Speaker 1: I was starting to get a better idea of how
Speaker 1: the Drummond brothers made some of their money. They had
Speaker 1: the store where they could charge a lot, They handled
Speaker 1: the states or proved their own claims. They were guardians
Speaker 1: and could borrow O s age money from other guardians.
Speaker 1: They had so many different roles when it came to
Speaker 1: O s age finances. I kept seeing this pattern, and
Speaker 1: apparently I wasn't the only one. I mentioned. That letter
Speaker 1: I found from nineteen thirty four for the tribal attorney
Speaker 1: Lewis Divers said essentially the same thing. He called it
Speaker 1: an association men who were using their positions over O
Speaker 1: s Age families to advance their own interests. He names
Speaker 1: names too, in addition to the Drummond brothers, and these
Speaker 1: men he named either worked at the Drummond Brothers store
Speaker 1: or the local bank where Jack Drummond worked and Fred
Speaker 1: Genner sat on the board. What Stivers seemed to say
Speaker 1: in this letter was that it wasn't just a coincidence
Speaker 1: that all the same men kept coming up in the
Speaker 1: O s he guardianships and the states they handled. It
Speaker 1: was a whole strategy, an association that was a shocker,
Speaker 1: huh That was a shocker of a letter. I sent
Speaker 1: this to Elizabeth Loha Homer, the lawyer in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Who's on the oath Age Nations Supreme Court, because for
Speaker 1: everything I had heard about that time period, I hadn't
Speaker 1: really seen any federal officials back then who seemed to
Speaker 1: catch that this was happening over and over again among
Speaker 1: the same people. In hominy, you don't hear about that
Speaker 1: very often where those bad behaviors actually get caught. The
Speaker 1: name Stivers mentioned have come up again and again in
Speaker 1: my reporting. There's Fred L. Shed, the guardian who lent
Speaker 1: out his words money to the Drummond brothers, and Carl T. Matthews,
Speaker 1: who was the guardian of Rhodoa Wheeler Rich, the o
Speaker 1: s Age woman who accused the pope brothers of arranging
Speaker 1: a marriage with her to take her money. A man
Speaker 1: named Barlow. I recognized his name from Iron Banks Junior's audit.
Speaker 1: Fred Gettner loaned him from Myron's account. Stiver's list a
Speaker 1: few others he writes at all at the end, so
Speaker 1: I can only assume there were more. The archives have
Speaker 1: other letters and documents the offer a look inside how
Speaker 1: all this seemed to work. In one case, the Office
Speaker 1: of Indian Affairs set a field agent to look into
Speaker 1: one of Fred L. Shed's guardianships. The superintendent had heard
Speaker 1: someone exerted quote influence over an O s age woman,
Speaker 1: so she would sign a paper saying she wanted Shed
Speaker 1: to remain her guardian. That agent reported back that Jack
Speaker 1: Drummond visited her instead of she told the Office of
Speaker 1: Indian Affairs that she wanted to keep Shed as her guardian.
Speaker 1: He'd make sure she'd get more money each quarter and
Speaker 1: a new car. From what I've read in the papers
Speaker 1: from this time period, these were prominent members of the
Speaker 1: white community in Hominy. This was a town of three
Speaker 1: or four thousand people back then with the Young Rotary Club.
Speaker 1: That all but one of the men on this list
Speaker 1: were members of the club. Came up in an article
Speaker 1: about a local game of donkey ball. A bunch of
Speaker 1: white businessmen writing donkeys tossing the ball around, and Fred
Speaker 1: Gettner specifically seemed to have a lot of sway. He
Speaker 1: owned those shares in the store and the bank. He
Speaker 1: had been the head of his local Masonic temple in
Speaker 1: the early nineties and led a committee to pave the
Speaker 1: road to Tulsa. Fred Getner was also on the board
Speaker 1: of the company that published the Hominy newspaper, and while
Speaker 1: he was doing all that, according to Stivers, he was
Speaker 1: also using his connections with other white businessmen to access
Speaker 1: money from O. S He guardianships and probates. When I
Speaker 1: showed this letter to Gettner Drummond in his office, he
Speaker 1: didn't think it said these men were using O. S
Speaker 1: Age estates to enriched themselves, just that someone was objecting
Speaker 1: to having business men administered these estates. There was one
Speaker 1: sentence in this letter from Louis Divers that stood out
Speaker 1: to me. After he lifts off examples where he's seen
Speaker 1: the association play out, he writes, all of these are
Speaker 1: sufficient to cause one to raise this question, to say
Speaker 1: nothing of Mr Drummond's conduct in the Wahusa estate in
Speaker 1: connection with certain disbursements. Do Josephine lohawk Hip. This was
Speaker 1: a new name to me, but Elizabeth she actually knew Josephine. Well.
Speaker 1: I always thought that Josephine was my grandma, but it
Speaker 1: turns out Josephine was not my grandma. Josephine was my
Speaker 1: grandpa's first wife. Elizabeth says she thought Josephine was her
Speaker 1: grandma because she was at her house so much. They
Speaker 1: lived just outside of Hominy in a big house hosted dinners,
Speaker 1: would have people over all the time. She was like
Speaker 1: the you know, kind of the center of the social
Speaker 1: scene for oh stages in Homony, and so we were
Speaker 1: over there all the time. It's like, what literally walking
Speaker 1: distance from our house. I wanted to know why Stivers
Speaker 1: singled out Josephine and her stepmother, a woman named Wahusai.
