WEBVTT - The Association 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:03.040 I was starting to get a better idea of how 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.000 the Drummond brothers made some of their money. They had 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:08.799 the store where they could charge a lot, They handled 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:12.520 the states or proved their own claims. They were guardians 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.080 and could borrow O s age money from other guardians. 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:17.640 They had so many different roles when it came to 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.720 O s age finances. I kept seeing this pattern, and 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:26.680 apparently I wasn't the only one. I mentioned. That letter 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.040 I found from nineteen thirty four for the tribal attorney 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:34.919 Lewis Divers said essentially the same thing. He called it 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.920 an association men who were using their positions over O 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.680 s Age families to advance their own interests. He names 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.080 names too, in addition to the Drummond brothers, and these 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.800 men he named either worked at the Drummond Brothers store 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.600 or the local bank where Jack Drummond worked and Fred 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.000 Genner sat on the board. What Stivers seemed to say 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.480 in this letter was that it wasn't just a coincidence 0:00:57.600 --> 0:00:59.520 that all the same men kept coming up in the 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:02.920 O s he guardianships and the states they handled. It 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:07.600 was a whole strategy, an association that was a shocker, 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:11.000 huh That was a shocker of a letter. I sent 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.600 this to Elizabeth Loha Homer, the lawyer in Washington, d c. 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.039 Who's on the oath Age Nations Supreme Court, because for 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.800 everything I had heard about that time period, I hadn't 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.760 really seen any federal officials back then who seemed to 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.840 catch that this was happening over and over again among 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.480 the same people. In hominy, you don't hear about that 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:34.280 very often where those bad behaviors actually get caught. The 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.399 name Stivers mentioned have come up again and again in 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.240 my reporting. There's Fred L. Shed, the guardian who lent 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.400 out his words money to the Drummond brothers, and Carl T. Matthews, 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:48.080 who was the guardian of Rhodoa Wheeler Rich, the o 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:50.920 s Age woman who accused the pope brothers of arranging 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.640 a marriage with her to take her money. A man 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.920 named Barlow. I recognized his name from Iron Banks Junior's audit. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.760 Fred Gettner loaned him from Myron's account. Stiver's list a 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:06.080 few others he writes at all at the end, so 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:23.400 I can only assume there were more. The archives have 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.280 other letters and documents the offer a look inside how 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.680 all this seemed to work. In one case, the Office 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.280 of Indian Affairs set a field agent to look into 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.480 one of Fred L. Shed's guardianships. The superintendent had heard 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.960 someone exerted quote influence over an O s age woman, 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.480 so she would sign a paper saying she wanted Shed 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.839 to remain her guardian. That agent reported back that Jack 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.840 Drummond visited her instead of she told the Office of 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:52.520 Indian Affairs that she wanted to keep Shed as her guardian. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.560 He'd make sure she'd get more money each quarter and 0:02:55.720 --> 0:03:02.320 a new car. From what I've read in the papers 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.560 from this time period, these were prominent members of the 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:09.079 white community in Hominy. This was a town of three 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.440 or four thousand people back then with the Young Rotary Club. 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:14.320 That all but one of the men on this list 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.200 were members of the club. Came up in an article 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.040 about a local game of donkey ball. A bunch of 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:24.840 white businessmen writing donkeys tossing the ball around, and Fred 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.200 Gettner specifically seemed to have a lot of sway. He 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.000 owned those shares in the store and the bank. He 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.480 had been the head of his local Masonic temple in 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.240 the early nineties and led a committee to pave the 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.600 road to Tulsa. Fred Getner was also on the board 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.200 of the company that published the Hominy newspaper, and while 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.200 he was doing all that, according to Stivers, he was 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.960 also using his connections with other white businessmen to access 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.200 money from O. S He guardianships and probates. When I 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:57.240 showed this letter to Gettner Drummond in his office, he 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.200 didn't think it said these men were using O. S 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.720 Age estates to enriched themselves, just that someone was objecting 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:09.120 to having business men administered these estates. There was one 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.040 sentence in this letter from Louis Divers that stood out 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.119 to me. After he lifts off examples where he's seen 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.920 the association play out, he writes, all of these are 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.080 sufficient to cause one to raise this question, to say 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.680 nothing of Mr Drummond's conduct in the Wahusa estate in 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:34.159 connection with certain disbursements. Do Josephine lohawk Hip. This was 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.960 a new name to me, but Elizabeth she actually knew Josephine. Well. 