Osage Indian War - Notable Osage

Notable Osage

• Scott BigHorse, Osage Assistant Principal Chief, elected to the Oklahoma House; served (2006-2008).
• Louis F. Burns (1920-2012), historian and author, considered a leading expert on Osage history, customs, and mythology. Author of thirteen books including A History of the Osage People.
• David Holt (politician), currently serves in the Oklahoma state Senate. He is the first Osage elected to state office since 2006.
• Dennis McAuliffe, journalist and writer, assistant foreign editor of the Washington Post. Since investigating the 1925 death of his Osage grandmother during the "Reign of Terror" and publishing Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation (1994), he has become an enrolled Osage member; and been active in recruiting and teaching Native American students in journalism. From 2003-2009, he led "Reznet," a website he founded to teach and mentor journalism online to Native American students at a variety of universities; he also teaches at the University of Montana and in the summer American Indian Journalism Institute.
• John Joseph Mathews (c. 1894-1979), author/historian, was a World War I veteran who became one of the Osage Nation's most important spokesmen and writers. He studied at the University of Oklahoma and Oxford; he wrote classic histories of the Osage, and a novel set during the early 20th-century period of the oil boom and the social disruption it caused.
• Willard Hughes Rollings, historian who published Unaffected by the Gospel: Osage Resistance to the Christian Invasion, 1673-1906: A Cultural Victory (2004), a study of Christian missionaries and the Osage, who resisted Christianization to retain their own religion and practices. The book was published by the University of New Mexico Press.
• Maria Tallchief, born in Fairfax, Oklahoma, she became a classical ballerina and contributed greatly to the success of ballet in the United States. She danced with the New York City Ballet as it created a new American dance style. Its director George Balanchine choreographed ballets just for her.
• Marjorie Tallchief, sister and professional ballerina. Both sisters were prima ballerinas who performed in many countries throughout the 20th century.
• Clarence Leonard Tinker (1887–1942), US major general and airman who lost his life during World War II while on a combat mission during the Japanese attack on Midway Island in the Pacific, June 7, 1942. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is named in his honor. He was the highest ranking native American descendant in the U. S. Army and the first general killed in World War II.
• Carter Revard - is a poet, author, and Rhodes Scholar.