When Missouri was first being settled, the Osage Native Americans were the only tribe between the Osage River and the Mississippi. They were of the same stock as the Sioux and were hostile to the whites. Around 1787, the Spanish government, who had acquired the territory from France in 1762, brought in a band of Shawnee and Delaware Native Americans, who had been friendly to the French, to help protect the settlers from the Osage. After the French had established and settled Ste. Genevieve, the first American settlers started showing up in about 1788, and trickled upriver from Cape Girardeau and New Madrid. Starting about 1794, Americans began migrating into the Ste. Genevieve District from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Starting around 1840, German Catholics began settling around New Offenburg and Zell, and shortly after German Lutherans began spreading into Ste. Genevieve from Perry County.