Speaker 1: Just a heads up before we get started. This episode
Speaker 1: contains descriptions of abuse. It may be hard to listen to.
Speaker 1: Last summer, I bought a book. I had to get
Speaker 1: it from a rare books distributor. I paid one dollars
Speaker 1: eighty six cents. I bought it because I thought it
Speaker 1: might help answer my question about the Drummond's head rights,
Speaker 1: those shares of the O Sage mineral estate that's held
Speaker 1: in trust by the federal government. The book came in
Speaker 1: the mail a week or two later. It's a couple
Speaker 1: hundred pages, found in a hardback linen cover smelled like dust.
Speaker 1: The cover was blue and pattered. Three different photos of
Speaker 1: one guy and one he's young twenties, maybe dressed in
Speaker 1: a military uniform. Another he's a kid riding a horse
Speaker 1: and a cowboy hat. The biggest photo is a portrait
Speaker 1: of him older. He's staring into the camera, holding a
Speaker 1: lit cigarette, a big ring on his finger. He's pale, round,
Speaker 1: dressed in a three piece suit. The title ranching from
Speaker 1: the front seat of a buick, The Life of Oklahoma's
Speaker 1: a a Jack Drummond. It's this telling of the booms
Speaker 1: and busts of early ranch days. In Osage County, a
Speaker 1: biography of one of the three Drummond brothers who grew
Speaker 1: up here in the early nineteen hundreds. Almost everyone I
Speaker 1: talked to about head rights brought up the Drummonds. A
Speaker 1: local newspaper had published a list of non os Age
Speaker 1: names who had them, but not how many they had.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe the book might give me a clue.
Speaker 1: I was also curious what a white man like Jack
Speaker 1: would have remembered about the reign of terror. A house
Speaker 1: blowing up, the FBI in town, murder all around him.
Speaker 1: But the details of this conspiracy are hardly mentioned at all,
Speaker 1: just one sentence on page sixty four, the line Bill Hale,
Speaker 1: a local rancher had to sell his land because he
Speaker 1: was going to prison for conspiring to murder most of
Speaker 1: an O s Age Indian family, so their head rights
Speaker 1: would devolve to his nephew. That was it. That's all
Speaker 1: the book how to say about it. The casual mention
Speaker 1: of another rancher in town, who, by the way, also
Speaker 1: happened to mastermind the most notorious murders from the time.
Speaker 1: There are pages dedicated to Jack Drummond going off to
Speaker 1: war fighting a bunch of lawsuits over land, meeting his
Speaker 1: first wife, being scammed out of more than ninety dollars
Speaker 1: on a trip to Chicago, paying for some local kids
Speaker 1: to go to college, loaning money to young ranchers who
Speaker 1: are about to go under, driving around Oklahoma, and his
Speaker 1: buick checking on cattle. But something at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the book jumped out to me and the author's no.
Speaker 1: The author his name was Terry Hammonds. He mentions he
Speaker 1: donated dozens of cassette tapes worth of interviews with Jack,
Speaker 1: along with a bunch of financial records, to the State
Speaker 1: Historical Society in Oklahoma City. It sounded like a gold mine.
Speaker 1: Maybe these tapes, these records would tell me something about
Speaker 1: the Drummond's head rights and how they got them. So
Speaker 1: I reached out to the Historical Society an archivist I
Speaker 1: spoke to, ran a search. Nothing came up, no luck.
Speaker 1: But a few days later I got an email that
Speaker 1: archivist said after her search came back blank, she decided
Speaker 1: to keep looking. She spent hours, in her words, scrambling
Speaker 1: to find these tapes. She scoured the Historical Society's inventory,
Speaker 1: called around to other sites, and to my surprise, she
Speaker 1: found the tapes and Jack's financial records somewhere I would
Speaker 1: have never thought to look up the road in a
Speaker 1: suburb called Edmund at the University of Central Oklahoma. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you terry where money is involved. Honors seemed to
Speaker 1: try out the windows or does sure does? And in
Speaker 1: families and that at one hour. These recordings, they're all
Speaker 1: the raw material that went into making that biography, Hours
Speaker 1: and hours of two guys sitting in a room talking
Speaker 1: about cattle, mortgages, land financing. In the Drummond family. The
Speaker 1: secret of the success in the cattle is finance. You
Speaker 1: have to know how to always pay those cattals, like
Speaker 1: one of them financed all this land. I kept my
Speaker 1: land in the terry and Jack started recording these in
Speaker 1: they talked every few months for the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: We hear dogs bark in the background, the clock ticking,
Speaker 1: and occasionally the tape skips or stops sometimes when things
Speaker 1: are just getting interesting. What you did was the government
Speaker 1: tells you what they'd pay you for it, and you
Speaker 1: just took it. That fit. You didn't bother any court
Speaker 1: or anything like. No. John's took his money and then
Speaker 1: he disappeared, right yeah, and you see him after that
Speaker 1: he kept that off. And I'll tell you, and honestly,
Speaker 1: at first I was worried there was nothing here. But
Speaker 1: then I found this moment when Jack starts talking about
Speaker 1: a legal fight he got into with a man named
Speaker 1: George Smith and a bank he just calls the National.
Speaker 1: So I had all this litigation with George Smith and
Speaker 1: the Old Sage, and I fought to National when I've
Speaker 1: showed him for this million dollars up there. So the
Speaker 1: National just hated me like hell. Basically, this was a
Speaker 1: fight between this rancher, George Smith and Jack Drummond over
Speaker 1: Land in os Age County. The bank's got involved because
Speaker 1: both men had taken out such big loans that whoever
Speaker 1: lost the lawsuit would go bankrupt. Think of it as
Speaker 1: a high stakes, highly leveraged her for and they called
Speaker 1: Bill dam And on the telephone and told him and
Speaker 1: I was a crooking son of a bitch and I
Speaker 1: was Steely's cattle, and they told him everything bad about me.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you all this because as he starts getting
Speaker 1: into the details of this dispute, he mentions, but I
Speaker 1: know Sam Borshen was a longer in in the Tulsa
Speaker 1: and he knew how expensive litigation was, and he said
Speaker 1: to me, how long can you keep up this litigation?
