WEBVTT - The Middlewoman 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.360 When I've talked to present day members that the extended 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:06.880 Drummond family, they've told me their ancestors got a lot 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:10.280 of their land from non Osage landowners who had already 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.760 gotten it from the original Osage lat And from what 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.160 I can tell from mill land records in the courthouse, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.560 that's true. The three Drummond brothers purchased a bunch of 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.040 their land from white people. There was the bill Hale ranch, 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:27.400 another one called the Tiger that Jack Drummond talks about, 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.440 a lot. They even bought land from Ovi Pope's family. 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:35.440 And in some cases there was a middleman, actually a 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:46.480 middle woman, Alan large let Anna. Jack Drummond tells Terry, 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.800 his biographer, about a woman who made selling O sage 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.640 land twit ranchers her whole business. And then she would 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:57.080 charge of it at a high rate. And then she 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.760 had later from the Indians of the much less. She 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:06.040 was a the middle man then right yeahs Anna Mark 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:10.760 themat would acquire individual O s age allotments on sixty 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.240 acres here and there and packaged them together as one 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.280 big chunk that she would then lease or sell two 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:21.440 ranchers who wanted large contiguous pieces of land that meant 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.400 Anna could charge more, and the difference between what she 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:26.680 paid O s Ages for the land and what she 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.360 got from the ranchers was her profit. Yeah, she knew 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.440 the Indians and she knew the counman about the command 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.920 one was a grass and what the Indians one was 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:41.280 money whenever they wanted to see. Anna started out with leases. 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.479 She'd leased out a bunch of oce Age allotments, then 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.840 stub leased the combined land to ranchers. After a while, 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.559 she moved beyond leasing. She started buying oth age land 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:55.200 outright and selling the pastors she'd put together for a profit. 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.720 Both Jack and Cecil Drummond bought land from her. She 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:04.000 was the richest person in the os. That's fascinating about 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.680 her now. She was sure, And do you know Terry 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:14.640 that later I used that land from that time on 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.240 and then I said, Mrs Lamont, I want to buy 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.440 your land. She's all right, I'll sell it to you. 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.640 And we agreed on the prize at thirty dollars an acre. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.800 It's clear Jack respected Anna. Terry brings her up a 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.720 lot in the tapes, and every time he does, Jack 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.560 speaks highly of her. Jack saw her tactics flipping oce 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.640 age Land at a markup as good business, kind of 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:42.760 like the shirts he was charging a markup on at 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.240 the store. Well, she was also she was the smartest 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.800 woman I I've known lots of women that she was. 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:54.239 She was, she was a businessman. But at one point 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.320 in those tapes, as he's again praising Anna LaMotte and 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.560 crediting her with a lot of his ranching success, Jack 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:03.640 says something a little more candid about what Anna was doing. 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:12.000 The fifty sounds and the difference between what the command 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:13.880 paid her unless she paid the end of the party, 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:18.120 and a lot of this land she just steal, just 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:23.920 get for nothing, diffused for nothing. She just steal, just 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:28.960 get for nothing, just used for nothing. When I started 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.079 looking into Anna LaMotte, I learned she was accused of 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:36.200 doing just that. Anna faced lawsuits and at one point 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:40.080 criminal charges over how she was getting O s Age Land. 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:46.440 When I talk about the system the Drummond Brothers learned 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:51.280 to operate to store the probates, the guardianships, I want 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:53.680 to make clear the brothers weren't the only ones getting 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:57.600 rich off the OCGE nation. There was the Association, sure, 0:03:58.040 --> 0:03:59.880 the group of men who funneled O s Age my 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.920 me through the store and bank, but there was also 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:08.400 simply everyone else. The Drummond family didn't build their ranching 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:13.320 empire alone. They had help, not just from the store, guardianships, 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.640 other white people in hominy. At the core of it 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.479 all was allotment and help in the form of policy 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.400 and money from the federal government. Today, I'm going to 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.120 