During the terrible winter of 1829, Indians of the Osage tribe arrived exhausted in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), ending a wandering that had taken them for two and a half years through part of Europe.
After weeks of wandering, the Osages were welcomed in Montauban by Bishop Louis-Guillaume Dubourg. A collection is organized to allow them to return home and it is thanks to the generosity of the people of Montauban that the Osages returned to their village and told of their odyssey. From one generation to the next, this story has been passed down to the present day Osages.
In 1989, the Oklahoma-Occitania association found contact with the tribe, which joined the cultural exchange project. Since then, Osages regularly meet in Occitania and Occitans in Oklahoma. A stele erected in the Montauban plant garden commemorates this rediscovered friendship
Tribal Location: The legends of the tribe tell that the ancient Osages once lived east of the Mississippi River, first in the foothills region of the state of Virginia, then in the Ohio Valley.