Townsite Settlement and Dispossession in the Cherokee Nation, 1866-1907 by Brad A. Bays

Author:Brad A. Bays [Bays, Brad A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, United States, State & Local
ISBN: 9781317732136
Google: tHp0DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-10-24T01:33:18+00:00

Figure 5.4 Small scale, open pit coal mining near Chelsea in 1922. Source: Oklahoma Historical Society.

occurred on a limited scale, in violation of Cherokee law, and it was reported that Cherokee citizens, who could legally mine coal, rarely paid the required royalties.31

By 1895 speculators had located the major petroleum and natural gas fields of the Cherokee Nation but failed to exploit them. Oil had been known to exist for years in the Caney valley and a few other places where oil springs and gas seeps were common. Cherokee mineral law, which had been intended to curtail intruder coal mining in the Cherokee Outlet by allowing only Cherokee citizens to mine, did not address oil and gas production until the early 1880s, when New York interests approached the Principal Chief for exploration rights. The capital required to tap this resource prompted the tribe in 1884 to restructure its mineral laws so as to enable corporate development of oil and to generate tribal royalties.32

In that year the chief issued a license to the Cherokee Petroleum Company, a corporation of mostly tribal officials and other wealthy citizens, including Union Agent Robert Owen, who then subleased its rights to a New York investor. The Department of the Interior did not interfere with the arrangement. For three years the firm failed to drill a producing well, and it disbanded in 1888. Oil was discovered near Chelsea in 1889 by an independent driller working in association with a Cherokee citizen. In 1890 the Cherokee Nation liberalized its mineral law to allow citizens to obtain licenses to lease their landholdings to oil companies in return for a 10% tribal royalty. The United States Oil Corporation, a group that gained rights over a large area of the Cherokee Nation, was unable to strike oil in eleven wells drilled between 1891 and 1895. In 1895 this firm was sold at a huge loss to the Cherokee Oil and Gas Company, which had begun operations in 1891 from the subleases of 36 tribal citizens. Although it had yet to produce much oil, Cherokee Oil and Gas had by 1895 become the largest holder of oil and gas mineral rights in the Cherokee Nation. After that year, oil exploration halted as the outlook for tribal control over leasing and mineral royalties blurred with the extension of federal control over the Cherokee Nation.33

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