Speaker 1: What conduct he was talking about that warranted its own
Speaker 1: sentence and a letter that was already about a bunch
Speaker 1: of questionable stuff he seemed to think was going on.
Speaker 1: So I pulled bahusas probate file the once Divers mentioned
Speaker 1: she died in and what I saw in her probate
Speaker 1: was another letter from Stivers. He flagged something and almost
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollar claim from the Hominy Trading
Speaker 1: Company debt. The store said Bahusai is a state owed
Speaker 1: and that claim it was approved by Bahusai's executor, Fred
Speaker 1: Gettner Drummond. This is the strange part. According to Stivers,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Waho sized debt at the store who was
Speaker 1: money her husband's estate owed when he died seven years earlier.
Speaker 1: In his name was Charles wa Rishi. At this point
Speaker 1: I had seen some pretty enormous claims on o s
Speaker 1: age estates, but nearly seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: a trading post that's more than a quarter million dollars today,
Speaker 1: And according to this letter, Fred Getner was administrator of
Speaker 1: Warishi's the state too. I started looking around for any
Speaker 1: information I could find about Charles Waichi because he seemed
Speaker 1: like he might hold the key to figuring out what
Speaker 1: conduct Divers was talking about. In that letter, the example
Speaker 1: he seemed to find most questionable that Fred Getner Drummond
Speaker 1: was behind. And I learned that Charles Warreschi was actually
Speaker 1: pretty famous at the time. He was a religious leader
Speaker 1: influential in hominy. I found a newspaper article calling him
Speaker 1: one of the most potographed Native Americans of the time.
Speaker 1: He took a trip to Mexico once and made headlines
Speaker 1: across the country. I found mentions in newspapers from El
Speaker 1: Paso in Washington, d C. He was also a source
Speaker 1: for a well known ethnologist named Francis la Flesh, who
Speaker 1: spent decades documenting Osage culture. His work comes up in
Speaker 1: a lot of books, and Waishi is mentioned by name.
Speaker 1: There was so much about him out there, But what
Speaker 1: stood out to me the most was a social media
Speaker 1: post on Reddit of all places, from five years ago.
Speaker 1: The title said Osage Priest of Puma Clan, Charles Waishi
Speaker 1: and the comment this is my great great grandfather born
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, murdered December during o Sage Reign of Terror. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is in trust. I'm Rachel Adam's hurt. I didn't
Speaker 1: set out to do a story about murder, not that
Speaker 1: those stories don't deserve to be told. There was just
Speaker 1: so much focus on the murders from the Reign of Terror, books,
Speaker 1: now a movie, and I wanted to understand the financial
Speaker 1: schemes going on around them, the ones that don't get
Speaker 1: as much attention but still have these massive generational impacts.
Speaker 1: But what I've learned from talking to o Stage families
Speaker 1: is that it's impossible to look at what happened during
Speaker 1: the twenties and nineteen thirties in oh Sage County without
Speaker 1: coming across murders that were never investigated or deaths that
Speaker 1: don't make sense. There was no meat, say he who
Speaker 1: died while married to a man half her age, a
Speaker 1: man who sold her head rights. Just a few years later,
Speaker 1: Myron Banks Junior's mother who got sick just when a
Speaker 1: man who wanted her money married her. Suspicious circumstances, definitely,
Speaker 1: but no one ever said they knew for sure what happened.
Speaker 1: But now I was looking at this Reddit post from
Speaker 1: someone who said definitively that their great great grandfather, Charles
Speaker 1: Wa Rishi was murdered, the same man whose debt at
Speaker 1: the Hominy Trading Company had come up in the Stiver's letter.
Speaker 1: I sent a message to the account on the post,
Speaker 1: explained what I was working on that I wanted to
Speaker 1: know more about Charles wal Rishi. For days, I refreshed
Speaker 1: the page over and over again, wondering if i'd hear back.
Speaker 1: While I waited, I went to someone else who might
Speaker 1: have heard about Charles Wa Rishi, John Maker, who told
Speaker 1: me about the O s Age price. His great grandmother
Speaker 1: was Wahusa, and even though Rishi was her second husband
Speaker 1: and not John's direct ancestor, I thought maybe he would
Speaker 1: know how a Rishi died. Well. I heard from that family,
Speaker 1: Angie Jake, who was his great great granddaughter, that he
Speaker 1: had been murdered on that road going out to their
Speaker 1: old place called Cotton Gin Road. Of course, he was
Speaker 1: back in those days as a horse and buggy in
Speaker 1: the dirt road, and they had found him murders shot
Speaker 1: in his buggy, just leaned over, but it was a
Speaker 1: bullet woun to the head and the horse was just
Speaker 1: standing there, stopped, and somebody was just coming or going
Speaker 1: and found him like that. What was Angie like when
Speaker 1: she told you that? Well, I know she she was
Speaker 1: hesitant to tell me. It's like Kama and no skeleton
Speaker 1: closet story. You know, she was real revering about it
Speaker 1: when she was telling me. And and I think we're
Speaker 1: just riding around in the car. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like, by the way, I'm oh, my
Speaker 1: grandfather was murdered on this road. It's like I had
Speaker 1: never heard that. Of course I had heard that name,
Speaker 1: Charlie Warry. She was a well known name around hamby
Speaker 1: real respected oh religious leader. So John Maker had heard
Speaker 1: Charles Barbrichi was murdered during the Reign of Terror, and
Speaker 1: he had heard this story from a woman named Angie.