Speaker 1: I said indefinitely. Well, he said, how can you do that?
Speaker 1: And that? And I said, well, I lived with my mother,
Speaker 1: so I have reboard and room and laundry. I've got
Speaker 1: an O Sage half an old stage head ride and
Speaker 1: that paid me enough money so that I can always
Speaker 1: get new cars and make my car payments on make
Speaker 1: my car installments. And I said that I've got to
Speaker 1: and I said as a last resort. Like the tape
Speaker 1: ends right there, right after he mentions he is half
Speaker 1: an osage head rate. Half a head rate he's using
Speaker 1: to make car payments, half a head rate that could
Speaker 1: float him during all these core battles. I later found
Speaker 1: out Jack had transferred most of his property into other
Speaker 1: people's names during this lawsuit, but this half a head
Speaker 1: rate he held on to Elsewhere in the tapes, he
Speaker 1: kind of brags to Terry Hammonds about it. I've gotta
Speaker 1: half O Sage head ride. That did you know? I
Speaker 1: how to have O D and that pays me. See,
Speaker 1: I gave that to Jim. That's what that try insurance.
Speaker 1: Jim Drummond is Jack stunt. He's in his seventies, still
Speaker 1: a practicing criminal defense attorney in Texas. I've spoken to
Speaker 1: him before I get to that conversation, though, I want
Speaker 1: to point out another moment in those tapes with Jack
Speaker 1: when he says flat out how he got that head
Speaker 1: right share and the number actually ends up being a
Speaker 1: little more than a half. Can you see I half
Speaker 1: a head four of Ryan i'bout the purchase of it
Speaker 1: from old a Pole. So there it was, and I've
Speaker 1: been able to confirm this. Jack Drummond bought one half
Speaker 1: and one four of a head right from someone named
Speaker 1: Movie Pope, and that half share Jack later gave to
Speaker 1: his son. If anything, these tapes gave me more questions
Speaker 1: than answers. Who was the V Pope, how did he
Speaker 1: get head rights? And who has them today? This is
Speaker 1: in trust. I'm Rachel Adams Hurt. I would like you
Speaker 1: to tell me about that three weeks when you and
Speaker 1: O V Pope drove around Oklahoma signing up cattleman for
Speaker 1: the Obama Livestock Marketing so hard. That's extremely interesting, And
Speaker 1: I just know I heard Jack mentioned OVI Pope's name
Speaker 1: again in the middle of a story he tells about
Speaker 1: trying to round up farmers and ranchers for a financial
Speaker 1: co op. This is the Great Depression, the beginning of
Speaker 1: the dust Bowl. Farmers and ranchers are facing yet another
Speaker 1: year of crop prices so low that can't stay afloat.
Speaker 1: They're overloaded with debt. Oklahoma families are starting to pack
Speaker 1: up their trucks and head west to California. This cooperative
Speaker 1: was supposed to help ranchers out, and Jack's job was
Speaker 1: to get people on board. I would sleep at night
Speaker 1: in the car and only both would would drive me.
Speaker 1: And then when I get to these towns, I would
Speaker 1: I would get me a one the cowman on the
Speaker 1: leading cowman, and have him go with me to his friends. See.
Speaker 1: Then I had to have the support and for each community,
Speaker 1: and it was hard gone. It took me three weeks.
Speaker 1: I never stook my clothes off for those three weeks.
Speaker 1: Those were a gruesome three weeks. The way Terry describes
Speaker 1: it in the book, It's August hot. For nearly a month,
Speaker 1: Ovie Pope and Jack Drummond are living out of a car,
Speaker 1: bumping along ranch roads, making a last ditch effort to
Speaker 1: see the Oklahoma the cattle business. The thing is nowhere
Speaker 1: in these capes does Jack say how OVI Pope would
Speaker 1: have gotten a head right or why he sold part
Speaker 1: of it to Jack. When I started looking around for
Speaker 1: something anything about OV Pope, I kept running into dead ends.
Speaker 1: Compared to the Drummonds, this was a relatively obscure guy.
Speaker 1: No line in the local paper when he went out
Speaker 1: of town on business, no university buildings named after him.
Speaker 1: But even without any specifics on OV Pope, I could
Speaker 1: get transfer records from the National Archives, all the paperwork
Speaker 1: that got sent to what was then called the Office
Speaker 1: of Indian Affairs, everything they were required before they would
Speaker 1: sign off on the sale of the head right to
Speaker 1: someone else. If the sale happened before, it's in the
Speaker 1: public record, held in a warehouse and for worth. It
Speaker 1: was legal to transfer a head right to a nono
Speaker 1: stage person or group up until so. There's a gap
Speaker 1: in the public records. You can access on head rights
Speaker 1: thirteen years that are essentially a black box. But even
Speaker 1: though the records before are technically public, they aren't easy
Speaker 1: to access. You have to know the names of the
Speaker 1: individuals involved in order to ask one of the archive
Speaker 1: specialists to email the documents. If you want to search
Speaker 1: through them yourself. You have to get an appointment in
Speaker 1: a special researcher card and travel to for worth. The
Speaker 1: folders I got back were bigger than I expected. It
Speaker 1: turns out there was a fair amount of bureaucracy involved
Speaker 1: in selling a head right. Each one's about a dozen pages.
