-their-backs
- Sun People
- Swan People
- Tsi-shu Peacemaker, or Villagemaker, or Giver of Life
- Touches-no-blood, or Red Eagle
- Bald Eagle, or Sycamore People. The principal gens of the left side of the tribal circle
- Night People, or Tsi-shu-at-the-end
- Night People proper
- Black Bear People
- Buffalo Bul
- Buffalo Bull
- Reddish Buffalo. (Corresponds to the Yuqe of the Kanss.)
- Thunder Being, or Camp-last, or Upper World People, or Mysterious Male being (Subgentes not ascertained.)
- Elder Osage, or Wa-sha-she Wa-nun. This gens embraces six of the seven Wa-sha-she or Osage Fireplaces, as follows:
- White Osage
- Turtle Carriers
- Tall Flags
- Deer Lights, or Deer People
- Fish People
- Turtle People. (Turtle-with-serrated-crest-along-the-shell. Possibly a mythical water monster.)
- Real Eagle People, or Hanka-apart-from-the-rest. The War Eagle gens. One of the original Hanka Fireplaces. The guards, policemen, or soldiers for the right side of the tribal circle are taken from the eight and ninth gentes.
- Ponka Peacemaker. This is the principal gens on the right side of the tribe circle. It was one of the original seven Osage Fireplaces
- Pond Lily
- Dark Buffalo. Or, as some say
- Red Cedar
- White Eagle People, or Hanka-having-wings. These Subgentes were two of the original seven Hanka Fireplaces:
- Elder White Eagle People
- Having Black Bears
- Black Bear
- (Meaning not ascertained.)
- 2. Dried Pond Lily
- 13. Elk, One of the seven Hanka Fireplaces
- 14. Kansa, or Holds-a-firebrand-to-the-sacred-pipes-in-order-to-light-them, Or, South Wind People, Or, Wind People, Or, Fire People
Each of the divisions A and B of the twelfth gens were originally a Fireplace of the Hanka.
There are four divisions of the Osages which have not yet been identified, the:
- Beaver People
- Crane People
- Owl People
- Earth People
The religious beliefs of the Osages are similar to those of the Kansas and other Siouan tribes. The term Wakanda had almost the same meaning. There were seven great Wakandas Darkness, the Upper World, the Ground, the Thunder-being, the Sun, the Moon, the Morning Star. The Upper World was perhaps the greatest of the Wakandas. In some of the tribes it was the supreme Wakanda. There was no set form of worship of Wakanda. Every one thought Wakanda dwelt in some secret place. It was believed that the Wakanda, or some Wakanda was ever present to hear any petition or prayer for help. There were many forms of propitiation, or these may have been sometimes in the nature of invocations, such as the elevation and lowering of the arms, the presentation of the mouth-piece of the pipe, the emission of the smoke, the burning of cedar needles in the sweat house, the application of the major terms of kinship, ceremonial waiting, sacrifice and offerings, and the cutting of the body with knives.
The Osages call the Sun the mysterious one of day, and pray to him as grandfather. Prayer was always made toward the sun without regard to its position in the heavens. Here is a prayer.
Ho, Mysterious Power, you who are the Sun! Here is tobacco! I wish to follow your course. Grant that it may be so! Cause me to meet whatever is good (i. e., for my advantage) and to give a wide berth to anything that may be to my injury or disadvantage. Throughout this island (the world) you regulate everything that moves, including human beings. When you decide for one that his last day on earth has come, it is so. It can not be delayed. Therefore, O Mysterious Power, I ask a favor of you.
The Pleiades, the constellation of the Three Deer (Belt of Orion), the Morning Star, the Small Star, the Bowl of the Dipper, are all Wakandas, and they are addressed as “Grandfather.” In the Osage traditions, cedar symbolizes the tree of life. When a woman is initiated into the secret society of the Osages, the officiating man of her gens gives her four sips of water, symbolizing, so they say, the river flowing by the tree of life, and then he rubs her from head to foot with cedar needles, three times in front, three times on her back, and three times on each side, 