Speaker 1: John told me, like a lot of deaths from this time,
Speaker 1: this wasn't something people talked a lot about that people
Speaker 1: were scared the same thing could happen to them. The
Speaker 1: corruption of the time is well documented now, but John said,
Speaker 1: for a long time this was only ever something that
Speaker 1: was whispered about, and back in those days it was
Speaker 1: common practice for these corners or medical people. Yeah, we did,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, no wall tops, none of that.
Speaker 1: I mean that corruption. What was the corners, the medical exam,
Speaker 1: the doctors, all the way to okcom a city, on
Speaker 1: all these sad I found out Andy had actually talked
Speaker 1: to someone else about it, an Osage woman she was
Speaker 1: distantly related to, who wrote her thesis paper on the
Speaker 1: o s Age Native American Church. In that paper, there's
Speaker 1: a passage from a conversation with Angie where she says
Speaker 1: wa Rishi didn't live very long. He was murdered, but
Speaker 1: Angie says her parents never really sat her down and
Speaker 1: told her anything. Angie has since passed away, so I
Speaker 1: don't know how she knew about water She's death, or
Speaker 1: if she knew any more than what she told John
Speaker 1: were this researcher at this point, I knew Louis Divers
Speaker 1: suspected the Drummond brothers and other men around Hominy of
Speaker 1: being in an association, and that Stivers thought fred Gettner
Speaker 1: Drummond took a bunch of money from wa who size
Speaker 1: the state money. Fred Getner said this war was ode
Speaker 1: by her late husband wa Rishi. And now I was
Speaker 1: learning that there was this whole other element, this belief
Speaker 1: by waar Rishi's family that he was murdered. I was
Speaker 1: looking around for more information on Charles wa Rishi one
Speaker 1: day when I went to check read it again, this
Speaker 1: time I had a new message from that account behind
Speaker 1: the post that said wah Rishi was murdered. His name
Speaker 1: is John horse Chief. He's an O Sage citizen, an
Speaker 1: I T expert who works with a lot of old
Speaker 1: O Sage records. We talked on the phone a few times.
Speaker 1: He said he was interested in seeing the documents I
Speaker 1: had found, so I sent him the letter from Louis Divers,
Speaker 1: the reason I had come across his post to begin with.
Speaker 1: John invited me out to his family's house and Hominy,
Speaker 1: John Rachel, it's nice to finally meet you in person.
Speaker 1: John had two crock pots on in the kitchen. There
Speaker 1: were jugs of tea on the table. His son had
Speaker 1: big cookies. I was gonna tell you guys, if you're hungry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I made like traditional Indian corn with buffalo, his real corn,
Speaker 1: the kind of girl here. My uncle grows it, and
Speaker 1: it's been like tested. It's got like protein in his corn.
Speaker 1: I sat down with John in the living room. His dad,
Speaker 1: Alfred was also there. John said, his sister Geneva and
Speaker 1: his cousin Mary Joe, we're going to come by later.
Speaker 1: The man they were going to tell me about he
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily important, not just to their family but to
Speaker 1: the os Age nation's history. He was a religious leader
Speaker 1: at a time when O s Age society was changing dramatically.
Speaker 1: He had been educated, but he chose to live a
Speaker 1: O s Age life. He wore traditional clothing, he preferred
Speaker 1: to speak his language, and you know, he lived traditional
Speaker 1: life as much as he could to that point. And
Speaker 1: so those are the things that we really value about
Speaker 1: the man of who he is. And it's really why
Speaker 1: I want my pops to be here, my son and
Speaker 1: all my family is because we have this big, large
Speaker 1: family and we like really take care of each other
Speaker 1: and our kids and but it's all to this culture,
Speaker 1: and it's all to what our grandpa left. So I
Speaker 1: was kind of war Rischi died long before John or
Speaker 1: his dad were born. And even though wau Rischi was
Speaker 1: technically his great great grandfather, John calls him Grandpa, says
Speaker 1: he's always felt a strong connection to him. When we
Speaker 1: sat down, John told me about a moment when he
Speaker 1: felt that connection, a moment that changed everything for him.
