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 Edited By: Angelic Saulsberry
Art Work
Courtesy of Louis F. Burns
The Indian has ever been considered the legitimate prey of the white
man by the commercial world, and this idea seems to have gained
considerable hold on the Indian offices and the Congress of the
United States.
The allotment of Indian lands, and the opening of the Indian
reservations to white settlement in Oklahoma by Congress has been
prompted in every case by the clamor of the homeseekers of bordering
states, and not by any wish of the Indian, or any apparent desire on
the part of Congress to better the condition of the red man. And
upon the opening of an Indian reservation the homeseeker has come,
and with him countless numbers of grafters without regard for the
laws of God or man. These grafters have been able to combine
the moneyed interests, and control the courts to the extent that it
is common talk that the value of real estate doubles as soon as the
title passes from the Indian. The Osage reservation is not an
exception to the rule. The Osage Allotment Act was approved
and became a law June 28, 1906, providing for the allotment in
severalty to the members of the Osage tribe all the lands of the
Osage reservation and reserving to the tribe in common the oil, gas
and mineral for 25 years.
Paragraph 7 of article 2 of the above named act reads as follows:
Seventh. That the Secretary of the Interior, in his
discretion, at the request and upon the petition of any adult member
of the tribe, may issue to such member a certificate of competency,
authorizing him to sell and convey any of the lands deeded to him by
reason of this Act, except his homestead, which shall remain
inalienable and non-taxable for a period of twenty-five years, or
during the life of the homestead allottee if, upon investigation,
consideration and examination of the request he shall find any such
member fully competent and capable of transacting his or her own
business and caring for his or her own individual affairs: Provided,
That upon the issuance of such certificate of competency the lands
of such member (except his or her homestead) shall become subject to
taxation, and such member, except as herein provided shall have the
right to manage, control and dispose of his or her lands the same as
any citizen of the United States: Provided, That the
surplus lands shall be nontaxable for the period of three years from
the Approval of this Act, except where certificates of competency
are issued or in case of the death of the allottee, unless otherwise
provided by Congress: And provided further, That
nothing herein shall authorize the sale of the oil, gas, coal, or
other minerals covered by said lands, said minerals being reserved
to the use of the tribe for a period of twenty-five years, and the
royalty to be paid to said tribe as hereinafter provided: And
provided further, That the oil, gas, coal and other minerals
upon said allotted lands shall become the property of the individual
owner of said land at the expiration of said twenty-five years,
unless otherwise provided for by Act of Congress.
The surface of the lands of the Osage tribe not being enough to
satisfy the greed of the grafters, they are now making an effort to
get their clutches on the oil that is now being produced and paying
a handsome revenue to the tribe, by attempting to have repealed that
part of the Osage Allotment Bill which reserves to the tribe in
common for 25 years the oil, gas, coal, and other minerals covered
by the lands of the Osage Reservation, and the following petition is
now being circulated among the members of the tibe by the
oily-tongued agents, with stories of thousands that would be paid to
the individual for his royalty, should the change asked for in the
petition be made:
To the Congress of
the United States and the Honorable, the Secretary of the Interior:
“We, the undersigned members of the Osage Tribe of Indians, would
respectfully show:
1st. Under the Act of Congress of June 28, 1906,
commonly known as the Allotment Bill, the minerals are reserved to
the tribe, and the allottee, to whom land has been allotted as an
individual, has no right to the same for a period of twenty-five
years.
2nd. That the purpose of reserving said minerals to
the tribe was, if possible, to guarantee to each member of the tribe
a share of the benefits to be derived from such minerals.
3rd. That in said Act of Congress, provision is
made for the granting of certificates of competency to the members
of the tribe, which certificate of competency carried with it the
right of the members, to whom the same is granted, to dispose of his
or her surplus lands subject to the mineral rights reserved to the
tribes.
4th. That under and by virtue of the Act of
Congress of March 3, 1909, upon application of any member of the
Osage Tribe of Indians, Secretary of the Interior may sell any of
the surplus lands belonging to such member subject to the mineral
rights reserved to the tribe.
