Two Indigenous communities, the Osage and the Pawnee, feature in this letter to the famous explorer William Clark in 1823. These communities were just two of the many still living in the newly formed United States of America and this letter gives a brief snapshot of the complexities of Indigenous communities living in such close quarters to not only each other but to the American colonists. Though the Osage and Pawnee had different histories and customs, both were subject to the changes implemented by the U.S. government. With the victory over the British secured, the new nation set upon discovering a definitive strategy to handle the "Indian problem". This began with treaties and ended with Indigenous nations on gradually decreasing reservations.

These complicated political maneuvers were only partially underway by the time this letter was written. By 1823 it had become a policy of the U.S. to purchase Indigenous land and move the inhabitants to other areas and the Osage nation had signed a number of treaties to this effect. The altercation mentioned in this letter, with the Osage returning from a battle with the Pawnee with scalps and other trophies of war, shows the continuing tense relationship between many of the Indigenous communities and the exacerbation of this situation by the relocations enforced by the U.S. government. The Indigenous Peoples had always fought and formed alliances between communities and many of the colonial wars saw allegiance being formed between communities and colonialists in order to battle enemy communities. By forcing them to live together on ever diminishing parcels of land, the U.S. government created a continually tense situation. William Clark’s role in this was that of the co-ordinator; he’d been appointed to the role of U.S. agent of Indian Affairs in 1807 and continued in this capacity for a number of years. Though sympathetic to the Indigenous plight and, due to his travels with Merriweather Lewis, keenly aware of the many different cultures and beliefs of the varying communities, he nevertheless supervised the purchase of hundreds of miles of Indigenous land by the U.S. government.

This letter conveys the rather bizarre situation of the two very different cultures of the Indigenous Peoples and the colonies living alongside each other; one attempting to hold on to their culture and the other determined to develop and enforce their own. The U.S. government eventually partially succeeded in their enterprise of isolation and assimilation; the scenes described in this letter swiftly disappeared from the American landscape as the Indigenous nations succumbed to the restrictions enforced on them and their numbers decreased each year. However, as the rise of civil rights movements spread throughout the twentieth century, Indigenous culture began to gain prominence again and, after a long fight, began to break through the boundaries of the reservations.