Speaker 1: At the time, John was working in the O s
Speaker 1: Age Nation's I T department. He says that first his
Speaker 1: job was mostly dealing with the typical I T stuff,
Speaker 1: mesting with printers, network management, plugging, and keyboards. But one
Speaker 1: day there's a big old box of dusty materials in
Speaker 1: the I T room, a box of old audio recordings,
Speaker 1: real to real tapes waiting to be digitized, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to pass it off to people. No one want
Speaker 1: to do it. And I was a new guy in
Speaker 1: I T and so I needed to do something. And
Speaker 1: then the first tape by Digiti was one of our
Speaker 1: leaders named Bacon Ryan, and he's a very famous chief
Speaker 1: of ours, and I heard his actual voice, and from
Speaker 1: that moment I knew that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: John started digitizing and converting more and more of these recordings,
Speaker 1: cataloging them. Some were tapes, others were from files from
Speaker 1: old wax cylinders at the Library of Congress. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what's when I started doing, knows, that's when I started,
Speaker 1: you know, really getting into it. And it was just
Speaker 1: opened up a new world for me, you know, because
Speaker 1: I didn't think we had recordings that old. John says,
Speaker 1: these tapes were organized by catalog number, so we'd have
Speaker 1: to compare the numbers with field notes from the time
Speaker 1: to figure out who was talking. And as he's doing that,
Speaker 1: one day he notices something they had our grandpa's name
Speaker 1: wrote down a whole different way, So lories you can
Speaker 1: get written down a bunch of different ways, right, And
Speaker 1: so it was like with the c H, I think,
Speaker 1: and then uh, I looked, and I was like, is
Speaker 1: that grandpa? Sure enough, I started listening to it, and
Speaker 1: it was and I was like, man, this is really him,
Speaker 1: this is it? And what was his voice when you
Speaker 1: heard that? You know, it was beautiful, it was haunting,
Speaker 1: and it was just like he's talking to me. John
Speaker 1: told me a lot of the recordings with Waishi were
Speaker 1: religious songs powerful important Warisci lived at a time when
Speaker 1: the Native American Church was first forming. John told me
Speaker 1: he was trying to hold on to parts of traditional
Speaker 1: oth Age beliefs and culture, and these songs were part
Speaker 1: of that. When you hear that and then you think
Speaker 1: about it and you go home, when you pray, and
Speaker 1: you think about, man, why did Why was I the
Speaker 1: one who got to hear my grandpa's voice? And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to say it's like about
Speaker 1: me or something like that, but you know, we believe
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason, and if it's meant to be,
Speaker 1: it's meant to be. And so I took it as
Speaker 1: a sign, a good sign, and so that's what I
Speaker 1: got into. And then the more I learned about it,
Speaker 1: I just totally went into it. Waishi was born in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties. He lived on the oth Age Reservation
Speaker 1: before the land was divided up and parceled out to individuals,
Speaker 1: before head rights. Then allotment came and everything changed. I
Speaker 1: imagine that would have been like taking you and dropping
Speaker 1: you in the middle of another country where you don't
Speaker 1: speak the language. This is Mary Joe, John's cousin She said,
Speaker 1: wa Rishi would have watched the impact of allotment firsthand
Speaker 1: and seeing the US government's efforts to force the Sage
Speaker 1: Nation to assimilate, and so taking someone out of something
Speaker 1: that would have been a community type environment where we
Speaker 1: don't look after the survival of ourselves, we look after
Speaker 1: survival of the community, and then separating purposely doing the separating.
Speaker 1: There you see the evolution, forced evolution. John and his
Speaker 1: family told me. When oil money started pouring in and
Speaker 1: more and more white people moved to Osage County, Waishi
Speaker 1: knew things were going to get bad. He watched just
Speaker 1: traders and bankers and ranchers all thought to get rich
Speaker 1: off the o s Age Nation. It's land, it's oil money.
Speaker 1: This whole time, both aged children were being forced to
Speaker 1: attend Native American boarding schools, a lot of it paid
Speaker 1: for with Native money money held in trust by the
Speaker 1: United States. These boarding schools punished children for speaking their
Speaker 1: own language and forced them to wear certain clothes. They
Speaker 1: were also rife with abuse. Where she was like wanting
Speaker 1: to say, this culture so he knew that we were
Speaker 1: getting wiped out. Here is the table stacked against us.
Speaker 1: The lawyers, the policemen. They were all against us. They're
Speaker 1: taken away our religion, our culture. So he was like,
Speaker 1: let's go somewhere else and start over, or we can
Speaker 1: get the religion going as much as we can make
Speaker 1: it work. And the times that we live in, so
Speaker 1: they thought about Mexico and they went down there in Mexico.
Speaker 1: I've seen references to this trip all over the newspaper archives,
Speaker 1: and one from December it says what Raci is quote
Speaker 1: proposing to remove the Indians from the right Pahaska jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: a reference to the os Age Agency superintendent at the time.
Speaker 1: There's also another newspaper clipping from June. It says more
Speaker 1: Raci hosted a feast at his house outside of Hominy.
Speaker 1: At this feast, he reportedly said he had already met
Speaker 1: with President Ubergon of Mexico and he was supportive of
Speaker 1: the plan to make Mexico the os Age nation's new home.
Speaker 1: The paper says, well, Rasci quote has the idea that
Speaker 1: this is too much of a white man's country. We
Speaker 1: went down there with a sack of dollars and we
Speaker 1: got to Mexico. He turned into a bag of pesos
Speaker 1: and he paid for everything, he talked to, everything, he
Speaker 1: managed everything. He was never scared. You know, he was
Speaker 1: on a mission to do something. He was trying to
Speaker 1: preserve our culture or people, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So that's how bad it was here. That's how deadly
Speaker 1: and bad it was here that they were getting murder.
Speaker 1: I mean, they could see the writing on the wall.
Speaker 1: But the Mexico plan didn't work out. After he visited,
Speaker 1: Waishi determined the land was no good for farming, and
Speaker 1: by the time he came back to Hominy, just as
Speaker 1: he had predicted, disaster had struck os Age County. The
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror was well under way. Just a year later,
Speaker 1: Waishi too was dead. Wow. During our conversation, John offered
Speaker 1: to take me out to a Rishi's land. It's still
Speaker 1: in the family. Only a couple of buildings are still standing.