tell that story, the story of An Lamott. It's a 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.719 story wrapped up in the project of allotment in Oklahoma statehood, 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.839 the story about how the US expanded west and built 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:49.000 the country we know today. This is in trust. I'm 0:04:49.080 --> 0:05:02.240 Rachel Adams. Heard to understand how Jack was able to 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.240 get land from Anna LaMotte, you need to understand how 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.039 Anna LaMotte got it in the first place. And she 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:12.520 couldn't have done it without Oklahoma statehood, without allotment. I 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.000 told you before the under allotment, the government divided up 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.400 land the O s Age Nation held Title two as 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.320 a whole and parceled it out to individual O s 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.479 Age citizens instead. In the decade leading up to those 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.520 allotment negotiations, the US had dismantled the os Age Nations 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:33.200 government and started cutting os Age families off from their culture. 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.080 They forced children to go to Native American boarding schools 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.440 and withhold their parents money they refused. This all worked 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:45.760 to severely weaken the os Age nation's power. Even still, 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.880 oth Age leaders traveled to Washington to argue against allotment. 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.520 An O s Age chief named Black Dog pointed to 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.480 the promises the United States had made in past treaties. 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.640 Another chief, James big Heart, told US government and officials 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:03.760 to look at the effects of allotment on other tribal nations. 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:06.880 He argued that all the disparate parcels of land were 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.560 too small to farm. Successfully incited examples of white men 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:12.880 who had tried and failed to farm their own plots 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:17.240 of land nearby. This comes up and Terry P. Wilson's 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:21.960 book The Underground Reservation. According to Wilson, the Secretary of 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.240 Interior brushed aside the concerns of Black Dog and Big 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:27.400 Heart and other prominent O s Age leaders from the 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:31.920 time and ended the meeting. He warned them allotment was coming. 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.760 Black Dog had raised another problem with allotment. The US 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.599 government was going to base who got those individual pieces 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.320 of land on a roll of Osage citizens at the time, 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.440 but that process was fraught outsiders tried to claim they 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:48.480 were O s Age, knowing they could get a chunk 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:50.920 of the reservation and a share of the mineral rights 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:56.960 that they succeeded. Apparently that included the Drummond family. According 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.440 to a newspaper article from nine two, so one tried 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:02.760 to enroll a member of the Drummond family in the 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:07.080 Osage Nation. The article in the Osage Journal list a 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.000 bunch of last names of children whose families applied to 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.560 have them added to the role of O s Age citizens. 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.440 Some sixty names were approved by Osage leaders, but two 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.920 were rejected. Names of people the O s Age Nation 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:23.440 said weren't O Sage, but it tried to get on 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.800 the role, and one of those names was Drummond. But 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.119 back to the people who were on the O Sage 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:35.040 roll two thousand, two hundred nine people, they were called 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.680 a lattas and every O Sage a latt was assigned 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.360 a head right and pieces of land in three rounds. 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:44.920 One of those parcels was known as a homestead allotment, 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.920 the others were called surplus land. Those chunks of land 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:51.600 could be far away from each other, making it difficult 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:53.960 for O Sage families to have any sort of profitable 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.760 ranching or farming operation. Just like Chief Big Heart warned, 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:02.560 So the entire economic city Asian changed and white ranchers 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.760 were able to sort of take advantage of this situation. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.760 This is Michael Snyder and I teach at the University 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.680 of Oklahoma. Michael has written a couple of books about 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:16.200 a famous O Sage writer named John Joseph Matthews. Matthews 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.640 wrote a newspaper column and several books, and while Michael 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:23.480 was researching his work and reading hundreds of old newspapers, 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.720 he kept seeing Anna LaMotte's name. She was all over 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.680 the papers in the early nineteen hundreds, so they described 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.840 her as attractive and charming. Anna LaMotte was associated with 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.679 political power and Oklahoma State, who had declared a romantic 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:40.240 figure by the press, even amidst their scandals. It turns out, 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.120 before Anna LaMotte made it her business to acquire O 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.120 Sage land and flip it for a profit, she was 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.920 heavily involved with Oklahoma becoming a state, the reason the 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.800 Osage Nation and other tribal nations were forced into allotment. