The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy by Robert P. Jones

Author:Robert P. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

OSAGE OIL AND PROSPERITY

The delaying tactics by Bigheart and Palmer to avoid allotment also had another fortuitous effect. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the nascent but burgeoning automobile industry had created an increasingly insatiable appetite for oil. Bigheart and Palmer had some knowledge that there was oil beneath Osage lands. A decade earlier, an Osage Indian had discovered a rainbow sheen floating on a creek near Gray Horse in the eastern part of Osage lands. But no one imagined the fortune these rocky, barren tribal lands would produce.

Between 1917, when one of the first major oil “gushers” erupted, and the early 1920s, the riches of the Osage oilfields garnered the attention, and the investment, of the world’s largest oil companies. Early leases granted by the Osage in 1912 for a single 160-acre drilling tract could be had for as little as $500, but by 1923 the most valuable of these tracts went for as much as $2 million. The auction of the Osage leases, which occurred three or four times a year and were overseen by the Department of the Interior, drew oil barons from all over the country. Arriving in their own luxurious railcars, the likes of Harry Sinclair (Sinclair Oil) and Frank Phillips (Phillips Petroleum) made the trip personally to stand under the branches of what became known as “the Million Dollar Elm,” a tree on a hill in Pawhuska where the auctions were held, and bid on the choicest leases.41

In 1923 alone, the tribe received more than $30 million for their leases, equivalent to about $520 million today. This communal income translated into thousands of dollars in quarterly payments for each member of the tribe, enormous sums at the time, and they were increasing every year. In a little more than a decade, the Osage had moved from the brink of starvation to being described as the wealthiest people per capita in the world by outlets like the New York Times.42 This transformation was met with dismay not only by envious local white residents but by observers across the country. Reporters wrote fabulous stories about the lavish lifestyles of “red millionaires.” The equivalent of the “reality TV” of their day, these voyeuristic accounts depicted chauffeured luxury automobiles and servant staffs, particularly the existence of white servants, who were derided as “Indian pot-lickers” for their willingness to do “all the menial tasks about the house to which no Osage would stoop.”43

“Where will it end?” a reporter from Harper’s Monthly Magazine mused. “Every time a new well is drilled the Indians are that much richer. The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.”44

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.