Speaker 1: There was a fire out here, the family says, an
Speaker 1: accident back in the seventies. Here is where Charles where
Speaker 1: she lived, and it was a big giant brick house
Speaker 1: that he built, and after it burned down, some of
Speaker 1: the bricks are over my little house I have over there.
Speaker 1: I used it to kind of make my little driveway.
Speaker 1: But this is where he had his big This is
Speaker 1: where Charles Richie's big house was at and they called
Speaker 1: this the farm out here. It's just a few miles
Speaker 1: away from where John lives now. The foundations still there.
Speaker 1: A couple of other buildings too, one called the summer house,
Speaker 1: kind of like a big guesthouse. Different people come visit
Speaker 1: for like two weeks a time, and that's where they
Speaker 1: would live in the summer house, or relatives come over.
Speaker 1: We'd have our dances. It was like for guests, and
Speaker 1: it was like for big occasions. This is the same
Speaker 1: house Elizabeth Loha Homer mentioned where she had all those
Speaker 1: memories from growing up of big dinners and social gatherings.
Speaker 1: Being there with John, I could imagine kids running around,
Speaker 1: adults visiting. And so this is our family's specific church
Speaker 1: house right here. Waichi's church is also on the property.
Speaker 1: It has eight sides appointed roof, and so you'll see
Speaker 1: these around. At one point there was forty five or
Speaker 1: so these churches active in the county. Each family had one.
Speaker 1: There's about four of them active left, and this was
Speaker 1: active till about ten fifteen years ago. And so that's
Speaker 1: what me and Mary, Joe and Geneva are here we're
Speaker 1: gonna We're trying to We're trying to get build, build
Speaker 1: back right because the tribe is having a renaissance. You
Speaker 1: know of our culture and who we are. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been through the worst, worst times, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, and the ones who are left, we're coming
Speaker 1: back stronger and we want to get back the stuff
Speaker 1: that we lost, you know, our family, our church, our culture,
Speaker 1: our language. And you know this is like for me
Speaker 1: personally now that I'm becoming an elder. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: talking to Mary, Joe and Geneva. This is something I
Speaker 1: want to fix up and get back together. And you know,
Speaker 1: in a hundred years, our boys and our grandsons are
Speaker 1: gonna sit in here and they're gonna know what to do,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna be their place again. So that's
Speaker 1: what we want. I've heard that Charles bo Rischi was
Speaker 1: murdered from a few different people at this point. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: everyone who would have had firsthand knowledge of this, the
Speaker 1: people who were there back then, they've all died. But
Speaker 1: the stories out there and the details are remarkably consistent.
Speaker 1: Charles bar Rischi was on his way home in a
Speaker 1: buggy on Cotton Gin Road when someone shot him in
Speaker 1: the head, but the official story was completely different. Even
Speaker 1: though Wa Rishi was the subject of a bunch of
Speaker 1: articles while he was alive, I could only find a
Speaker 1: couple of newspapers that mentioned his death. It's the same
Speaker 1: article republished one on December twelve by a newspaper in
Speaker 1: Pahaska and the other on the next day in the
Speaker 1: o Stage Journal. The headline was Charles ba Rischi dead
Speaker 1: at Hominy. His name is spelled differently fifty seven words
Speaker 1: that say he died at row Leader Hospital in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: that his wife and daughter were there. The service is
Speaker 1: at ten a M. Row Leader Hospital all the way
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is a two hour drive
Speaker 1: from Hominy today way longer in It's the same location
Speaker 1: on his death certificate, which says he died on December
Speaker 1: tenth from empaima of gallwater with stones. Basically, the doctor
Speaker 1: who filled out this death certificate was saying Wa Richi
Speaker 1: died of complications from gallblater inflammation. Today it's pretty rare
Speaker 1: to die from that, but it can happen if left
Speaker 1: and treated. The undertaker was in Oklahoma City too. His
Speaker 1: name was ed L. Hahn. In the funeral home he
Speaker 1: worked at. It still exists today on Cook Street and Drinker.
Speaker 1: This is Cheryl, Can I help you? Hi, Cheryl, My
Speaker 1: name is Rachel. I told Cheryl I was looking for
Speaker 1: anything she could get me on Marie. She I would
Speaker 1: have to look and see if we actually have the
Speaker 1: record or not. Uh, that far back. I mean we
Speaker 1: do have some that far back, but they're a little
Speaker 1: sketchy sometimes and I will need to go upstairs and
Speaker 1: look for that, so I will need to call you back.
Speaker 1: Cheryl dug around in the records for a while. She
Speaker 1: called me back when she found something. I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of information. This is all handwritten, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to read. It's just a little card,
Speaker 1: is all it is. Back then, that's about all we
Speaker 1: all we ever had. Cheryl told me some of the
Speaker 1: basic facts. The funeral home had his name, that he
Speaker 1: was married, that he was sixty eight years old. There
Speaker 1: was an informant, I guess the gentleman that took care
Speaker 1: of him was um fred Gie Drummond, and he died
Speaker 1: at Rollators are Rollaters hospital, So what would be the
Speaker 1: role of an informant that would give us the information
Speaker 1: as to what like mother and father's names, date of birth,
Speaker 1: date of death, Uh, that sort of thing. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the death certificate. Is there any information about how he died? No,
Speaker 1: there's nothing on here at all about how he died,
Speaker 1: just where he died, and uh, that's it. So Fred
Speaker 1: Gettner was the informant on this record at the funeral home.
