It Began With Grazing

If one does a search on the internet for Osage Indians, the results often time focus on the discovery of oil. This is largely due to when the Osages purchased their reservation in the late 19th-Century, present-day Osage County, Oklahoma. Oil production was going to become a huge industry, and from that development big revenues would come to the tribe. Greed also came manifested through fraud, theft, and murder. But before oil there was something else—there was grazing.

In 1868, Washington D.C. was having the Osages sell their Kansas lands, approximately eight million acres, for around twenty-cents an acre to the railroads. Osage leader James Bigheart knew this was wrong and sought advice from a former teacher, Father Schoenmakers at the Osage Mission.

Father Schoenmakers “warned all Osage chiefs, and protests were sent to … the Southeast Kansas District in Congress.” The outcome was “a law prohibiting any Indian tribe from selling its land to any [one] other than the United States.” On July 15, 1870, the Osage Diminished Reserve was sold at $1.25 per acre to the U.S. The funds were placed in trust with the U.S. government allowing the Osages to buy a reservation in Indian Territory; land held by the Cherokee Nation was purchased for $1,099,137.

After the Osages acquired their Oklahoma reservation, Commissioner Walker stated he saw their future being positive. “… Having now a fixed place of abode and having large sums coming to them from the sale of their lands in Kansas, the Department sees no reason to doubt that they will in a few years become a rich and prosperous people.”

What Walker was referring to was something that has not always been associated with the Osages. Usually when inferring a connection between money and the Osages, one is referring to oil revenue. But instead, Walker was talking about grazing; between 1880 and 1881, pastures rented for 4-1/2 cents per acre. This was not planned by the Osages.

The area in Indian Territory where the Osages moved to had been desired for a while by cattlemen. Situated between Texas and Kansas, the region was sometimes called “the promised land” for its grasses and “the possibility of free land.” Cattlemen wanted the bluestem grass and the Osages dealt with the trespassing “by selling grazing leases.”

The late Osage author Louis F. Burns wrote “… Drovers did not drive their herds to the rail heads as depicted in the movies. They grazed them on the so-called long drive, which should be more accurately termed the long-graze.” During the “long grazing drives” the bluestem grass of the Osage reservation was excellent for wintering cattle.

The grass leases were negotiated by “an Osage leasing committee … The Osage leased 431,640 acres in 1898 and 727,260 acres in 1910.”

But after the reservation was allotted, in order for Oklahoma to obtain statehood, much of this grass leasing ended.

(The photograph on thefront webpage slider is used with permission of the Osage Tribal Museum. The caption on the photograph: Roundup in the Osage Nation Carpenter's Ranch. This was a Vince Dillon photo.)