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.200 I always thought that Josephine was my grandma, but it 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.320 turns out Josephine was not my grandma. Josephine was my 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:51.000 grandpa's first wife. Elizabeth says she thought Josephine was her 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.720 grandma because she was at her house so much. They 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.560 lived just outside of Hominy in a big house hosted dinners, 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.560 would have people over all the time. She was like 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.240 the you know, kind of the center of the social 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.600 scene for oh stages in Homony, and so we were 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.520 over there all the time. It's like, what literally walking 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.040 distance from our house. I wanted to know why Stivers 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.960 singled out Josephine and her stepmother, a woman named Wahusai. 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.640 What conduct he was talking about that warranted its own 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.040 sentence and a letter that was already about a bunch 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.400 of questionable stuff he seemed to think was going on. 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.520 So I pulled bahusas probate file the once Divers mentioned 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.000 she died in and what I saw in her probate 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.200 was another letter from Stivers. He flagged something and almost 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.960 seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollar claim from the Hominy Trading 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.600 Company debt. The store said Bahusai is a state owed 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.559 and that claim it was approved by Bahusai's executor, Fred 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:59.880 Gettner Drummond. This is the strange part. According to Stivers, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.120 it wasn't Waho sized debt at the store who was 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:07.120 money her husband's estate owed when he died seven years earlier. 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:13.240 In his name was Charles wa Rishi. At this point 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:15.719 I had seen some pretty enormous claims on o s 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:20.120 age estates, but nearly seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollars to 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.000 a trading post that's more than a quarter million dollars today, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.599 And according to this letter, Fred Getner was administrator of 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:36.040 Warishi's the state too. I started looking around for any 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.760 information I could find about Charles Waichi because he seemed 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:41.880 like he might hold the key to figuring out what 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.360 conduct Divers was talking about. In that letter, the example 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.479 he seemed to find most questionable that Fred Getner Drummond 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:52.480 was behind. And I learned that Charles Warreschi was actually 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.360 pretty famous at the time. He was a religious leader 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.320 influential in hominy. I found a newspaper article calling him 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:01.880 one of the most potographed Native Americans of the time. 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.320 He took a trip to Mexico once and made headlines 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.720 across the country. I found mentions in newspapers from El 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.600 Paso in Washington, d C. He was also a source 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.560 for a well known ethnologist named Francis la Flesh, who 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.520 spent decades documenting Osage culture. His work comes up in 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:23.080 a lot of books, and Waishi is mentioned by name. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.600 There was so much about him out there, But what 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.280 stood out to me the most was a social media 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.920 post on Reddit of all places, from five years ago. 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.360 The title said Osage Priest of Puma Clan, Charles Waishi 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.559 and the comment this is my great great grandfather born 0:07:43.840 --> 0:08:00.360 eighteen sixty two, murdered December during o Sage Reign of Terror. Yeah, 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:25.600 this is in trust. I'm Rachel Adam's hurt. I didn't 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.240 set out to do a story about murder, not that 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.120 those stories don't deserve to be told. There was just 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.480 so much focus on the murders from the Reign of Terror, books, 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.719 now a movie, and I wanted to understand the financial 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.559 schemes going on around them, the ones that don't get 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.640 as much attention but still have these massive generational impacts. 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:47.800 But what I've learned from talking to o Stage families 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.520 is that it's impossible to look at what happened during 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.280 the twenties and nineteen thirties in oh Sage County without 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.800 coming across murders that were never investigated or deaths that 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.760 don't make sense. There was no meat, say he who 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.760 died while married to a man half her age, a 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.520 man who sold her head rights. Just a few years later, 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.280 Myron Banks Junior's mother who got sick just when a 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.760 man who wanted her money married her. Suspicious circumstances, definitely, 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.480 but no one ever said they knew for sure what happened. 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.640 But now I was looking at this Reddit post from 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.160 someone who said definitively that their great great grandfather, Charles 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:31.000 Wa Rishi was murdered, the same man whose debt at 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.000 the Hominy Trading Company had come up in the Stiver's letter. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.400 I sent a message to the account on the post, 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.240 explained what I was working on that I wanted to 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.960 know more about Charles wal Rishi. For days, I refreshed 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.280 the page over and over again, wondering if i'd hear back. 