Speaker 1: He was the one who called to give La Riche's
Speaker 1: background information, his age, that he was married. Cheryl sent
Speaker 1: me a copy of the card and a separate itemized
Speaker 1: claim for what Ricci's undertaking services. It was eight hundred
Speaker 1: thirty seven dollars and cents. The most expensive part was
Speaker 1: the casket fifty dollars. An account at the home trading
Speaker 1: company paid for it. But there was no mention of
Speaker 1: how Waishi died. The funeral bill, the death certificate, the
Speaker 1: paper they all put Charles BA Rishi in Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: when he died, apparently from some sort of gall butter inflammation.
Speaker 1: When I'd find something like this, I'd sent it to
Speaker 1: John Horse Chief and I'm just like, that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. That's not what we heard. So do you
Speaker 1: think he would like because you said that you still
Speaker 1: believe that he was absolutely murdered. Yes, I believe that.
Speaker 1: John and I have talked a lot about this. Why
Speaker 1: the paperwork doesn't match the story. He's heard that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have heard that Wau Rishi was shot
Speaker 1: in the head. John told me he hasn't changed his mind.
Speaker 1: There are enough stories and enough proof that corruption was
Speaker 1: rampant back then. I've tried to find out more about JB.
Speaker 1: Role later, the doctor of the hospital was named after
Speaker 1: who signed off on Moa Rishi's death certificate. It There's
Speaker 1: nothing I've seen that indicates he was ever suspected of
Speaker 1: being part of the reign of terror, of the criminal
Speaker 1: conspiracy that reached far beyond William Hale to lawyers, medical examiners, doctors.
Speaker 1: There are some murders that have been solved from that
Speaker 1: time period thanks to these archives and family stories. They
Speaker 1: come up in books like Killers of the Flower Moon
Speaker 1: or the Deaths of Sybil Bolton, and I wish I
Speaker 1: could tell you this was one of those stories, and
Speaker 1: I figured out definitively whether Wa Rashi was murdered, and
Speaker 1: if he was, who did it. But for every case
Speaker 1: that's been solved, there are more like Wa Raci's. We're
Speaker 1: finding the answer seems almost impossible. The records say one thing,
Speaker 1: but knowing the corruption of the time, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know whether you can trust them. The family story says
Speaker 1: something else, but it's been a very long time, and
Speaker 1: no one who is there is still alive. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there was still this whole other element to war Rishi's
Speaker 1: death that John still had questions about the money, why
Speaker 1: war Rishi's estate would have owed so much, and where
Speaker 1: it went. That's after the break, John said he was
Speaker 1: as sure as he ever was that Waishi was murdered.
Speaker 1: The official documents that placed him in Oklahoma City on
Speaker 1: December tenth just didn't seem right to him. Why would
Speaker 1: he have gone to a hospital so far away if
Speaker 1: he wasn't murdered. Why had John heard the specific story
Speaker 1: that Waishi was shot in the head on Cotton Gin
Speaker 1: Road his entire life, John said, when he was reading
Speaker 1: all this paperwork, the death certificate, the card from the
Speaker 1: funeral home where Fred Getner was the informant, the receipt
Speaker 1: paid for by an account at the Drummond store, it
Speaker 1: was enough to make him want to know more. Why
Speaker 1: Fred G. Drummond was all over war Rishis and his wife,
Speaker 1: who says paperwork. He wanted to know how Fred Getner
Speaker 1: ended up with so much of his family's money. So
Speaker 1: John went to the courthouse and asked for the records
Speaker 1: on Waishi's estate. Sure enough, I went up there yesterday
Speaker 1: to pull up those records and it's a big Manila envelope,
Speaker 1: this thick, very first name Freggie Drummond, oh Ship. So
Speaker 1: he became his executor after Grandpa died. Right And in
Speaker 1: the very first day, Fredgie Drummonds in there trying to
Speaker 1: correct the letter and get paid for this and get
Speaker 1: paid for that. When John went to the courthouse that day,
Speaker 1: I actually ran into him in the parking lot. He
Speaker 1: told me he put in an order to have Va
Speaker 1: Rishi's entire probate copied and printed out so he could
Speaker 1: keep it. They told him it would take a couple
Speaker 1: of days. He said I could come with him when
Speaker 1: he picked it up from y It's so very it's
Speaker 1: kind of intimidating Corey House in the way. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: are you feeling. It's a different feeling, you know, Like
Speaker 1: the first time he came up here. I could really
Speaker 1: feel it the first time we asked about it. Thanks
Speaker 1: the tones, Yeah, the old books with the golden red spine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I scanned every single one of the white one thing
Speaker 1: for you guys. Yes, ma'am, I'd like to pick up
Speaker 1: a probade I ordered on Friday, John Horse Chief, Where
Speaker 1: is she? Yeah? John handed over his card. The woman
Speaker 1: behind the counter walked over to her computer, only to
Speaker 1: return a few seconds later. She told us the machine
Speaker 1: couldn't take a card with a pen. John needed to
Speaker 1: come back with cash. Okay, Well, we have to go
Speaker 1: get some money to come back. Okay, John, let me
Speaker 1: ride with him to an ATM nearby. We drove past
Speaker 1: three Drummonds mercantile, past your hotel. The Pioneer Woman boarding
Speaker 1: house Downtown Pahaska was busy that day, a lot of
Speaker 1: tourists around. John's told me before he doesn't have anything
Speaker 1: against Re Drummond. She never did anything to him or
Speaker 1: his family. And I've heard a version of this before
Speaker 1: from some other Sage citizens that Reath brought jobs to
Speaker 1: the community and helped revitalized Pasca. But John also said
Speaker 1: he feels conflicted about eating at her restaurants, knowing the
Speaker 1: broader suspicions around the Drummond family's history and Osage County.
