Miami, Mo. ? After taking a sip of water, Truman Black placed the tips of his fingers against his chest and closed his eyes. He swayed slightly as he sang a soft, deeply powerful melody.

“The Flag Song,” as Black called it, honors Otoe predecessors who fought for their culture at home as well as for the United States abroad.

“Our tribe, many a tribe, have great honor in their warriors,” said Black, who calls himself one of the last full-blooded Otoe American Indians.

Black, 68, of Oklahoma City, spoke about the Otoes’ history, language and culture recently at Van Meter State Park, about 75 miles west of Columbia. The event was sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

The Otoe originated in what is now the Upper Midwest in the 1300s or 1400s. They moved west in the 1500s to 1600s before settling in the 1750s with the Missouri and Ioway American Indians in what are now Nebraska and Iowa.

Connie Winfrey, historical site administrator for Van Meter State Park, said that after the Missouri, Ioway and Otoe tribes migrated from the Great Lakes, the Missouri Indians stayed near the Missouri River in what is now Saline County and the Otoe went up the river to Nebraska.

In the late 1700s, when the Sauk and Fox tribes defeated the Missouri Indians, they went up the river and joined the Otoe.

“When Lewis and Clark came through here, the Missouri Indians weren’t living here. They found them with the Otoe,” Winfrey said. “The Missouri Indians and the Otoe were the first tribes Lewis and Clark encountered on their trek west.”

Black said the Missouri, Ioway and Otoe have similar languages. The Ioway language, he said, has only a handful of words with meanings that differ from the Otoe language. The Missouri Indians spoke the same language but at a quicker pace, he said.

“If we got the people to slow down enough, we could understand them,” Black said.

At its peak, Black said, the Otoe tribe had about 2,300 members. Today, he said, there are a little more than a dozen “full-blooded” Otoe.

Language is the key to the preservation of culture, Black said. “You lose your language, you lose your culture,” he said.

Black said that because the Otoe do not have a written language, he learned the tribe’s customs and language from Arthur Lightfoot, an uncle of Ioway and Otoe descent. Black said he is among only a handful of people who know how to speak the language.

Black said descendants of the Otoe tribe don’t know American Indian history because their parents no longer talk about it. “They are no longer told stories as I was when I was growing up,” he said.

During a question-and-answer session, Black explained how to say the word “daughter” in Otoe but struggled to recall the word for “mama.” “If you don’t speak it, you lose it,” he said.

Black also discussed his confrontations with bigotry. He told how he was refused service in 1957 at a Ponca City, Okla., bar while wearing his Navy uniform. The server told him that because he was an American Indian, he could not buy beer.

Black said he once was confined to a segregated portion of a cafe. But he said he has never been ashamed of his heritage. “I have never had a reason not to be prideful of my heritage.”

He said that it was emotional to remember his past because many of the people who know the Otoe culture are dying off.

“I’m of an age where I knew the elders that lived the culture, still spoke the language and were still in the cultural customs of our Indian history,” he said. “There are many people of my age today who don’t have that spiritual feeling that I have because of knowing of the language and the customs.”