several different ways.
• Smithsonian Photographs
  Otoe-Missouria photographs from the Smithsonian Archival, Manuscript, and Photographs Collection. Most of these photographs were taken in Washington, DC, when the chiefs and other tribal delegates were appearing before the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
• The Pawnee Indian School
  The Pawnee Indian School in Pawnee, Oklahoma, was one of many federally funded boarding schools built around the turn of the century for the purpose of assimilating Indian youth into white culture. In other words, they strove to take as much of the Indian out of the Indian and to replace it with the most rudimentary tools for "civilized" life. I took a walk back in time with my father, sixty years after he attended that school.