Speaker 1: It's no secret what they did. They took advantage through
Speaker 1: hook and crook, and you know they can say that
Speaker 1: we signed the paper and it was all legal. Button.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're sitting here holding all the money. I
Speaker 1: just want to know the truth. John withdrew the cash
Speaker 1: and we drove back to the courthouse. He paid for
Speaker 1: Riche's probate left with a few hundred pages double sighted.
Speaker 1: We made a plan to meet up later after he
Speaker 1: had a chance to read through it. M Later that week,
Speaker 1: one night, after John had gotten off work, I went
Speaker 1: back to his house. He had all the papers from
Speaker 1: the probate file on his kitchen table with a magnifying glass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what do you make of like these dates? Oh
Speaker 1: there's even more so likes this one. And then there's
Speaker 1: a thousand dollar charge from the hospital from the Rollers
Speaker 1: Hospital to my grandpa's bill. As farther down here, I
Speaker 1: think in addition to the role leaders hospital charge, there's
Speaker 1: also a claim from the Hominy Trading Company. In the
Speaker 1: first week of December. It shows mo Rishi bought some
Speaker 1: coffee and eggs, a couple of boxes of jello, and
Speaker 1: on December eight, two days before he died, there's another
Speaker 1: claim from the Drummond store two d dollars cash for
Speaker 1: quote expense to Oklahoma City. Fred Getner approved that, and
Speaker 1: all the other claims. It's even worse. And you see
Speaker 1: all these this guy's name all over it, right, he's
Speaker 1: the one getting all the money out of it and
Speaker 1: directly benefitting from it. Stud's names, all of my grandpa's paperwork. Right,
Speaker 1: even seeing the probate, it still wasn't clear how A.
Speaker 1: Rashie's estate would have owed so much money to the
Speaker 1: how Many Trading Company about seventeen eight hundred dollars by
Speaker 1: the time the store collected on it. Yeah, it's so interesting, Like,
Speaker 1: so we have the we have the congressional record, and
Speaker 1: we have that funeral hard from Oklahoma City funeral home
Speaker 1: with expenses that went into the funeral. But then I'm
Speaker 1: not even like really seeing where those would be. Maybe
Speaker 1: those are yeah, they're not even any here, are they?
Speaker 1: Maybe those are paid out of his own pocket. I
Speaker 1: don't know, But I don't even know what goes on.
Speaker 1: It's just so confusing. It was confusing. You have to
Speaker 1: make a lot of assumptions to get the numbers tat
Speaker 1: up because there aren't many receipts showing how the debt
Speaker 1: could have piled up so much. But I have been
Speaker 1: able to put together a rough idea of how that happened.
Speaker 1: The congressional record I mentioned to John it was the
Speaker 1: same hearing we're one lawmaker called the extreme funeral bills
Speaker 1: worse than teapot dome. They cite an example an o
Speaker 1: Sage citizen whose funeral expenses were around nine thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: They called the persona Risha and later war rec But
Speaker 1: it's clear from the other details they mentioned they're just
Speaker 1: missed saying Wai Shi because they're talking about an oh
Speaker 1: stage man who lived in Hominy, whose undertaker was an
Speaker 1: Oklahoma city whose administrator was Fred Gettner Drummond. I've looked
Speaker 1: at all the other estates fred Gettner handled wais She
Speaker 1: is the only one that makes sense here. According to
Speaker 1: this hearing, the monument for ware She's grave cost four thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars and the casket was three thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The funeral came out to more than nine thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later, as the administrator of Vershi's estate,
Speaker 1: Fred Gettner Drummond issued the Hominy Trading Company a promisory
Speaker 1: note basically, and I owe you it said. Wahi's estate
Speaker 1: owed the store a little over eleven thousand dollars because
Speaker 1: fred Getner gave his store a promisory note from the estate,
Speaker 1: it was collecting interest every year until one day when
Speaker 1: Wahusai dies and the store makes the claim with interest
Speaker 1: on her estate for roughly seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: more than three hundred thousand dollars today. So that's where
Speaker 1: the seventeen eight hundred dollar claim on Wahusai's estate must
Speaker 1: have come from Ushi's funeral, the one that came up
Speaker 1: in a congressional hearing that one lawmaker called worse than
Speaker 1: teapot Dome. This is what Louis Divers, the tribal attorney,
Speaker 1: was complaining about in that letter I found the one
Speaker 1: that sent me looking for Charles Marrichi's family that led
Speaker 1: me to John Horse. Chief Stivers was objecting to how
Speaker 1: much that debt increased, and how the guy who issued
Speaker 1: the promisory note from Marishi's estate was also the guy
Speaker 1: collecting on it, Fred Getner, and I owe you to
Speaker 1: himself effectively from the estate of an o s age
Speaker 1: man who couldn't dispute it. But despite all the flags
Speaker 1: from Stivers from US Congressmen, fred Getner never had to
Speaker 1: pay the money back. A county judge overruled Stiver's objections
Speaker 1: and said the Hominy Trading Company could keep the roughly
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand, eight hundred dollars. He also said fred Getner
Speaker 1: could keep the executor's fee. He paid himself another three thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred ninety four dollars in eighty cents, and fred
Speaker 1: Getner's lawyer, a man named G. K. Sutherland, made one
Speaker 1: thou five hundred dollars from all who say's estate. It's
Speaker 1: like an open check. You can just start writing money
Speaker 1: against this guy. And when you think about that, this
Speaker 1: used to be yours, and you actually see the paperwork,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think you look at things a
Speaker 1: lot differently, you know what I mean, You look at
Speaker 1: people a lot differently. You think about yourself differently. John
Speaker 1: told me he was going to keep looking through barbary
Speaker 1: She's records, reading the probate, piecing together just what happened
Speaker 1: to his family in the twenties and thirties. You know,
Speaker 1: one of these days are gonna make sense of all
Speaker 1: his paperwork and and it will be some more closure.
