NEWTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — According to a release from the Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office (ONHPO), officials have successfully petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (USBGN) to designate the highest peak in the Ozark Mountains, the “Wahzhazhe Summit."
The peak reaches an elevation of 2,561 feet in the Ozark National Forest, situated in the Boston Mountains area of the Osage Nation Ancestral Homelands, a little more than 13 miles east of the city of Pettigrew, AR.
The Director of the ONHPO, Dr. Andrea Hunter, said that when she saw “Buffalo Lookout" proposed as a name for the peak, she responded.
“I emailed the USBGN stating that rather than naming the summit [after] a fire tower that was on the summit, we suggest naming it for the indigenous people who lived on the Ozark Plateau for 1,300 years before being removed, the Osage Nation,” Dr. Hunter explained. “I submitted a proposal for an alternate name, Wahzhazhe Summit.”
According to the Osage Nation, Wahzhazhe, meaning "People of the Middle Water," was used as a name for themselves, before it was "historically deduced to the interpretation and spelling of 'Osage' after colonization and forced migration."
In response to Dr. Hunter’s proposal, the USBGN sought input from various sources, including the original advocate of "Buffalo Lookout."
Dr. Caven Clark, a former archaeologist at Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas, wrote a letter in support of Dr. Hunter's proposal, stating, “The ‘giving’ of this name reasserts the covenant between the Osage people and this living and dynamic landform as a symbolic reference point to a unique past and a shared future."
“The Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office works tirelessly to protect our ancestral lands across 16 states,” Dr. Hunter said. “The history of our Nation and our footprint on the landscape is generally not known by the public at large. When I see an opportunity where we can assist in educating the public about our ancestral lands, I take it. I couldn’t have been happier with our success.”
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