"This nation, . . . once the most numerous nation in this part of the Continent, " wrote the captains, "[is] now reduced to about 30 families . . . and under the protection of the Oto on the River Platte."  The Indians who gave their name to the state and the mighty, muddy river had left Missouri about a decade before the Corps of Discovery sailed by.  They had suffered severely from smallpox epidemics and raids by their Sauk, Fox, and Ioway enemies after 150 years in their Missouri homeland.

The Missouria (Nau-tat-ci or Peki-tan-oui) spoke the same Chiwere-Sioux language as the Oto, Ioway, and Winnebago tribes and had migrated to north-central Missouri from the upper Great Lakes long before French explorations began in 1673.  Because the Missouria were a leading fur trading tribe, French Canadians in the 1720s built Fort Orleans for their use and even took a tribal delegation to meet the king at Paris and Versailles Palace.  In that same decade, the daughter of a leading Missouria chief married a French nobleman and bore him a son, while another woman of the tribe held her wedding to a French soldier in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.