Speaker 1: You had to write a formal application, get it notarized,
Speaker 1: have an oil and gas inspector weigh in on the
Speaker 1: purchase price. The whole thing had to be approved by
Speaker 1: the Assistant Secretary of Interior. According to those transfer records,
Speaker 1: Jack Drummond bought the one half head right from Ovi
Speaker 1: Pope in for two fifty dollars, and three years later
Speaker 1: he buys another one fourth of a head right for
Speaker 1: eleven thousand, two d fifty dollars. What's also in that
Speaker 1: paperwork is something missing in the tapes with Jack. How
Speaker 1: Ovi Pope got his head rights. He inherited them from
Speaker 1: his wife, an o stage woman named namt He She
Speaker 1: died in I found something else on the Pope family too,
Speaker 1: this time it was in Oklahoma's court records. I found
Speaker 1: out that after Namata he died, Ovi Pope's brother married
Speaker 1: her daughter, a daughter she had from a previous marriage
Speaker 1: to an O stage man. Her name was Rhodo wheeler Ridge,
Speaker 1: and she was trying to get a divorce. I brought
Speaker 1: all this, the transfer paperwork and the introduction to the
Speaker 1: divorce case to tear a dammeron at the White Hair
Speaker 1: Memorial who told me about that list of non ocge
Speaker 1: heap very holders. We started with the transfer paperwork. So
Speaker 1: this is dated May nineteenth, ninety to a Mr. A
Speaker 1: by Ludwick County Clerk Busk, Oklahoma says, Dear sir, there
Speaker 1: isn't clothes for recording assignment from O V. Pope to
Speaker 1: Alfred A. Drummond, which was approved by the Assistant Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Interior on May tenth, together with Cashier's chick.
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear Tara's thoughts on this because she
Speaker 1: spends all day immersed in these kinds of records. She
Speaker 1: would know better what we were looking at. So OV
Speaker 1: Pope was a white man who was married to an
Speaker 1: stage lady. Um I'll meet say, and she had three
Speaker 1: head rights at the time of her death in from suberculosis,
Speaker 1: and he got one and a half. Okay, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like she was in her sixties and her husband
Speaker 1: was in his thirties really and um he inherited half
Speaker 1: of her estate. So Ovie Pope has one and a
Speaker 1: half head rights. Her daughter, Rhoda wheeler Ridge has one
Speaker 1: and a half head rights. Ovie Pope's brother marries the daughter.
Speaker 1: And this is her divorce case. If you want to
Speaker 1: read starting there is where it explains it this. This This
Speaker 1: is Pope v. Pope, Oklahoma nine six. The ground alleged
Speaker 1: and the petition was extreme cruelty. On September eighteenth, nineteen four,
Speaker 1: plaintive filed an amended petition in which she alleged. Over
Speaker 1: pages and pages of testimony, Rhoda talks about the months
Speaker 1: before namat Say He died, when Ovi Pope and his
Speaker 1: brother Troy packed up her things and moved her to Colorado.
Speaker 1: They kept her and her children and house Troy Pope bought,
Speaker 1: even while her mother, who Over Pope was married to,
Speaker 1: was dying back in Osage County. In January, nat Say
Speaker 1: He died, and a little over four months later, as
Speaker 1: Rhoda was set to inherit half of her mother's estate,
Speaker 1: the two Pope brothers took her to the courthouse. Rhoda
Speaker 1: was forced to marry Troy Pope. I want you to
Speaker 1: hear some parts of Rhoda's testimony. And just to be clear,
Speaker 1: this divorce case is over seven hundred pages long, so
Speaker 1: this isn't all of it. But what it does show
Speaker 1: is textbook abusive behavior. Rhoda describes a relationship where she
Speaker 1: was isolated from her family and her finances, where she
Speaker 1: was manipulated and coerced and physically and emotionally abused. It's
Speaker 1: tough to listen to, but I think it's important to hear.
Speaker 1: We've asked voice actors to read from the testimony. There's
Speaker 1: one moment when the lawyer asked Rhoda about her first husband,
Speaker 1: a man named King Ridge. They divorced just months before
Speaker 1: her mother died. Did Ov Pope ever try to get
Speaker 1: you to get a divorce? Yes? He helped me lots
Speaker 1: of times, talk to me lots of times, and tried
Speaker 1: to get me to do it. I had to go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it. After that, the Pope brothers moved
Speaker 1: Rhoda to Colorado. Did you want to go to Colorado? No?
Speaker 1: He asked Rhoda if she wanted to marry Troy Pope. No,
Speaker 1: why did you do that? Well? I was afraid he
Speaker 1: might hurt me? Did he threaten to hurt you? Rhoda
Speaker 1: doesn't respond. What did he do? Again? No response? What
Speaker 1: made you afraid of him? Because they had a gun? Later,
Speaker 1: the lawyer tries to show the marriage as a sham.
Speaker 1: He drills down on the moment Rhoda was forced to
Speaker 1: say I do. What did the preacher ask you? The
Speaker 1: preacher asked me to say I do. The preacher asked
Speaker 1: you to say I do? And how many times did
Speaker 1: he ask you that? He asked me three times? Did
Speaker 1: you want to say I do? No, sir? Why did
Speaker 1: you because I was afraid of them? Two boys? Roda
Speaker 1: tells the lawyer Troy was cruel to her and her children,
Speaker 1: that he whipped them. Did he ever slap you any
Speaker 1: He'd done it four different times in Colorado? What caused that, Rhoda?
Speaker 1: Do you know he gets mad because I don't give
Speaker 1: him money because you don't do what because I don't
Speaker 1: give him money? Did he ever twist your arm? He
Speaker 1: twists my arm two three times like that? Did it
Speaker 1: hurt you? Yes? Sir? What name did he call you?
