An Osage warrior.
The Osage were an Indian tribe in the Confederation of North America. Originally located in the valley of the Ohio River in what would later be western Virginia, the Osage migrated west after a series of wars with the Iroquois tribe, settling on land that would later become the confederation of Southern Vandalia.
In the 1830s, an Osage leader named Chief John Miller, who had converted to Christianity, claimed to be the Messiah, and also to be the ghost of the earlier Indian leader Tecumseh. Miller promised the Indians a new heaven on earth would arrive after the destruction of the white settlers, whom he claimed were agents of the devil. In 1839 Miller raised an army among the Indians of Vandalia and Indiana, and in the summer crossed the Mississippi River to march on Michigan City. His army laid siege to the city on 7 July 1839, and took it two weeks later, killing some 5,000 of the city's half million inhabitants.
Miller's rule of Michigan City ended on 19 October 1839, when General Winfield Scott, leading a combined army of the various confederations of the C.N.A., entered the city and overran the Indian army. After the battle, Scott's men slaughtered Miller and his entire army.
Sobel makes no further mention of the Osage after the destruction of Miller's army, but it is likely that the tribe was driven west into the United States of Mexico during the Rocky Mountain War of 1845 - 1855.