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.679 To begin with, She had been married to an Oklahoma 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.640 Republican congressman named Bird S. McGuire, who was a lawyer 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:03.880 and a rancher who owned a large acreage, so she 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:08.400 knew about ranching and large land deals. Burn McGuire was 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.600 also one of the delegates lobbying for Oklahoma statehood in 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.880 the early nineteen hundreds, and op ed from the time, 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.040 written by a progressive senator blasted McGuire for taking part 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.680 in quote schemes to promote the game of getting the 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.040 Indians patrimony into the hands of those who would use 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:30.680 it to quote develop the country. In other words, this 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:35.280 senator was saying statehood for McGuire was about getting native land. 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:40.920 Anna was right alongside Bird McGuire during the push for statehood. 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.200 She went with the delegation to Washington, d c. Where 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.080 Theodore Roosevelt held a special reception for them in the 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.800 East Room of the White House, and upon Oklahoma statehood, 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:54.720 she was presented with the Oklahoma flag. This moment with 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.800 the flag is almost cinematic the way the paper writes it. 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.079 They're at the Capitol building, the Speaker of the House 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.480 presents her with the old flag for Oklahoma Territory. The 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:08.720 paper calls it a valuable relic. Then the speaker hands 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:13.000 Anna another flag, the first date flag for Oklahoma with 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.640 a big star and the number forty six on the front. 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:19.199 I imagine a ritualistic kind of a scene, almost kind 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.200 of a maternal sort of a symbol, right giving her 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:24.679 those flags like a mother of the state of Oklahoma. 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.760 Perhaps a few years after Oklahoma became a state and 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.920 the reservations were allotted out, Anna divorced Bird McGuire and 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:37.720 married a Chippawaman named George Lamont. George was a baseball 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.480 and football star who later worked at the Office of 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.960 Indian Affairs O s Age Agency before becoming a rancher. 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.160 When Anna and George Lamont married, they also became business 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:52.480 partners and started leasing and buying O Sage land, a 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:54.920 lot of it. There was a lot of pressure for 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.319 O Sages to lease their land to others and then, 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.520 in a lot of cases, eventually to sell it two 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.360 outside parties. It's important to understand that a lot of 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.240 the disconnected parcels of land that Allotman created weren't of 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.120 any use to many O Sage families. They weren't big 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.600 enough to graze cattle, they were too spread out to 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:18.480 cultivate a real farm. And the whole county was swarming 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.560 with outsiders eager to get it. They'd offered to buy 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:25.800 or lease allotments in exchange for cash, cars, anything that 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.600 meant they could have control of the land. So allotment 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:32.680 it was a tool Anna and George Lamott were able 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.080 to use to start their land business, a business that 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.000 would quickly give them control of a massive chunk of 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.720 o s Age land by one newspaper's count a third 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:47.000 of the entire county. Remember, this was supposed to be 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.320 hard to do. There were those restrictions in place that 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.320 meant o stage allottees couldn't sell or lease or mortgage 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.160 their land without approval from the government. You heard Katie 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.320 Eates Free the real estate Specialist, talk about this a 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:05.439 few episodes back. The restriction is that the federal government, 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:09.680 the Bureau of Indian Affairs, they have to basically bless 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.559 what you're doing with your property. They're like, okay, is 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.199 this in your your best interest what you're doing because 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.679 people back in nineteen o six and nineteen eighteen and everything, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.320 we're being taken advantage of. So that's where they came in. 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.600 I think that was the whole point, was to have 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.880 those restrictions, so that wasn't They weren't leasing to the 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:31.880 neighbor next door for a dollar a year when they 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:33.920 could be getting a hundred dollars a year or something 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.959 like that. But Anna and George Lamot skirted those protections. 