My Father's Story

My father recently sat down to write his memories from childhood.  These are his words:

The Beginning

by Eugene R. Rutland

I do not know when Gholson and Annie Ford moved with their family, Pearl, Delpha and Harry, from Oklahoma to Tacoma, Washington.  Gholson Ford was quite a bit older than Annie and was unable to work.  I do not know how or when he was injured.

Annie had a brother, Elmer Barnhart, who had a small fuel distribution business in Tacoma.  I suspect that hope of financial support from him was the basis for this migration.

In Tacoma they lived in the south end of town.  Mom (Pearl), their oldest child, dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, and went to work at Seiyers Lumber Mill in the Tide Flats area of Tacoma.

Osage Nation

This stone structure was the Osage Agency School in Pawhuska.

From the Osage Nation website:

The Osage, Ponca, Omaha, Kwapa (Quapaw), and Kansa Nations were the descendants of one great tribe of Indians whose first dwelling place was in the region of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. Soon they wandered westward, some going down the Mississippi and some ascending it.

The Omahas, which then included the Osage, Ponca, and Kansa group, ascended the Missouri river, but another separation took place when the Osage and Kansa families settled in the present territory of Missouri and Kansas.

The Osage were once called "Wah-zha-zhe" - the name of a great tribe. The older ancient Osage called themselves the Niukonska which translated to "Little Ones of the Middle Waters".

The Osage were often described as war-like due to the fact that they guarded their land with such ferocity. The ability to obtain firearms at an early date gave the Osage a major advantage in their conflicts with those who intruded upon their lands. The Osage occupied a strategic location between the tribes to the west and the advancing European-American frontier. They were able to control the trade between these tribes and the Europeans until the nineteenth

There were three divisions, the Big Hills, the Little Osages, and the Kaws. The Kaws, who the Osages once refused to acknowledge, drifted away and did not return for a long time. They spoke about the same dialect and could understand each other. The Kaws allotted their lands in 1902, and their people occupied the area northwest of the Osages in Oklahoma Territory.

The Osage were first recorded by Father Jacques Marquette in 1673. He placed them on the Osage River in present-day Vernon County, Missouri, where they were still established nearly 100 years later in 1759.

There is little known about the Osage from this time until the treaty at St. Louis in 1804. Here we find the explorers and French traders marrying into the Osage tribe. Almost from the beginning, trading with the Indians became a lucrative enterprise, for the white man and the spread of trade brought a large number of tribes into contact with the French, Spanish and English. Of whom all groups were trying to create allies among the Indians.

In 1853 the Osages composed seven large villages, besides many smaller ones, along the Neosho and Verdigris rivers, and held sway, at one time, over most of the territory which now composes the states of Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas.

During the treaty of 1894, at St. Louis, it had become apparent that they had in many instances married French traders and explorers, from whom they took the names that distinguishes some of the prominent Osage families of today. Some of these names are: Lessart, Revard, Plomondan, Del Orier, Pappan, Tayrien, Mongranin, Soldani, DeNoya, Fronkier, and Moncravie.

Osage County, Oklahoma

From Wikipedia:

Most of the county is in the Osage Plains, and consists of open prairie. The eastern part of the county contains the Osage Hills, an extension of the Flint Hills in Kansas. Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is north of Pawhuska.

By the seventeenth century, the Osage had moved west of the Mississippi River and established themselves as a powerful nation in the areas of present-day Missouri and Arkansas between the Missouri and Red rivers, as well as extending to the west.  By 1760, they had increased their range to include the present Osage County.  Historically one of the most powerful Great Plains tribes, their numbers were reduced by infectious disease and warfare.In 1825, they ceded their claim to the land in present-day Oklahoma to the United States government in 1835.  In 1870, the Osage prepared for removal from Kansas, after having negotiated payment for their land. They purchased 1.57 million acres of their former territory from the Cherokee and, by owning it, had a stronger position in relation to the US government than did other tribes.

The Osage Agency was established at Deep Ford, later renamed as Pawhuska in 1872. It was named the county seat at statehood. The other chief settlements in the 1870s were Hominy and Fairfax, each of the three settled by a major Osage band.

In 1875 the land they purchased was designated the Osage Reservation and, because the tribe owned the land directly, they retained more control over their affairs than did tribes who only had rights to land held "in trust" by the United States government. This reservation became part of the Oklahoma Territory in 1890.  

In another important difference, as owners the Osage retained the communal mineral rights to their reservation lands. In October 1897, the Phoenix Oil Company drilled the first successful oil well on the Osage reservation and Oklahoma Territory. It was located along Butler Creek. In 1901, Phoenix Oil and Osage Oil companies combined their assets to form the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company (ITIO).

By 1920, the Osage were receiving lucrative revenues from royalties and were counted as the richest people in the country. During the 1920s, Osage County was the site of the infamous Osage Indian murders. Because of the great wealth being generated by oil, an estimated 60 tribal members were killed as whites tried to gain their headrights, royalties or land.  To try to protect the Osage, Congress passed a law in 1925 prohibiting the inheritance of headrights by persons who were not at least half Osage in ancestry.