What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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Top Continued From Page 3 4 WHAT'S UP! JULY 5-11, 2020 A collection of Native American "war shirts" displayed at Top of the Rock is considered one of the most impressive in North America. (Courtesy Photo) in 2018, looks at the Native Americans who hunted the region and later settled there. The second, "A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 2: The Conflicted Ozarks," considers the fundamental changes in the region caused by the Civil War. And the third volume, subtitled "The Ozarkers," is coming in 2021, Blevins promises. "In the very early 1800s, there really weren't any residents in that part of southwest Missouri," he begins. "The White River Valley and most of the Ozarks had traditionally been the territory of the Osages, but they didn't live there; they used it as hunting ground, coming down from their villages in west-central Missouri and even Kansas. "But right around the time the War of 1812 was ending, southwest Missouri and other parts of the Ozarks became an early version of Indian Territory, a dumping ground for Eastern tribes forced west." Of course, that caused conflict between all of those tribes — the Delaware, the Shawnee and others from the Ohio Valley — and the Osage, Blevins says. And as white settlers started coming in, they — and the government — tended to ally themselves with whoever fought the Osage, who were the most powerful Indian nation in the central United States. Still, Blevins says, there wasn't a lot of the kind of cowboys-and-Indians conflict portrayed in 1940s and '50s television and movies. There were cowboys in the region before the Civil War, and they did drive herds of cattle west to feed the gold rush in California — a period Blevins also talks about in "A History of the Johnny Morris' passion for Native American history started when he found a single arrowhead. Since then, the founder of Bass Pro Shops has collected a few more. (Courtesy Photo) See Top Page 39 COVER STORY