The first European journal reference to the…
1700 CE
Informed by reports, he describes an Omaha village with four hundrew dwellings and a population of about four thousand people.
It is located on the Big Sioux River near its confluence with the Missouri, near present-day Sioux City, Iowa.
The French call it "The River of the Mahas."
The Omaha tribe began as a larger Woodland tribe comprising both the Omaha and Quapaw tribes.
This tribe had coalesced and inhabited the area near the Ohio and Wabash rivers around year 1600.
As the tribe migrated west, it split into what became the Omaha and the Quapaw tribes.
The Quapaw had settled in what is now Arkansas and the Omaha, known as U-Mo'n-Ho'n ("upstream") settled near the Missouri River in what is now northwestern Iowa.
Another division happened, with the Ponca becoming an independent tribe, but they tended to settle near the Omaha.