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.120 While I waited, I went to someone else who might 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:54.800 have heard about Charles Wa Rishi, John Maker, who told 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.679 me about the O s Age price. His great grandmother 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.600 was Wahusa, and even though Rishi was her second husband 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.120 and not John's direct ancestor, I thought maybe he would 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.720 know how a Rishi died. Well. I heard from that family, 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:17.880 Angie Jake, who was his great great granddaughter, that he 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.520 had been murdered on that road going out to their 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.880 old place called Cotton Gin Road. Of course, he was 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.480 back in those days as a horse and buggy in 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:30.560 the dirt road, and they had found him murders shot 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:35.720 in his buggy, just leaned over, but it was a 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.040 bullet woun to the head and the horse was just 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.360 standing there, stopped, and somebody was just coming or going 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.079 and found him like that. What was Angie like when 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.400 she told you that? Well, I know she she was 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.800 hesitant to tell me. It's like Kama and no skeleton 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:59.480 closet story. You know, she was real revering about it 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.240 when she was telling me. And and I think we're 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.920 just riding around in the car. Yeah, I mean, it's 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.640 just kind of like, by the way, I'm oh, my 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.760 grandfather was murdered on this road. It's like I had 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:16.719 never heard that. Of course I had heard that name, 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:20.080 Charlie Warry. She was a well known name around hamby 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:27.040 real respected oh religious leader. So John Maker had heard 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.560 Charles Barbrichi was murdered during the Reign of Terror, and 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:33.240 he had heard this story from a woman named Angie. 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.679 John told me, like a lot of deaths from this time, 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.079 this wasn't something people talked a lot about that people 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.160 were scared the same thing could happen to them. The 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:47.079 corruption of the time is well documented now, but John said, 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:49.800 for a long time this was only ever something that 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.720 was whispered about, and back in those days it was 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:58.719 common practice for these corners or medical people. Yeah, we did, 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.240 all right, you know, no wall tops, none of that. 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.840 I mean that corruption. What was the corners, the medical exam, 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.800 the doctors, all the way to okcom a city, on 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.360 all these sad I found out Andy had actually talked 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.120 to someone else about it, an Osage woman she was 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.440 distantly related to, who wrote her thesis paper on the 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.240 o s Age Native American Church. In that paper, there's 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.319 a passage from a conversation with Angie where she says 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.760 wa Rishi didn't live very long. He was murdered, but 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.720 Angie says her parents never really sat her down and 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.599 told her anything. Angie has since passed away, so I 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.199 don't know how she knew about water She's death, or 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.120 if she knew any more than what she told John 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:48.120 were this researcher at this point, I knew Louis Divers 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.320 suspected the Drummond brothers and other men around Hominy of 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.960 being in an association, and that Stivers thought fred Gettner 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.480 Drummond took a bunch of money from wa who size 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.640 the state money. Fred Getner said this war was ode 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.559 by her late husband wa Rishi. And now I was 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.640 learning that there was this whole other element, this belief 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.080 by waar Rishi's family that he was murdered. I was 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.360 looking around for more information on Charles wa Rishi one 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.240 day when I went to check read it again, this 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.880 time I had a new message from that account behind 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.520 the post that said wah Rishi was murdered. His name 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.120 is John horse Chief. He's an O Sage citizen, an 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.280 I T expert who works with a lot of old 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.440 O Sage records. We talked on the phone a few times. 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.080 He said he was interested in seeing the documents I 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.120 had found, so I sent him the letter from Louis Divers, 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.679 the reason I had come across his post to begin with. 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.320 John invited me out to his family's house and Hominy, 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.440 John Rachel, it's nice to finally meet you in person. 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.439 John had two crock pots on in the kitchen. There 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.920 were jugs of tea on the table. His son had 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.960 big cookies. I was gonna tell you guys, if you're hungry, Yeah, 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.920 I made like traditional Indian corn with buffalo, his real corn, 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:07.600 the kind of girl here. My uncle grows it, and 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:12.160 it's been like tested. It's got like protein in his corn. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.080 I sat down with John in the living room. His dad, 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:19.600 Alfred was also there. John said, his sister Geneva and 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:21.920 his cousin Mary Joe, we're going to come by later. 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:24.920 The man they were going to tell me about he 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.840 was extraordinarily important, not just to their family but to 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.400 the os Age nation's history. He was a religious leader 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.960 at a time when O s Age society was changing dramatically. 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.160 He had been educated, but he chose to live a 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.480 O s Age life. He wore traditional clothing, he preferred 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.600 to speak his language, and you know, he lived traditional 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.320 life as much as he could to that point. And 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.320 so those are the things that we really value about 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.440 the man of who he is. And it's really why 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:56.960 I want my pops to be here, my son and 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.520 all my family is because we have this big, large 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.640 family and we like really take care of each other 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.520 and our kids and but it's all to this culture, 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:06.520 and it's all to what our grandpa left. So I 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.840 was kind of war Rischi died long before John or 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.760 his dad were born. And even though wau Rischi was 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:17.400 technically his great great grandfather, John calls him Grandpa, says 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:21.360 he's always felt a strong connection to him. When we 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.000 sat down, John told me about a moment when he 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:29.480 felt that connection, a moment that changed everything for him. 