Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” film / Osage tribe members were the world’s richest people per capita.
~ Thursday, October 19, 2023 Blog Post ~
I watched “Killers of the Flower Moon” on its premiere yesterday, Wednesday, October 18, 2023 and I must say that it is a heartwarming, gripping, and interesting movie. I have always adored Leonardo DiCaprio and in his latest film, the “Titanic” star still demonstrated that he is among Hollywood’s finest and the world’s best actor.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is about the murders of the Osage Nation’s members in the 1920s. This screenplay based on a tragic story centered on the lives of the Osage people. These Native Americans were wealthy, thanks to the oil money they had been blessed with, which they derived from the precious commodity beneath their reservation in Northeast Oklahoma.
The Osage tribe became the world’s richest people per capita in the early 20th century. But, tragically, they started to be mysteriously murdered and the case became one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s first-ever major homicide investigations.
I’m curious about the Osage Nation’s oil wealth. Hence, I want to include this Bloomberg article here in my blog entry:
In Trust: The Search for the Osage Nation’s Lost Oil Wealth (From Bloomberg)
By Rachel Adams-Heard, September 6, 2022
Welcome to the first episode in the podcast series In Trust. Subscribe to the podcast here and learn more about the project. A transcript of this episode is available.
In episode one, a list published in a local Oklahoma newspaper sheds light on who ended up with a tribal nation’s mineral rights.
Osage County, Oklahoma, is as big as some US states. It’s nearly 1.5 million acres, much of it covered in bluestem grass perfect for grazing cattle. More than a century ago, the Osage Nation held title to the land.
Today, a lot of the county is owned by non-Osages. There’s a Nature Conservancy prairie preserve and thousands of acres owned by Farmland Reserve, an affiliate of the Mormon Church. But of all the landowners in Osage County, one extended family is the biggest. Its members have been ranching here for generations. The family name is associated with Oklahoma state politics and a TV show on the Food Network. The story of the family’s rise is the story of how US policies allowed White settlers to build tremendous wealth off land and minerals once owned by the Osage.
To understand how this Oklahoma land empire came to be, you have to start in 1906.
What Are Headrights?
In the early 1900s, the Osage Nation, which bought this land after leaving its Kansas reservation, was undergoing tremendous change. The US had dismantled its government. Now, the federal government wanted to take the land out of the collective ownership of the Osage Nation and parcel it out to Osage individuals — a policy known as allotment. Many Osage leaders opposed the move, seeing the disastrous effects on other tribal nations. The individual parcels would be small and scattered; one chief argued against it by pointing to White farmers nearby who had tried and failed to farm 160-acre tracts. But Oklahoma statehood was coming. Allotment seemed inevitable. Osage Chief James Bigheart reached an agreement with the federal government: The Nation would accept allotment but retain ownership of the mineral rights beneath its land. Those rights were put in a trust managed by the federal government, whose role as trustee obligated it to safeguard the Osage beneficiaries’ financial interests. Each person on a roll of Osages at the time received a share, which came to be called a headright. Every three months, each person who had a headright received a portion of the money from oil and gas drilling in Osage County.
When oil production exploded a decade later, those headrights became extremely valuable. Tales of Osage wealth swept the country, many of them exaggerated. But that wealth — and that attention — also brought tragedy. Outsiders flocked to Osage County, plotting ways to get the money for themselves. Dozens of Osages were murdered in widespread schemes to get their headrights, a years-long criminal conspiracy often referred to as the Reign of Terror. Headrights left Osage hands in other ways, too — some via fraud and deceit, others through sales, charitable donations and bequests — that many Osage leaders say should never have been allowed by the US.
In the decades since, Osage citizens have tried to figure out who got their headrights — and how. The answer was a secret, closely guarded by the trust’s overseer, the US government.
Who Has a Headright?
When a local paper, the Bigheart Times, published the full list of non-Osage headright owners in 2009, it ripped open old wounds. More than a quarter of headrights were now held outside Osage hands. Almost 2,000 non-Osage people, companies and organizations held headrights or some fraction of one.
Among those names was one known throughout Osage County: Drummond.
The Drummonds have been in Oklahoma since before it was a state. Their expansive ranching empire here exists on land once owned by the Osage Nation and, after allotment, by Osage citizens. If you add up land held by dozens of Drummond entities and individuals, the extended family together makes up nearly 9% of the county. That land is currently worth at least $275 million, according to a Bloomberg estimate based on Osage County agricultural land transactions compiled by Oklahoma State University, as well as conversations with brokers and appraisers familiar with the land.
This story starts with a question: Did the Drummonds have headrights? And if not, how did they amass this much land? But the story led someplace else — into an exploration of an entire system, made possible by federal laws and rules, that helped move wealth out of Native hands and into White ones. And how the Osage Nation is working to reverse decades of land loss.
— With assistance by Linly Lin, Devon Pendleton and Allison Herrera.
References:
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0361617Z:US#xj4y7vzkg