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.160 They got leases and deeds without ever going in front 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.480 of a federal official who would make sure the oath 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.720 age latte was getting a fair price. Sometimes the leases 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.280 were signed by white men who served as guardians for 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.200 oath age children. I mean, what it comes down to 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:57.080 is they were making shady deals that had to do 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:02.240 with leasing oth age lands or involving o sage properties. 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:06.160 I guess using sharp practices. They were just dishonest and 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.160 how they were working with those sages and that allowed 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:13.079 them to fill their pockets and increase their land base. 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:16.360 So they were kind of in the business of tricking 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.920 people into signing over stuff. Yeah, and they were doing 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:23.600 things where they were always supposed to inform the government. 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:26.160 The Department of the Interior was in charge of all this, 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.000 so they were kind of doing deals behind the back 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.679 of the governments. They were they were ripping off sages 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:34.840 and they were defrauding the government. So the government of 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.560 course retaliated when they found out about this, but they 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.360 kind of did it a handful of times. They did 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:47.680 it repeatedly. The government first went after Analemma. She was 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.360 indicted for signing someone's name on a lease. Her indictment 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.440 didn't go over very well in the local press. The 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.480 Pahaska Paper characterized it as an attack by federal investigators 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.200 who were quote stir r things up around here. The 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:07.240 next year, there was another lawsuit against the Lamtts. This 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.839 one brought on behalf of an o Sage woman named 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:14.280 Rose Neil Hill. In that lawsuit, Rose said Anna told 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.280 her she was signing a power of attorney, when in 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.160 fact Rose was signing over a d to her land. 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:24.120 Rose was trying to undo that transfer and eight others. 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.680 In the lawsuit, she said Anna had stolen four thousand 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.400 acres of Osage land. That same year, some of the 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.680 indictments against the Lamottes were dismissed. A newspaper in nearby 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.680 Ponca City wrote, we were mightily pleased to find this 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:44.840 piece of news, but in the Lamottes were on trial again. 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.080 This is when the newspapers said the Lamottes claimed to 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:52.200 control roughly a third of the entire county. During one hearing, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.320 George LaMotte told the court we thought we owned the 0:14:55.360 --> 0:15:00.200 world and that the O Sage Country was a little kingdom. 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.360 Just a few days after his testimony, Anna and George 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:07.240 were found not guilty. According to a newspaper article, the 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.320 jury deliberations lasted an hour and a half. As Anna 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.000 LaMotte walked into the courtroom, the newspaper said, she quote 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:44.920 smiled confidently at the jurors. They beamingly returned the smile. Eventually, 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.560 the US brought a case to prevent the Lamats from 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.280 leasing out any more O Sage land. The government one, 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:56.640 but the Lamats appealed. The U. S. Supreme Court ruled 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.360 the Lamas had to turn over all leases they had 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.960 on restrict did oz Age land. In the decision, the 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:07.240 court wrote that those restrictions were necessary. These allotments, after all, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.520 were in quote scattered tracks without restrictions. The court wrote, quote, 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:16.360 it is certain that improvident and ill advised leases would 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:21.320 be given and multiplied. From what I can tell, Even 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.520 after that case, Anna LaMotte kept leasing out land because 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.920 according to Jack's biography, he didn't start leasing land from 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:34.000 her until I don't know much about those leases. Jack 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.000 tells Terry a lot of his deals with Anna were informal. 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.920 They didn't put much in writing. But two years after 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:45.000 the Supreme Court's ruling, the Lamots dissolved their business partnership. 