Speaker 1: He he just called me, call me names everything. What
Speaker 1: would he say? Do you remember Rhoda silent. At another point,
Speaker 1: Rhoda says Troy wouldn't let her visit her mother when
Speaker 1: she was dying. She says she wanted to see her
Speaker 1: all the time, she never got to say goodbye. She
Speaker 1: had to find out on me to say he died
Speaker 1: from a telegram that arrived at three o'clock on a
Speaker 1: Sunday morning. Within months, Ovi Pope was remarried. Rhoda says
Speaker 1: she was also sick during this time, and Troy refused
Speaker 1: to get her a doctor. Meanwhile, he's signing the back
Speaker 1: of her text and cashing them for himself. Did you
Speaker 1: get some money from Ovi Pope from your mother's estate?
Speaker 1: Rhoda doesn't respond. Did you get three a month from
Speaker 1: your mother's money? Yes. In his testimony, Troy Pope denied
Speaker 1: that he abused Rhoda or that he and his brothers
Speaker 1: were taking her money for themselves. Ovi Pope testified that
Speaker 1: Rhoda wanted to go to Colorado. The lawyers didn't spend
Speaker 1: much time on his own marriage to Rhode's mom, or
Speaker 1: the fact that less than five years after all meats
Speaker 1: say he died, Ovi Pope had sold the one and
Speaker 1: a half head rights he inherited from her for over
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand dollars, the equivalent of more than one
Speaker 1: million dollars today. In total, three fourth went to Jack Drummond,
Speaker 1: one half went to another white man, and one fourth
Speaker 1: went to an investment company. This divorce case goes beyond
Speaker 1: detailing the alleged abuse by the Pope brothers. It also
Speaker 1: paints the picture of an oh stage woman who went
Speaker 1: to great lengths to protect her children. Rhoda enlisted the
Speaker 1: hope of her uncle Jimmy to stand guard over her house.
Speaker 1: She hired lawyers to get restraining orders against Troy Pope,
Speaker 1: and in the end she was successful and got away
Speaker 1: from the Pope brothers. She lived for another forty years.
Speaker 1: She's buried in Hominy next to her first husband, King Ridge.
Speaker 1: I've been in touch with Rhoda's descendants. They didn't know
Speaker 1: about this case, about the Pope brothers where these head
Speaker 1: right shares went, but over email they gave me a
Speaker 1: sense of who Rhoda was outside of this case, because
Speaker 1: it didn't define her. They said she grew old on
Speaker 1: her allotment with King Ridge. She remarried him after her
Speaker 1: divorce from Troy Pope. Her five children grew to live long,
Speaker 1: full lives. They gave her grandchildren, whom she adored. She
Speaker 1: loved playing cards and board games and hosting everyone over
Speaker 1: the holidays. Rhoda was a humble of a person, they said,
Speaker 1: but most importantly, she was strong. The Pope brothers never
Speaker 1: got any scrutiny outside of this divorce case because despite
Speaker 1: all the evidence, the suspicious timing of it in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Reign of Terror, what the Pope brothers
Speaker 1: did wasn't treated as anything criminal. As far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, the FBI didn't investigate. I never found anything
Speaker 1: published in the local paper about me to say He's
Speaker 1: death or Rhoda's arranged marriage. No books, no movie, another
Speaker 1: lost story of the reign of Terror calling Tara dammon again.
Speaker 1: So this is exactly the type of schemes crime THEFS.
Speaker 1: There's so much of this type of stuff that was
Speaker 1: just not looked into. Obviously, wrote his mother was what
Speaker 1: in her sixties and Ovi Pope was half her age
Speaker 1: and this is just awful, and it's just disgusting. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't because you hear stories, right, and you hear rumors,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you know, we're pretty sure that
Speaker 1: so and so has got it. But then then you
Speaker 1: see it in black and white, just like that list,
Speaker 1: and then it's then it's real. Then it's then it's okay.
Speaker 1: I was right, We were right. I had also pulled
Speaker 1: the death certificate for Rhoda's mom, not me to say
Speaker 1: he It said she died of chronic tuberculosis and heart failure.
Speaker 1: OVI Pope was the one who provided all the family
Speaker 1: information for the death certificate. He apparently didn't know very
Speaker 1: much about the woman he married. Next to the space
Speaker 1: for her mother and father's names, it just says unknown.
Speaker 1: So so, yeah, she was married to him, and then
Speaker 1: she died in with a listed cause of death as tuberculosis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why do you make that sound? Well? So so so
Speaker 1: many oh stages have a suspicious cause of death, especially
Speaker 1: during that time period, especially the twenties, the the teens. Um.
Speaker 1: So we don't know if that's true or not, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: so we can't really trust the death certificate just because
Speaker 1: of the murders and we know that they were cover
Speaker 1: ups and that you know, causes us of death weren't investigated,
Speaker 1: either poisoned whiskey or strychnine or doping or I mean
Speaker 1: just none of that was none of that was investigated,
Speaker 1: you know. So she may have died of tuberculosis because
Speaker 1: that you know, that was a disease, you know, prevalent
Speaker 1: during that time. But I don't know. There was something
Speaker 1: else I brought Tara that day. It was a list,
Speaker 1: a small one of non os Age head right holders. Tara,
Speaker 1: of course has seen a version of this list before,
Speaker 1: the one from that lawsuit that ended up in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: But the list I brought her it had numbers how
Speaker 1: many head rights or head right fractions some of these
Speaker 1: non oth age groups owned. When the Bureau of Indian
Speaker 1: Affairs rejected my records request for this information, Bloomberg hired
Speaker 1: a law firm to fight it. We argued that the
Speaker 1: b i A didn't give a good reason for denying
Speaker 1: our request, that the exemptions they claimed didn't apply, and
Speaker 1: we were successful kind of Eventually, after a bunch of
Speaker 1: back and forth, we got something some seventy names of
Speaker 1: non Osage head right holders and how many they owned.
