Omahas

Omahas, North American aborigines, a branchof the Siouan (Dakota) family, whose domain formerly comprised the lower course of the Platte River and most of the Elkhorn Valley, in the present State of Nebraska, United States. But, according to the national traditions, they came originally from the district now occupied by the city of St. Louis, and this confirms the view that the Siouan migrations were from east to west, not west to east, as is commonly supposed. The Omahas were not members of the Dakota Alliance, against which they were often at war. Since 1845 most of them have been confined to the Omaha and Winnebago Agency, Nebraska, where they have taken to agriculture, abandoning most of their old pagan usages, and where they have increased from 1,076 in 1875 to 1,158 in 1890.