The first reference to the Osage came in 1673, when Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette descended the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes, stopped at the mouth of the Missouri River, and gathered information about river tribes from Indians they met. The French soon established themselves in the region, with missionaries building missions on the Illinois River and later at Cahokia and Kaskaskia. Fur traders were the first explorers to actually meet the Osage, possibly as early as 1680, though they left no records; in 1693, two French traders reportedly reached the Osage and returned to Kaskaskia with members of the tribe. The first European known to have visited the Osage and left a record was Charles Claude du Tisne, who in the summer of 1719 traveled from Kaskaskia to the Big Osage village, which he said had 100 lodges and 200 warriors, and whose people he described as well built, led by several chiefs with little power, difficult to deal with, but hospitable because they wanted to trade. Between 1714 and 1719, the Osage split into larger and smaller groups, and the Little Osage moved north to establish a village near the Missouri Indians in what is now Saline County, remaining there until the 1780s; as the Missouri Indians, decimated by disease, began to leave the area, the Little Osage turned more to the Big Osage for protection. Two European-borne items, the horse and the gun, strongly changed Osage life: the horse spread north from the Spanish in New Mexico beginning about 1630 and was common among the Osage by 1700, allowing them to travel farther and faster, while guns obtained by trading furs with the French helped them maintain a dominant position over their neighbors. With more horses and guns, the Osage became the fiercest group on the eastern plains and the most sought after by fur traders. A pattern of warfare and honor also took shape among the Osage and other plains tribes, in which daring acts that risked life were considered manly and honorable, though settlers could not understand these acts and were therefore at odds with Indians. By 1733, reports were widespread that the Osage were attacking other Indian groups and Frenchmen, and the French government, with only a small population of traders, tried to remain on good terms with Indians and did little to stop the raids. After the French ceded the Louisiana Territory to the Spanish at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, Spanish possession brought little change in the treatment of Indians.