Speaker 1: Not the full list. The b i A withhold the
Speaker 1: names of non people who had had rights, but the
Speaker 1: organization's family trust, churches, oale companies, some of that we
Speaker 1: got so I told you we were filing that COYA. Um.
Speaker 1: I told you when we were filing the request, and
Speaker 1: you politely told me that I was probably not going
Speaker 1: to have much luck, and you're right. So the Beer
Speaker 1: of Indian Affairs denied it, um, and then we appealed
Speaker 1: and they actually said that they were going to send
Speaker 1: a letter to every non O s age head right
Speaker 1: holder and give them the chance to object to you
Speaker 1: look surprised, Oh my god, wow, really keep going so um.
Speaker 1: They gave us a list of all the non O
Speaker 1: s age entities that did not object the release of
Speaker 1: this information. Really, so it's a start. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: On that list is Jack Drummond's trust and right there
Speaker 1: half a head right. It's worth noting the list we
Speaker 1: got back from this FOYA is not even close to comprehensive.
Speaker 1: The b i A says about a fourth of all
Speaker 1: head rights are held by outsiders, something like five hundred
Speaker 1: sixty head rights. What we got back was just a
Speaker 1: small number of those, a fraction of non oth age
Speaker 1: groups who didn't object when the b i A reached
Speaker 1: out because of our appeal. By my account, it's about
Speaker 1: thirty six head rights represented in this list, there's about
Speaker 1: five hundreds that we don't know about. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I mean so okay, so about roughly thirty six head rights, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean, just do the math in like the
Speaker 1: last twenty years, you know, or this past year. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of money. Since that initial list, the
Speaker 1: b i A has added a couple more names. So
Speaker 1: the latest version represents about thirty eight head rights. If
Speaker 1: you add up all the money those thirty eight head
Speaker 1: rights have paid out just since the law has changed
Speaker 1: to stop more head rights from leaving o stage hands,
Speaker 1: the total comes out to more than thirty million dollars.
Speaker 1: And Jack Drummonds trust it may not have held the
Speaker 1: dozens of head rights that I had heard. The Drummonds
Speaker 1: might have put that half a head right, the one
Speaker 1: he bought from Ovi Pope, a white man whose oth
Speaker 1: age wife was twice his age and died during the
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror, who was accused of force her daughter
Speaker 1: to marry his own brother just as she was about
Speaker 1: to inherit the other half of her mother's estate. That
Speaker 1: half a head rate was also a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Since when Jack bought it from Ovi Pope for the
Speaker 1: equivalent of dollars today, that half a head rate has
Speaker 1: paid out one point seven million dollars when adjusted for inflation.
Speaker 1: It's just so hypocritical. I think the Bureau knowingly approved
Speaker 1: the transaction or sale of O Sage head rights to
Speaker 1: Nano Sages and saw nothing wrong with that, you know,
Speaker 1: and kept it kept it from us from all these years,
Speaker 1: you know, And that that's the The other thing is
Speaker 1: that they've they've just been so protective. They're protecting people
Speaker 1: that it doesn't belong to, you know, and that's not
Speaker 1: their job because these people aren't even Indian. They're not
Speaker 1: even Indian, you know, but they have oh Sage money
Speaker 1: or they have Indian money, you know, and it's it
Speaker 1: just it doesn't it's not right, it's not okay, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. This comes up a lot in
Speaker 1: my conversations with Tara. She's always emphatic that this money
Speaker 1: belongs to the Osage nation and its citizens. That even
Speaker 1: if there were legal ways for those head rights to
Speaker 1: be transferred out of oth Age hands, that should have
Speaker 1: never been the case. That as long as the O
Speaker 1: Stage mineral estate is around. It's meant to be benefiting
Speaker 1: O sage citizens, not the white people and oil companies
Speaker 1: and universities that have ended up with so many head
Speaker 1: rights after the break, the Drummonds who have these shares today. Okay,
Speaker 1: just a Second'm gonna plug in. Okay, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: This is Jim Drummond. He's a criminal defense attorney outside
Speaker 1: of Austin, Texas. His dad is Jack Drummond, the one
Speaker 1: from the tapes. Jack said he gave his half a
Speaker 1: head right to Jim and a trust. I called him
Speaker 1: after I learned the story behind Jack's head right shares.
Speaker 1: He didn't answer, but a few hours later he called
Speaker 1: me back. I told him I was a reporter that
Speaker 1: I was doing a podcast series. I asked if I
Speaker 1: could record our call. So you said that Alfred Alexander
Speaker 1: Drummond was your father, right? Yeah? So he was my
Speaker 1: adoptive father. I was adopted by my grandmother, my biological grandmother,
Speaker 1: and he was her second human. They adopted me. Okay,
Speaker 1: were you all close? Yeah? Yeah. I talked to Jim
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. He told me he's read Jack's book.
Speaker 1: It turns out Jim was the one who asked Harry
Speaker 1: Hammonds to write it. He didn't know the interview tapes
Speaker 1: where his father's financial records were in a public archive.
Speaker 1: He never looked into it. Jim was guarded, said he
Speaker 1: didn't understand White Bloomberg News would be interested in this,
Speaker 1: but there was something he said before we started recording.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk about the first thing out
Speaker 1: of his mouth when he called me back, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned you said your first question was is it about
Speaker 1: the head rights? I'm just curious what there was a
Speaker 1: confort There was a controversy about that in a number
Speaker 1: of years ago. You know that the the s h
Speaker 1: tribe was looking to try to get some of the
Speaker 1: people who acquired head rights from the travel members, and
Speaker 1: that they were hoping that people would voluntarily return them
Speaker 1: to the ownership and some passion I was. I didn't
Speaker 1: ever read the the full story about that or the documents,
Speaker 1: but I was contacted by a trust which holds h
Speaker 1: Han right that my father required, and they had no
Speaker 1: power to agree or disagree with that. The trust owns it,
Speaker 1: not me. So that's what I remember about this one.