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:31.800 At the time, John was working in the O s 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.160 Age Nation's I T department. He says that first his 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.880 job was mostly dealing with the typical I T stuff, 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:43.040 mesting with printers, network management, plugging, and keyboards. But one 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:45.280 day there's a big old box of dusty materials in 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.080 the I T room, a box of old audio recordings, 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:53.760 real to real tapes waiting to be digitized, and they're 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:55.200 trying to pass it off to people. No one want 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:56.240 to do it. And I was a new guy in 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:58.000 I T and so I needed to do something. And 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:01.120 then the first tape by Digiti was one of our 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.240 leaders named Bacon Ryan, and he's a very famous chief 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:06.320 of ours, and I heard his actual voice, and from 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.080 that moment I knew that's what I wanted to do. 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.720 John started digitizing and converting more and more of these recordings, 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:17.040 cataloging them. Some were tapes, others were from files from 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.400 old wax cylinders at the Library of Congress. Yeah, that's 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.600 what's when I started doing, knows, that's when I started, 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:24.200 you know, really getting into it. And it was just 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:26.760 opened up a new world for me, you know, because 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.480 I didn't think we had recordings that old. John says, 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.760 these tapes were organized by catalog number, so we'd have 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:35.160 to compare the numbers with field notes from the time 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.720 to figure out who was talking. And as he's doing that, 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.680 one day he notices something they had our grandpa's name 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.960 wrote down a whole different way, So lories you can 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.200 get written down a bunch of different ways, right, And 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:50.520 so it was like with the c H, I think, 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:52.200 and then uh, I looked, and I was like, is 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:54.640 that grandpa? Sure enough, I started listening to it, and 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.080 it was and I was like, man, this is really him, 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:00.320 this is it? And what was his voice when you 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.440 heard that? You know, it was beautiful, it was haunting, 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.840 and it was just like he's talking to me. John 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.520 told me a lot of the recordings with Waishi were 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:15.760 religious songs powerful important Warisci lived at a time when 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:19.560 the Native American Church was first forming. John told me 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.040 he was trying to hold on to parts of traditional 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.240 oth Age beliefs and culture, and these songs were part 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.160 of that. When you hear that and then you think 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:29.840 about it and you go home, when you pray, and 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:31.840 you think about, man, why did Why was I the 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.560 one who got to hear my grandpa's voice? And so, 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:36.280 you know, I don't want to say it's like about 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.719 me or something like that, but you know, we believe 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.720 everything happens for a reason, and if it's meant to be, 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.120 it's meant to be. And so I took it as 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.119 a sign, a good sign, and so that's what I 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.600 got into. And then the more I learned about it, 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:56.359 I just totally went into it. Waishi was born in 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.800 the eighteen sixties. He lived on the oth Age Reservation 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.359 before the land was divided up and parceled out to individuals, 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:09.200 before head rights. Then allotment came and everything changed. I 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.879 imagine that would have been like taking you and dropping 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.600 you in the middle of another country where you don't 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:20.080 speak the language. This is Mary Joe, John's cousin She said, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.440 wa Rishi would have watched the impact of allotment firsthand 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.840 and seeing the US government's efforts to force the Sage 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.800 Nation to assimilate, and so taking someone out of something 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:34.800 that would have been a community type environment where we 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.119 don't look after the survival of ourselves, we look after 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:43.600 survival of the community, and then separating purposely doing the separating. 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:49.280 There you see the evolution, forced evolution. John and his 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:52.720 family told me. When oil money started pouring in and 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.200 more and more white people moved to Osage County, Waishi 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:59.119 knew things were going to get bad. He watched just 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.639 traders and bankers and ranchers all thought to get rich 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.359 off the o s Age Nation. It's land, it's oil money. 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.879 This whole time, both aged children were being forced to 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.480 attend Native American boarding schools, a lot of it paid 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.720 for with Native money money held in trust by the 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:21.120 United States. These boarding schools punished children for speaking their 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.720 own language and forced them to wear certain clothes. They 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:29.160 were also rife with abuse. Where she was like wanting 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.840 to say, this culture so he knew that we were 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.320 getting wiped out. Here is the table stacked against us. 