5th. A large number of the members of the tribe
have made application to the Secretary of the Interior for
certificates of competency, and others have made application to the
Secretary of the Interior to sell their surplus lands under the Act
of Congress of March 3, 1909.
6th. That in the allotment and the division of the
lands between the members of the Osage Tribe of Indians, the same
was so done as to give to each and every member of the Tribe some of
the mineral lands belonging to the tribe, so that no member, or
practically no member received his entire allotment without
receiving a share of the mineral lands.
7th. That at least eighty (80%) per cent of the
lands in that section of the Osage Reservation which is known as
mineral lands is unfit for agricultural purposes, and more than one
half is very poor grazing land.
8th. Because of the restrictions against the right
of the allottee to convey the mineral with the surplus, lands
situated within the mineral district bring very poor prices, except
where the same is good farming land, and under the conditions that
now exist, a very large part of the land situated within the mineral
district not suitable for farming purposes will not bring to exceed
$2 to $2.50 per acre, but if the mineral rights could be sold with
the surface, said lands would bring to the allottee many times that
amount and, in some instances, almost fabulous prices.
9th. Very little or none of the development is
going on at this time in the Osage Indian Reservation by the
company, having the lease thereon, or by its sub-lessees, and your
petitioners believe that very little more development will go on so
long as the mineral rights are reserved to the tribe.
Speculators in oil land and others seeking to get possession of the
surface of these lands at a very small price prefer to withhold the
development until such time as the mineral rights will go with the
surface.
10th. We believe that very great detriment is being
done to members of the Osage Tribe of Indians by reason of the
mineral rights being reserved to the tribe, and believe that if the
mineral rights were to go with the surface, in cases where it was
desired to sell the land, a very much greater price could be
obtained, and in cases where it was desired to retain same, a very
much better rate of royalty could be obtained by the allottee than
is now being obtained under the present lease, and very much more
development would be carried on than is now being carried on under
present laws.
Wherefore, Your petitioners respectfully ask that an Act of
Congress be passed providing that the allottee shall own the mineral
as well as the surface of his allotment, and that the royalties
derived under the present lease be paid to the owner of the
allotment.
The above petition, to the casual observer, seems innocent enough,
but what of the members of the Osage tribe that would thus be cut
off from their part of the oil money by an arbitrary act of
Congress? Have they no rights for Congress to consider?
Has Congress, under the constitution, any right to take the property
of any one and bestow it upon another without due process of law?
And is not the mineral right of each individual member of the Osage
tribe as much his or her property as any other property? I
think so. And now let us see who would be benefited and who
would be robbed by this proposed change.
An investigation of the records will show that the Osage tribe is
now receiving royalties from approximately 900 oil wells with a
total production of about five million barrels of oil. The
records with further show that these 900 wells are located on the
allotments of less than 250 of the 2230 enrolled members of the
Osage tribe. A further investigation will show that of the
250, that under the proposed change would be beneficiaries, less
than fifteen are full-blood Osages, and that 150 of these
beneficiaries are either white men that have inherited the lands of
their children or wives, or the wives and minor children of the
white men, leaving a total of less than 100 members of the tribe who
would actually be benefited by this change, and that to the
detriment of the rest of the tribe. That with these actual
conditions showing upon the face of the agency records, these
grafters are smooth enough in their various ways to obtain the
signature of the simple Indian to their petition is amazing.
They go farther than that. Not wanting to incur the expense of
paying a lobby in Washington, they have been able to induce a great
many of the Indians to sign contracts to pay various sums of money
to their attorneys for their proposed effort in obtaining this
change, thereby inducing the Indian to pay for being robbed.
And some of these contracts carry the stipulation that in the event
of the Indian receiving the mineral under his allotment, a
percentage of it goes to the attorneys. In other words
Congress is asked to set up a lot of attorneys and some intermarried
white men in the oil business.
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