Speaker 1: I remember about that, And are you a beneficiary of
Speaker 1: the trust? You just can't. I am, I am the beneficiary,
Speaker 1: but that I have no control over the what we
Speaker 1: call the as I'm a lawyer, what we call the
Speaker 1: rest or, the body of the trust is it? It
Speaker 1: does not belong to me. You said that you had
Speaker 1: no ability as a beneficiary at the trust to give
Speaker 1: it back when I do like, was that something you
Speaker 1: wanted to do? You know, I'm just not aware of
Speaker 1: the I didn't. I didn't. I decided not to formulate
Speaker 1: an opinion on that since I had no power to
Speaker 1: do any thing. Uh. I can certainly see an argument
Speaker 1: that the Osage Nation made. I think they were exploited. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are probably a lot of my family members who
Speaker 1: would not agree with me on that. I tend to
Speaker 1: be more of a left wing democrat and they came
Speaker 1: to be of the other persuasion, the reader persuasion. But
Speaker 1: I didn't. I've never made an issue of it. It's
Speaker 1: pointless to create a to take sides in a controversy
Speaker 1: over which I have no power to have any effect. Interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: I would love to talk to you some more, um,
Speaker 1: and I would love to kind of show you some
Speaker 1: of the documents that I got from from the Alfred
Speaker 1: Drummond Collection at the University of Central Oklahoma. Were in
Speaker 1: Houston with my producer. Would would you be up for
Speaker 1: an in person meeting at some point if we came
Speaker 1: up to Austin, I go up a lot. Boy, I
Speaker 1: hate to here's the deal, you know, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to start any controversy with anybody.
Speaker 1: And I don't really know a lot of my father's dealings.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was growing up. He was fifty two
Speaker 1: when I was born. And you know, I'm very I'm
Speaker 1: very reluctant unless I in You know, journalists don't like
Speaker 1: to share questions in advance. But unless I knew what
Speaker 1: questions were you going to delve into about those documents,
Speaker 1: I'm very reluctant to get involved. I I belonged to
Speaker 1: the Drummond family. I am a peripheral member. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I don't want to create any problems or controversies for anyone.
Speaker 1: But any any allegations of wrongdoing I know zero about I.
Speaker 1: I hear you, and I mean I think you mentioned
Speaker 1: that you think that the Osage Nation was exploited. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I'm curious if ever there that's the that's
Speaker 1: there there, that's there point of view, and I understand.
Speaker 1: I understand that, I understand why they might have that
Speaker 1: point of view, uh whether, But but in terms of
Speaker 1: actually knowing any of the real details of who bought
Speaker 1: what and what circumstances they bought it, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a wholly different issue of which I'm not qualified or
Speaker 1: informed enough to comment on. And frankly, I don't have
Speaker 1: the time to review a lot of those documents that
Speaker 1: you're referring to at Central State. I'm a busy and
Speaker 1: E know, I am seventy three years old. I am
Speaker 1: a busy criminal defense attorney. I have a major felony
Speaker 1: case load. That's all I do. It's criminal defense, and
Speaker 1: I don't really I am not only no interest in
Speaker 1: stirring up pot, but I also have no no dog
Speaker 1: in that fight. I've talked to Jim several times since
Speaker 1: that first call about the head right transfer paperwork the
Speaker 1: Pope Brothers. I wanted to know whether it changed to
Speaker 1: his perspective knowing the story of this half a head
Speaker 1: right in the family it had belonged to. After that
Speaker 1: first conversation, Jim said he didn't want to be recorded,
Speaker 1: but he still took my calls. He told me that
Speaker 1: as far as he could tell, his father, Jack Drummond,
Speaker 1: hadn't done anything illegal or an ethical to get this
Speaker 1: head right share, that if you average out what it
Speaker 1: paid over the last nineties seven years, it's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty modest return on what Jack initially bought it for.
Speaker 1: And Jim said he couldn't do anything about it anyway.
Speaker 1: He said he didn't have control of the trust and
Speaker 1: he doesn't like forming opinions on things he can't change.
Speaker 1: I asked a trust attorney about this. By the way,
Speaker 1: Jim's right, he and the other beneficiaries could certainly ask
Speaker 1: the trustee, the bank or financial for managing the trust
Speaker 1: to give the head right share back to the ose
Speaker 1: ege nation, but the trustee has the final say, And
Speaker 1: if there are future beneficiaries, kids or grandkids who aren't
Speaker 1: even born yet, that makes it pretty difficult for the
Speaker 1: trustee to make need decisions like that. There is an
Speaker 1: exception if someone sues over this half of a head
Speaker 1: right no stage family who says it was stolen from
Speaker 1: them were taken fraudulently, a court could order the trustee
Speaker 1: to give this share back to the family. But it's
Speaker 1: not only Jim who has those head right shares that
Speaker 1: Jack Drummond bought from Movie Pope. There was that other
Speaker 1: quarter of a head right in that share. Over time,
Speaker 1: has ended up with a few other Drummonds. One of
Speaker 1: them is named Frederick Ford Drummond, but he goes by Ford. Hello.
Speaker 1: Hi is this Ford? Yes? Hi, my name is Rachel Adams.
Speaker 1: Ford wasn't super interested in talking to me the first
Speaker 1: time I called him. Yeah, I'd rather not. I'm going
Speaker 1: to decline. Okay, is there sounds like an interesting story?
Speaker 1: Is there someone else in your family that you think?