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:36.640 The lawyers, the policemen. They were all against us. They're 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.480 taken away our religion, our culture. So he was like, 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:42.320 let's go somewhere else and start over, or we can 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.560 get the religion going as much as we can make 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.879 it work. And the times that we live in, so 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.520 they thought about Mexico and they went down there in Mexico. 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.680 I've seen references to this trip all over the newspaper archives, 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:00.679 and one from December it says what Raci is quote 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.840 proposing to remove the Indians from the right Pahaska jurisdiction, 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:09.119 a reference to the os Age Agency superintendent at the time. 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:16.080 There's also another newspaper clipping from June. It says more 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.920 Raci hosted a feast at his house outside of Hominy. 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:23.040 At this feast, he reportedly said he had already met 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.399 with President Ubergon of Mexico and he was supportive of 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:29.560 the plan to make Mexico the os Age nation's new home. 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.040 The paper says, well, Rasci quote has the idea that 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.840 this is too much of a white man's country. We 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.760 went down there with a sack of dollars and we 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.440 got to Mexico. He turned into a bag of pesos 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.119 and he paid for everything, he talked to, everything, he 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:48.199 managed everything. He was never scared. You know, he was 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:50.199 on a mission to do something. He was trying to 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.800 preserve our culture or people, you know what I mean. 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:56.760 So that's how bad it was here. That's how deadly 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.720 and bad it was here that they were getting murder. 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:02.560 I mean, they could see the writing on the wall. 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:07.600 But the Mexico plan didn't work out. After he visited, 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.520 Waishi determined the land was no good for farming, and 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.120 by the time he came back to Hominy, just as 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.280 he had predicted, disaster had struck os Age County. The 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.280 Reign of Terror was well under way. Just a year later, 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:37.760 Waishi too was dead. Wow. During our conversation, John offered 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.520 to take me out to a Rishi's land. It's still 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:43.920 in the family. Only a couple of buildings are still standing. 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:46.760 There was a fire out here, the family says, an 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:50.280 accident back in the seventies. Here is where Charles where 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.160 she lived, and it was a big giant brick house 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.760 that he built, and after it burned down, some of 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:58.479 the bricks are over my little house I have over there. 0:21:58.480 --> 0:21:59.879 I used it to kind of make my little driveway. 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:02.960 But this is where he had his big This is 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.240 where Charles Richie's big house was at and they called 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.119 this the farm out here. It's just a few miles 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:12.040 away from where John lives now. The foundations still there. 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.280 A couple of other buildings too, one called the summer house, 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:18.400 kind of like a big guesthouse. Different people come visit 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:20.240 for like two weeks a time, and that's where they 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:22.840 would live in the summer house, or relatives come over. 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:25.560 We'd have our dances. It was like for guests, and 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:28.440 it was like for big occasions. This is the same 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.920 house Elizabeth Loha Homer mentioned where she had all those 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:35.679 memories from growing up of big dinners and social gatherings. 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:38.959 Being there with John, I could imagine kids running around, 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:42.720 adults visiting. And so this is our family's specific church 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:46.480 house right here. Waichi's church is also on the property. 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:50.360 It has eight sides appointed roof, and so you'll see 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:52.080 these around. At one point there was forty five or 0:22:52.080 --> 0:22:54.680 so these churches active in the county. Each family had one. 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:57.040 There's about four of them active left, and this was 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:00.480 active till about ten fifteen years ago. And so that's 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:02.800 what me and Mary, Joe and Geneva are here we're 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:05.400 gonna We're trying to We're trying to get build, build 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:09.399 back right because the tribe is having a renaissance. You 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.520 know of our culture and who we are. You know, 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:15.520 we've been through the worst, worst times, you know what 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.200 I mean, and the ones who are left, we're coming 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:20.720 back stronger and we want to get back the stuff 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.840 that we lost, you know, our family, our church, our culture, 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:26.560 our language. And you know this is like for me 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:29.960 personally now that I'm becoming an elder. You know, I'm 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:31.800 talking to Mary, Joe and Geneva. This is something I 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:34.399 want to fix up and get back together. And you know, 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:37.199 in a hundred years, our boys and our grandsons are 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:38.840 gonna sit in here and they're gonna know what to do, 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:41.560 and this is gonna be their place again. So that's 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:50.600 what we want. I've heard that Charles bo Rischi was 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:54.520 murdered from a few different people at this point. Unfortunately, 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:58.000