Background
In 1897 oil was first discovered in Osage County. The federal government's Department of Interior (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) managed leases for oil exploration and production on land owned by the Osage Nation, and later managed royalties, paying individual allottees. As part of the process of preparing for statehood, the federal government allotted 657 acres to each Osage on the tribal rolls in 1907; thereafter, they and their legal heirs, whether Osage or not, had "headrights" to royalties in oil production, based on their allotments of lands. The headrights could be inherited by legal heirs, including non-Osage.
By 1920 the market for oil had grown dramatically and the Osage were wealthy. People all across the United States read about the Osage, called "the richest nation, clan or social group of any race on earth, including the whites, man for man." Some Osage used their royalties to send their children to private schools; others bought fancy cars, clothes and jewelry, and traveled in Europe; and newspapers across the country covered their activities. Along with tens of thousands of oil workers, the oil wealth attracted many white opportunists to Osage County; as the writer Robert Allen Warrior characterized them, some were entrepreneurial, while others were criminal, seeking to separate the Osage from their wealth, by murder if necessary.
Believing the Osage would not be able to manage their new wealth, or influenced by whites who wanted a piece of the action, by 1921 the US Congress passed a law requiring Osage of half-blood or more in ancestry to have guardians appointed until they demonstrated "competency". Under the system, even minors who had less than half-Osage blood had to have guardians appointed, regardless of whether the minors had living parents. The courts appointed the guardians from local white lawyers or businessmen. The incentives for criminality were overwhelming; such guardians often maneuvered legally to steal Osage land, their headrights or royalties; others were suspected of murdering their charges to gain the headrights.
At that time, 80 lawyers were working in Pawhuska, the Osage County seat, which had 8,000 residents; the number of lawyers was said to be as great as in the state capital, which had 140,000 residents. In 1924 the Department of Interior charged two dozen guardians of Osage with corruption in the administration of their duties related to their charges, but all avoided punishment by settling out of court. They were believed to have swindled their charges out of millions of dollars. In 1925, each Osage headright was worth $1 million in equivalent 1994 dollars, according to the work by the journalist Dennis McAuliffe. In 1929 $27 million dollars was reported still being held by the "Guardian System," an organization set up to protect the financial interests of 883 Osage families in Osage County.
Read more about this topic: Osage Indian Murders
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