Speaker 1: I was hoping Ford could give me another name, someone
Speaker 1: on his side of the family I could talk to
Speaker 1: about this. He couldn't really think of anyone, he said,
Speaker 1: the Drummond family. At this point, it's really big, and
Speaker 1: no one person can really speak for everyone. He wished
Speaker 1: me good luck on the story. That was the last
Speaker 1: Fort and I talked for a while, at least until
Speaker 1: one day when I was in no Stage County and
Speaker 1: I heard a rumor that made me call him back. Listen,
Speaker 1: I know you said you didn't want to talk, um,
Speaker 1: but I have one quick question for you, Um, just
Speaker 1: because it's come up, and I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we get get your take. Um. And as you know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a podcast, so I'm recording all my calls. UM.
Speaker 1: But I I heard a rumor that you might be
Speaker 1: trying to give um your head right share back to
Speaker 1: the tribe. That's correct. My father had a one twelve
Speaker 1: head right along with his two sisters, so a four
Speaker 1: for the head right. I guess they heard it from
Speaker 1: their day who I guess they got from his dad.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, and you may know more about it
Speaker 1: than I do. But my dad passed away in and
Speaker 1: he left it to me and I had along with
Speaker 1: my cousins who both of my aunts passed away as well,
Speaker 1: so everyone is interested in giving the head right back
Speaker 1: to the tribe. Ford Drummond's dad had one twelfth of
Speaker 1: a head right, part of the one fourth that Ford's grandfather,
Speaker 1: Fred Getner, bought from Jack who bought it from Movie
Speaker 1: Pope forward with that to inherit his head right share
Speaker 1: after his dad died in but he wanted to give
Speaker 1: it back to the Ocge nation, as did his cousins,
Speaker 1: who inherited the other part of that head right share.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, like why you decided to to try
Speaker 1: to do that. Well, the tribe has asked for him
Speaker 1: back for one thing, and it's not honestly a lot
Speaker 1: of money um involved, And it just seems like the
Speaker 1: right thing to do at this point. I mean, we
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot more history coming up about um,
Speaker 1: you know, the killers of the Flower Moon movie and
Speaker 1: all those kind of things. I have no idea how
Speaker 1: we got this hid right, and I'm not aware of
Speaker 1: anything nefarious or any wrongdoing or anything, um, but I
Speaker 1: just think it's it seems like the right time and
Speaker 1: the right thing to do to just try to give
Speaker 1: it back to the tribe. But here's the thing. Ford said,
Speaker 1: he and his cousins they can't actually give their head
Speaker 1: right shares back to the tribe. They tried, but for
Speaker 1: some reason, federal law makes it practically impossible. You've probably
Speaker 1: learned it's difficult to do it just legally, so they're
Speaker 1: trying to get some type of legacy relief to allow
Speaker 1: that to happen. So, you know, we're just waiting to
Speaker 1: see when we can do it. But yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: my plan, and so is it. The is the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Indian affairs. That doesn't really have a mechanism. I
Speaker 1: think if there's something the way the laws set up,
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to try to find the original airs
Speaker 1: of that head, right, the descendants of that head, right,
Speaker 1: and or a portion of a head right, And as
Speaker 1: you probably have learned, head rights have been split up
Speaker 1: into yeah, very minute fractions across for descendants. So it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to do that, it's hard to track people down,
Speaker 1: and there's not really a good mechanism for just giving
Speaker 1: it back to the tribe itself. Oh so, so the
Speaker 1: idea is that you would actually find the O stage
Speaker 1: a Lott who's head right share that originally was, and
Speaker 1: give it back to the family instead of the tribe.
Speaker 1: You I'm not sure, you'd probably better off asking someone
Speaker 1: at the b i A. I mean, all I know
Speaker 1: a patage what There's been a couple of news articles
Speaker 1: on it in local newspapers, and it is there is
Speaker 1: there's like a whole kind of a list of how
Speaker 1: you have, what you have to do to get it done,
Speaker 1: and which is just mats basically made it impossible to
Speaker 1: do it. Ford is the German family member I mentioned
Speaker 1: in episode one. The one who's a citizen of the
Speaker 1: Choctaw Nation. He said his great grandfather on his mother's
Speaker 1: side experienced the removal of the Choctaw Nation from Mississippi
Speaker 1: to their reservation in present day Oklahoma. Ford said he's
Speaker 1: a product of both sides of Oklahoma's history, tribal removal
Speaker 1: and white settlement, and now he's set to inherit this
Speaker 1: fraction of a head right that was traced back to
Speaker 1: an o s Age woman who died during the Reign
Speaker 1: of Terror, whose white husband was later accused of coercing
Speaker 1: her daughter to marry his brother, a man she said
Speaker 1: exhibited extreme cruelty against her, and Ford wants to give
Speaker 1: it back, but for some bureaucratic reason he can't. Howway
Speaker 1: Donnie nick Sha Nicole pockets on Zoli ki stow me
Speaker 1: a Watanka. My name's Evert Waller from an Osage Indian
Speaker 1: from Hamny, Oklahoma. I am now the seeded chairman of
Speaker 1: the Sage Minerals Council. I went to meet Everett Waller
Speaker 1: because just a few weeks before, the os Age Minerals
Speaker 1: Council announced an effort to get the US Congress to
Speaker 1: pass a bill that would make it easier for non
Speaker 1: os Age how right holders like four Drummond to give
Speaker 1: their shares back to the Osage nation. That should never
Speaker 1: would have left my people's hands. Our trustee should not
Speaker 1: allow a item, whether it's monetary, whether it's land, whether
Speaker 1: it's our future, to be given out to someone else,
Speaker 1: because we administrated, we paid for it. Everett and his
Speaker 1: fellow Minerals Council members are elected by os Age head
Speaker 1: right holders to make decisions about how to develop all
Speaker 1: the oil and gas resources in oth Age County. Everett's
Speaker 1: job is to represent oth Age head right holders interests,
Speaker 1: and a big part of that is getting back all
Speaker 1: the head rights held outside the nation. I looked at
Speaker 1: the Natio six Act as amended. It was said that
Speaker 1: you cannot give these head rights or sell them to
Speaker 1: not O Sages, which stopped the bleeding, But then the
Speaker 1: damage has already been done. When the first oh Sage
Speaker 1: original latt died, any of their possessions should have been
Speaker 1: held in trust for the nation. I sat with Everett
Speaker 1: at a big table in a huge conference room in
Speaker 1: the Minerals Council building on the hill in Pahaska where
Speaker 1: all the O s Age government buildings are on the
Speaker 1: wall as a mural of dozens of oth Age citizens,
Speaker 1: including members of Everett's family. Evert's pushing for this legislation
Speaker 1: to get head rates back because even though the rules
Speaker 1: were changed in the seventies and eighties so that head
Speaker 1: rates could no longer be transferred to non oth ages,
Speaker 1: they didn't require any of the head rates that had
Speaker 1: already left O s Age ownership to be returned. So
Speaker 1: right now, if a non O stage person has a
Speaker 1: head right and they want to give it back to
Speaker 1: the O s Age nation, cannot happen. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it can't happen. I just said we have
Speaker 1: seen a couple of issues before I was chairman that
Speaker 1: actually showed that there's not a proper methodology through the
Speaker 1: federal government to allow that. And I think that's done,
Speaker 1: as you well know, by some people in Washington that
Speaker 1: has not completed the requirements of taking care of the
Speaker 1: truty rights to the outside. So both Ford and Everett
Speaker 1: are saying the current process is so complicated and cumbersome
Speaker 1: that non O stage head right holders are practically prohibited
Speaker 1: from returning their shares. That's what this new legislation would do.