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.360 They made notice of it in the paper, the Pasca 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:52.720 Daily Journal. It says, no further business is authorized to 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:56.880 be done in the firm name. All of those transactions 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.680 happened pretty quickly, within fifteen years or so of allotment, 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.080 and even though a lot of those leases were later canceled, 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.440 the Lamottes were able to reshape O s Age County 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:11.040 in that time, giving ranchers access to huge swass of 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:14.040 land that they could use to graze cattle and expand 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:26.480 their operations. There's something else I want to tell you 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:29.440 about the Lamotts, because the Drummonds didn't just buy land 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.560 from them. This whole time the Lamottes and the Drummonds 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.679 and other big ranchers were buying up land. The oil 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:39.840 underneath all that land was making head right holders some 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.520 of the wealthiest people in the world. The same law 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.240 that allotted the O Sage Reservation, the nineteen six Act, 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:50.680 it also created the head right system and kept the 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:54.440 mineral estate and trust. But the wording in the nineteen 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.399 o six Act only guaranteed it would stay that way 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.159 for twenty five years. The policy at the time in 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:03.760 nineteen o six was that we're going to make this law. 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:05.560 This is going to the o s Ages after a 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.640 few decades, are going to go away as a sovereign. 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.320 Let's get them assimilated. Let's get them out of where 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.240 we have any trust obligations to them at all. This 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.480 is Wilson pipes them. I am an o Sage head 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.159 right holder and a citizen of the Oto, Missouri tribe. 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.119 He's an attorney who has represented the oath Age Nation 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.360 in the os Age Minerals Council. A lot of Wilson's 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:30.720 work for them goes back to that trust relationship with 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.480 the United States, the federal government's obligations to the oath 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.840 Age Nation and henright holders. It's not just I trust you, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:43.040 you trust me. That's this is not that so to me. 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.840 The highest piece of this trust relationship is the sovereign 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.160 authority of the oas Age Nation. The os Age Allotment 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:57.119 Act is unusual compared to other acts because it has 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:03.320 so much control over so much federal control and superintendence 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.800 over O Sage resources. I mean remarkable compared to any 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.359 other tribe the United States. So again we embrace that 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:13.640 in some ways because it's created protection, but in other 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:18.520 ways it's caused, you know, significant hardship as well. In 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.600 the late nineteen teens, that trust relationship was in jeopardy 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.840 because of the wording in the nineteen o six Act. 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:27.720 The oth Age Nation was nearing the end of this 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.600 promise that the oil and gas rates beneath the land 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.760 would be held in trust by the US on their behalf. 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.479 After twenty five years, the subsurface will belong to the 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:45.399 whoever the surface landowner is, and then there won't be 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:47.840 an o Sage tribe as a sovereign that exists anymore. 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:50.840 A lot of the people who came to oath Age 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:55.679 County to buy land thought that they would become the 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.160 owners of the mineral rights underneath that land, got all 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.439 the oil and gas revenue would no longer go to 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.000 head right holders. But os Age leaders pushed to extend 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.919 the trust relationship over the mineral estate. They got lawmakers 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.480 to introduce a bill that would make sure it wouldn't 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.600 go away, that all the proceeds from oil and gas 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.399 drilling in Osage County would continue to go into that 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:19.920 big pot and be paid out to head right holders. 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.199 But that incensed big landowners who wanted to own the 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.879 mineral rights. So some of those landowners formed a group 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.880 called the Osage County Homeowners Association. Michael Snyder's written about 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:35.800 them too. So you're not talking about like the homeowners 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:39.400 Association that tells you your grass is too long, right, 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:41.960 I mean there that that might be kind of sinister too, 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:47.960 But this is a group of homeowners and their landowners, bankers, guardians, 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:54.119 other kinds of businessmen. But they were openly doing this. 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.840 This was different from the Association's divers alluded to the 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:01.520 men in hominy who are accessing o money through guardianships 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:06.320 and probates. The os Age County Homeowners Association was something bigger, 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.440 more formal. Their purpose was to lobby against the bill 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.040 that would keep the os Age Mineral State held in 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:16.040 trust for the nation. This is kind of the original 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.960 roster of the group. George LaMotte was the president and 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:28.320 um the vice president was Frederick Gentner Drummond. Later Jack 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:31.400 Drummond would also become involved with the home Owners Association. 