I'm not an Osage historian, but wanted to provide some brief context for the photograph.

First, the photo is dated 1909, which is a good four hundred years after Europeans convinced themselves the New World was, well, a new world and not, in fact, India. Going back several centuries normal European trade goods were, depending on time and place, anything from cloth to glass beads to guns. Metal artifacts were regularly reworked and traded far beyond the frontier of European encroachment. The Osage managed to play the game of empires almost perfectly, positioning themselves to trade for horses spreading north from Mexico, and firearms from Canada. They were, for a time, masters of the Southern Plains. While they have a rich material culture, we don't typically find lapel pins among their traded items.

Jumping ahead a century or two, by the turn of the twentieth century the United States ongoing war against indigenous peoples focused on two fronts: assault on communally held land in favor of individual allotments of 160 acres, and cultural erasure through the boarding school system. The Osage are unique in the context of allotment. Between 1887 and 1934 tribal land holdings in the U.S. dropped from 138 million acres to roughly 48 million acres. Around 1894 oil was discovered under Osage land. When they were forced at accept allotment of their lands in 1907 they insisted on continuing ownership of the mineral rights below that land. The Osage profited in the ensuing oil boom, and 1909 would be squarely at the start of that boom. Osage leadership would be at the heart of an oil rush, negotiating resources for the nation, and managing the extraction, sale, and transportation of this liquid black gold. By 1923 oil royalties would reach thirty million dollars in one year alone. The lapel pin was much more likely to be traded or bought at this time, when investors were desperately courting Osage mineral wealth and the nation, again, positioned itself to maintain it's sovereignty in the face of a ruthlessly expansive neighbor.

Hi there! I'm no historian, but I am a member of the Osage Nation. Growing up, I had the same questions and I was shocked the first time I saw what I thought was a swastika on a shawl from the 1800s.

I was quickly and thankfully informed that no, my ancestors were not Nazis. If you compare the symbol in the attached photo to the Nazi's swastika, you will noticed its actually inverted. This inverted symbol can be historically traced back hundreds of years and was used by many tribes, often referred to as the whirling log or the rolling log.

As you can imagine, the Osage Nation discontinued any use of the whirling log symbol after WWII. However, there are a few pre-WWII structures in Oklahoma (e.g. Hominy Round House) where you can still see these symbols carved into rock etc.

Hope this helps! If you have any other questions let me know. If I don't know the answer, I can always call me Dad - he's our family historian, knows so much more about the Osage side of the family than I do. :)

Just to complement the great comment by u/anthropology_nerd about the Osage, here are some answers about the use of swastikas in Europe and America pre-Third Reich.

• This answer by u/Noble_Devil_Boruta talks a bit about its usage and association with American Indians in the early 20th century, especially in Oklahoma and Arizona.

• There is also this thread with an initial response by u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and a comment by a now-inactive flair that points to some use of the symbol among Puebloan people before European contact.