Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe
principal Chief of the Osage Nation
Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe (1836/1837 – January 18, 1883) was a chief of the Big Hills band of the Osage Indians. He won the first election of Principal Chief of the Osage Nation in 1882. In official documents he was also known as Joseph Paw-ne-no-Pa-she and Joseph Pre-ne-pro-pah-she. His Osage language name translates to "Not Afraid of Longhairs" or "Not Afraid of Pawnee", and he was informally known to whites as Big Hill Joe.
Early life
Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe was born in 1836 or 1837 and was named Watchie-cha-hiche at birth. During his early years, the Osage mostly lived on the large Osage Reservation in present-day southeastern Kansas, often encamping along the upper Neosho River. They often hunted bison and other game in other parts of Kansas and present-day Oklahoma, as well. The Osage had been considered a partially civilized tribe for several decades by this time, having signed several treaties with the United States and other Indian tribes and only occasionally fighting battles.
Joseph's father was a well-respected Osage war chief, also named Paw-ne-no-pash-she, who enrolled his son in the Catholic mission school in Kansas at age 11 in 1848. He was educated under the school run by Father John Schoenmakers at the Osage Mission's post.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Pawnee-no-pashe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.