Speaker 1: Make that process easier, and it seems likely that legislation
Speaker 1: like this isn't going to be very controversial. We're talking
Speaker 1: about adding a legal mechanism for someone to voluntarily give
Speaker 1: something back to a tribal nation. Even with all the
Speaker 1: gridlock and polarization and government, it's hard to see anyone
Speaker 1: taking any major issues with that. And once this is
Speaker 1: all solved, for Drummond and his two cousins will give
Speaker 1: back their portion of that one fourth of a head
Speaker 1: right and Jim Drummond's trustee will hang on to his.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, the Drummonds had three
Speaker 1: fourths of a head right. They bought it from a
Speaker 1: man named Ovi Pope, who inherited his shares from his wife,
Speaker 1: Na meet say He, who died while the Pope brothers isolated, abused,
Speaker 1: and coerced her daughter into marrying Troy Pope. We only
Speaker 1: followed three four of a head right and we ran
Speaker 1: into the reign of terror. How many of the five
Speaker 1: plus other head rights held by non os Ages had
Speaker 1: a similar story. I get why the idea of the
Speaker 1: Drummonds having dozens of head rights got around. The Drummonds
Speaker 1: are a big name around os Age County. Some of
Speaker 1: them are rich and powerful. You can't walk through downtown
Speaker 1: Pahaska without running into one of the Drummonds businesses, and
Speaker 1: across the different branches of the family. They owned so
Speaker 1: much land, and their ancestors we're able to buy pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: How is one family able to get so much thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of acres by the nineteen thirties, especially since
Speaker 1: this was all owned by the O s Age Nation
Speaker 1: in six and sure there's still a chance that there's
Speaker 1: a Drummond out there who holds more head rights under
Speaker 1: some other name. But after reading pages and pages of
Speaker 1: head right transfers and going through probate files and other
Speaker 1: legal documents from that time, this three fourths of the
Speaker 1: head right is all that I could find. That's still
Speaker 1: a lot of money over the years, money that wasn't
Speaker 1: meant for them. I doubt when O s Age leaders
Speaker 1: negotiated collective ownership of the mineral estate they imagine parts
Speaker 1: of it would end up with a white family like
Speaker 1: the Drummonds. Certainly not like this. But the money the
Speaker 1: Drummond family did get from head rates, it's not enough
Speaker 1: to build a ranching empire, not one like there's more
Speaker 1: than one thousand acres across all the family members the land.
Speaker 1: The Drummond's own thousands of acres of blue stem grass.
Speaker 1: They can graze, cattle, service collateral for loans, build wealth
Speaker 1: over generations. By the time Jack Drummond bought that fraction
Speaker 1: of a head right, he and his two brothers already
Speaker 1: owned a lot of O Sage land. And when I
Speaker 1: tried to find out how they did that, I saw
Speaker 1: something more subtle than the murders of the reign of terror.
Speaker 1: A system that the Drummond brothers and other white men
Speaker 1: in os Ge County used to insert themselves into the
Speaker 1: finances of generations of O s Age families. A system
Speaker 1: that helped build an empire. What started it all? Next
Speaker 1: Time on In Trust? In Trust is a production of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg and I Heeart Media. It's reported and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Reachuel Adam's Heard. This episode featured voice acting by
Speaker 1: Maura Redcorn and Yancy Redcorn. Special thanks to Bill Noonez.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank Veronica Reading at the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: Historical Society and the descendants of Rhoda Wheeler Ridge, who
Speaker 1: spent countless hours helping me tell her story. Additional reporting
Speaker 1: by Alison Edita Davis. Land is our senior producer. Samantha
Speaker 1: Story is our executive producer. Jeff Grocott is our senior editor.
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Francesco Leavy and Daniel Ferrara. Additional production
Speaker 1: by Victor Ebayez, Production support from Jelda de Carle, Sound
Speaker 1: engineering by Blake Naples, fact checking by Molly Nugent, Theme
Speaker 1: music by Laura Orman, Photography by Shane Brown. You can
Speaker 1: email us at Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. Find more
Speaker 1: about this episode at Bloomberg dot com. In Trust find
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