Speaker 1: But I'm just barely kind of like putting together all
Speaker 1: that happened, and like the repercussions of what it did
Speaker 1: to us personally, you know what I mean, on a
Speaker 1: personal level, not just financially, right, you know, So the
Speaker 1: bigger loss is just that he meant more to us
Speaker 1: the person, right it. You know, it's it's bringing us
Speaker 1: together as a family, and it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: just something we can kind of I guess now we're
Speaker 1: ready to talk about it, because I have a feeling
Speaker 1: they didn't talk about it for a long time, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It was just so painful and
Speaker 1: just such a loss, and so it was very very
Speaker 1: hard on our family. So and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, it's just so much stuff cloes through
Speaker 1: my head, right because my grandpa was resistant to all
Speaker 1: this stuff like let's keep our culture, let's keep our language,
Speaker 1: let's keep what makes us us. And then he was
Speaker 1: actively trying to move the tribe to where we could
Speaker 1: practice our culture and stuff. And it's just definitely makes
Speaker 1: you think that this culture is not strong. It can
Speaker 1: withstand all of this, all these millions of dollars, all that,
Speaker 1: and if we just lead into that, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: be all right. John and I went through more of
Speaker 1: the probate. We talked for a while out it was
Speaker 1: getting dark outside thirty something degrees. A winter storm was
Speaker 1: rolling in. He told me about other things he was
Speaker 1: up to, projects he was working on with people around town.
Speaker 1: He showed me some bead work he was doing for
Speaker 1: his son, a other hat he made. John told me
Speaker 1: before I left there was something he wanted to show me.
Speaker 1: He had just gotten back from Nebraska from a buffalo hunt.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a gun and I was about
Speaker 1: seventy yards away, and I wasn't a four by four.
Speaker 1: You know, I just kind of got out of four
Speaker 1: by four. Wait. I couldn't shoot nothing else, because if
Speaker 1: you should know that one, you got paid for that
Speaker 1: one too. I got it, I got it. I got
Speaker 1: so the wait until you have to wait till nothing
Speaker 1: behind him or nothing in front of him. And then
Speaker 1: I did, and I prayed, and I was very thankful,
Speaker 1: and I was a good feeling, good experience the blessing.
Speaker 1: So I'm very happy for that. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of good things I want to spread around.
Speaker 1: John pulled up a video on his phone. He had
Speaker 1: a brush in his hand, combing it through the hide.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a buffalo. Rub I'm making a buffalo
Speaker 1: when first I would say, just kill a buffalo over
Speaker 1: a hundred years. That's what I'm saying until someone pops
Speaker 1: up it's a picture. But this is what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to take back. And I don't say, Hey, we need
Speaker 1: you start eating buffalo, going on corn, learn how to
Speaker 1: do this again? Does it make you feel close to it? Does? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It makes me feel like his blessings are coming to me.
Speaker 1: You know, he's helping me out and just gotta fall
Speaker 1: this way. No no no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no. In
Speaker 1: Trust is a production of Bloomberg and I Heart Media.
Speaker 1: It's reported and hosted by me Rachel Adam's Heard additional
Speaker 1: reporting by Alison Edita Davis Land is our senior producer.
Speaker 1: Samantha Story is our executive producer. Jeff Grocott is our
Speaker 1: senior editor. Additional editing by Francesco Leavy and Daniel Ferrara.
Speaker 1: Additional production by Victor Ebayez. Production support from Jelda de Carle,
Speaker 1: Sound engineering by Blake Maples, fact checking by Molly Nugent,
Speaker 1: the music by Laura Worman. Photography by Shane Brown. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Brett Goldstein, a forensic handwriting consultant, and Brodie
Speaker 1: Forward with Bloomberg News. You can email us at Podcasts
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Find more about this episode at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash in trust. For maps, newspaper archives,
Speaker 1: photos and other documents related to this episode, go to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash in trust, find in trust anywhere
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts m