Claude Charles Du Tisne

Claude Charles Du Tisne (also Dutisne) led the first official French expedition to visit the Osage and the Wichita Indians in 1719 in what became known as Kansas in the present-day United States.

Claude Charles Du Tisne was born in France around 1681 and went to Canada in 1705 as a soldier. He was sent to establish a fort on the Ohio River. He built up a reputation for competence and knowledge of the frontier and the Indians.

In 1719 his superiors instructed him to visit the Panis or Panioussa (Wichita) and the Padouca (Apache) as a first step toward establishing trade with the Spanish colony of Santa Fe in New Mexico. He was to make friends with these Indians, who were then unknown except by name to the French, and ensure that they posed no problems to such trade passing through their lands. What Du Tisne and the French did not know was that the leaders of New Mexico were opposed to any trade with the French.

Du Tisne and his small group of French and Indians left Kaskaskia, Illinois probably in May 1719, and journeyed by canoe up the Missouri River to the village of the Missouria Indians near where the small town of Miami is today. The French already knew some of the Missouria; they were a Siouan people, speaking a dialect of Chiwere, the language of the Winnebago, Oto, and Iowa peoples. This Missouria village had 100 houses, probably the same type of large bark-covered longhouse typical of the region. The total population was likely more than one thousand. Du Tisne said the Missouria stayed in the village only in the spring, an indication that they probably followed the same seasonal pattern as other nearby tribes of planting crops in the spring and journeying west to hunt buffalo in the summer. Du Tisne did not report the Missouria using horses, although all the Plains tribes had adopted use of these animals by then.

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