The name Dog Soldier was a translation for Soldat du Chien, which may have been a corruption of Soldat du Chêne, or Oak Soldier. The Little Osage leader who journeyed to Washington may have been the son of an Osage called Soldat du Chêne, who traveled to New Orleans in 1794 as part of a delegation meeting with the Spanish governor and who was killed by some Chickasaws on his return upriver. Auguste Chouteau, who had accompanied the delegation, presented the medal the Spanish gave to Soldat du Chêne to his son, thereby encouraging a hereditary conferral of rank. In a statistical abstract on Indians he encountered, Zebulon Pike identified Watchkinsingow, or Soldat du Chien, as second chief of the Little Osages. His lieutenant James B. Wilkinson, however, reported meeting with an important leader named Soldier of the Oak at a Little Osage village. The same leader may have been identified as Voithe Chinga, second chief of the Little Osages, in the treaty signed between the Osages and the United States in 1808 (Rollings, The Osage description begins Willard H. Rollings, The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie Plains, Columbia, Mo., 1992 description ends , 173-7; Donald Jackson, ed., The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike: With Letters and Related Documents, 2 vols. [Norman, Okla., 1966], 2:4-5, 40-1; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855-56, 8 vols. description ends , 7:110).

For the murders of a party of Osages, see TJ to Dearborn, 29 June.

village divided: possibly a reference to the Arkansas band of Osages, who had been a distinct group for several decades but had recently been drawing off warriors alienated by the leadership of White Hair. It could also be a reference to followers of Black Dog, an Osage leader who, similarly discontented, established a new village about 1803 (Rollings, The Osage description begins Willard H. Rollings, The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie Plains, Columbia, Mo., 1992 description ends , 159-62; Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent [Philadelphia, 2006], 170-4, 204; Sturtevant, Handbook description begins William C. Sturtevant, Handbook of North American Indians, Washington, D.C., 1978- , 15 vols. description ends , 13, pt. 1:484; TJ to White Hair and Others, 16 July).

I am young: despite TJ’s endorsement, the content of these notes suggests that more than one Osage leader delivered an address when meeting the president. Youth is likely not a descriptor that White Hair would have applied to himself. Furthermore, the references to the receipt of a medal, to having been driven from the Missouri River, which indicates a leader of the Little Osage band, and to one of the Chouteans acting as a father figure imply that the final section of TJ’s notes records the address of Dog Soldier. The Little Osages had occupied villages along the Missouri River while the Big Osage villages were traditionally on the Osage River (TJ to Dog Soldier, 16 July; Rollings, The Osage description begins Willard H. Rollings, The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie Plains, Columbia, Mo., 1992 description ends , 55-9).

quelques egards pour lui: that is, some considerations for him. It seems likely that TJ heard the addresses in French from Pierre Chouteau as each chief spoke in Osage. TJ prepared French versions of his replies to White Hair and Dog Soldier (see below, 16 July).