In 1854, occupied the south eastern portion of the State, south of the Platte River, their hunting grounds extending as far west as the Blue. They numbered at that time between 800 and 1,000, all told, and their principal village was a few miles below the present Nebraska City.
The Otoes belong to the Dakota family and were originally a part of the Missouris, with whom they have been for years united, forming one village. They were known to the French in 1673 under the name of Attanka, and calling themselves Wahoohtahta. Major Long, who explored this country in 1819-20, says the Otoes were a band from a great nation living at the head of the Mississippi River, from whom they separated in about 1724, coming west to the Missouri, their first settlement in Nebraska being near the mouth of the Great Nemaha River. Their next camping ground was on the Platte, fifteen or twenty miles from its mouth, and it was from this camp that several of their Chiefs and warriors went to visit and hold a council with Lewis and Clarke in the summer of 1804, at the latter's camp on the bluffs of the Missouri sixteen miles above Omaha, from which incident the place derived its name of Council Bluffs. From the Platte they came to the Missouri and established villages on the plateau now occupied by the city of Omaha, where they were living in 1820, but removed shortly afterward again to the Platte, near their old homes. Abandoning this place they established permanent villages of earth-covered huts on the Missouri a few miles south of the present location of Nebraska City, where they were living at the time of the opening up of the Territory to settlement. Treaties were made with them on June 24th, 1817, and September 26th, 1825, and by treaty on March 15th, 1854, the confederated tribes of Otoes and Missouris ceded their rights to the lands lying along the Missouri, and were removed to a reservation of 16,000 acres on the southeastern border of the State, where they still remain; both tribes, together, in 1879, numbering less than five hundred souls. The western half of their reservation has been appraised for sale.