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.920 The Drummond brothers, the Lamotts, and other landowners. They were 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.639 all working together to try and end the head right 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.679 system so that all the oil and gas rights beneath 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:43.879 the land they owned would go to them, not O 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:46.960 s Age citizens. This was a group made up of 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.560 prominent landowners in os Age County at the time. According 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:55.200 to one newspaper article from the most active members were 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:59.879 also guardians. These guardians their job was to protect the 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:04.000 financial interests of their O Sage wards. They were actively 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.480 lobbying to end the head right system and the trust 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.240 relationship over the mineral estate and their wards means source 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.240 of income. They would actually go out and talk to 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:17.200 the landowners and canvas and you know, just try to 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:19.639 persuade them, bring them around to their way of thinking 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:22.280 about this. So yeah, they were. They were aggressive, and 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.160 they were they were going out canvassing, and they were 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:31.119 putting um political pressure on on mayors and senators and 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:33.080 so forth. So yeah, they were. They were very vocal, 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:37.439 and until the Sages retaliated, they were just kind of 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:42.000 doing this very openly. The os Age Tribal Council fought 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:45.879 hard against the os Age County Homeowners Association. They launched 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.720 their own lobbying campaign, telling lawmakers that the landowners had 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:52.080 gotten the land for cheap, that they knew when they 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.359 bought it the mineral rights belonged to the tribe and 0:22:55.400 --> 0:22:58.800 the tribal Council was successful. O s Age leaders got 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:01.600 the U. S. Congress to us a law extending the 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:05.360 head right system and the trust relationship. Several years later 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:11.879 it was extended again, and in it was extended one 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:16.960 last time, this time in perpetuity. There really isn't a 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:20.919 lot out there about the Osage County Homeowners Association. It 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:23.040 often gets lost in a lot of the history that's 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:25.639 told about the os Age Nation in the nineteens and 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:30.360 nineteen twenties. A lot happened then, but the Homeowners Association 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:33.960 was a big deal, a very public battle between major 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:37.400 landowners and the os Age Nation over the mineral rights 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.040 that had made os Age citizens so wealthy, A battle 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:43.399 fought by a lot of the same men were supposed 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:45.840 to be looking out for O s Age financial interests. 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:49.399 On one of my phone calls with Gettner Drummond, the 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.880 lawyer running for Oklahoma Attorney General, I asked him about 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:56.439 the os Age County Homeowners Association whether he knew anything 0:23:56.480 --> 0:23:59.919 about it. I was not aware of that. But had 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.920 I've been alive, I would have certainly said the law 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:05.520 that was past the nineteen o six should be enforced. Yes, 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:08.720 I would have done that because landowners so think about 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:11.800 it from the buyer. So the buyer is aware because 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:14.440 it's a law right, So you have to impute knowledge 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:17.040 of the law because it's published that if I buy 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:20.400 this land in nineteen twenty, for example, that in five 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:22.800 years I will own the minerals below it. Then you've 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:29.560 detrimentally relied on federal law and probably paid additional consideration 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:32.159 knowing that you would be a mineral estate owner, and 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:35.760 then the law changes in your not so it's really 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:39.000 been a taking, which would be akin to eminent domain. 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:41.680 So yeah, if I were alive back then, I would 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:45.359 have lobbied to not to not change the law. I 0:24:45.359 --> 0:24:48.320 would have said keep the law as it is. So, 0:24:48.400 --> 0:24:51.120 Getner said he would have made the same legal argument 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:54.240 as earlier Drummonds, that the head rate system and the 0:24:54.280 --> 0:24:58.080 trust relationship should have expired, that the nineteen o six 0:24:58.119 --> 0:24:59.920 Act should have been the final stay on the map. 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:03.880 That word he used at taking, it's a legal term 0:25:03.960 --> 0:25:08.399 from the government takes control of private property. It's worth 0:25:08.440 --> 0:25:11.280 mentioning that the o Stage mineral estate is still managed 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:14.640 by the federal government under current law. All the land 0:25:14.640 --> 0:25:17.480