January 28, 2015, Wednesday, 7:00 pm General Membership meeting at Lindbergh High School in Anne Morrow Lindbergh Room “The Majesty of the Osage” by Jim Duncan, historian, educator, and past director of the Missouri State Museum. This presentation discusses the early migration of the Osage people and how the structure of their clan system reflects their view of the cosmos. Their fascinating origin myths are explored in relationship to the environment, subsistence, procreation, and the artifact record. Audience members will learn how these proud, independent people, forced to move from their homeland beginning in the 1820s, have managed to surmount the hardships of forced acculturation to retain their identity.

See directions to Lindbergh High School in Anne Morrow Lindbergh Room.

 About Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan is a native Missourian and was born and raised in Jefferson City. His ancestry includes Osage, Cherokee, French and Scotch-Irish.

Jim served as Director the Missouri State Museum for several years and then as Information Office for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Jim then moved to St. Louis to teach. In 2003 he was asked by the Conservation Department to return and direct the statewide Lewis and Clark Programming during the Bicentennial from 2003 to 2006.

Along with his specialties on the Osage, Lewis and Clark, Native American and Frontier technology, Jim is also well-known as an archaeologist and served several terms on the board, including president of the Missouri Association of Professional Archaeologists.

Jim has co-authored “The Petroglyphs and Pictograms and Missouri” and co-edited “the Rock Art of Eastern North America” with a third book in the works. He has also authored and co-authored a number of published articles on archaeology, history, and American Indian iconography.

About Jim Duncan’s work

See work done by Jim Duncan and his wife on Indian rock art at Washington State Park at: http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/washingtonparkA.html

See work by Jim Duncan done with the Ponca Hethuska Society, researching what it did and what it was.

Presentation by Heartlands Conservancy – The Mounds Initiative

The Heartlands Conservancy made a brief presentation about the Mounds Initiative. See more about it at: Heartlands Conservancy and the Mounds Initiative.

George Catlin portraits of Osage Indians

Jim Duncan referred to George Catlin’s classic paintings of Osage Indians and he presented some of Catlin’s paintings in his slide presentation. According to Wikipedia, “George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.” Two Catlin paintings are displayed on this page, one above and one below.