Colonial Entanglement

Constituting a Twenty-First-Century Osage Nation

Jean Dennison

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780807872901, 9780807835807
• eBook ISBN: 9780807837443
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

From 2004 to 2006 the Osage Nation conducted a contentious governmental reform process in which sharply differing visions arose over the new government’s goals, the Nation’s own history, and what it means to be Osage. The primary debates were focused on biology, culture, natural resources, and sovereignty. Osage anthropologist Jean Dennison documents the reform process in order to reveal the lasting effects of colonialism and to illuminate the possibilities for indigenous sovereignty. In doing so, she brings to light the many complexities of defining indigenous citizenship and governance in the twenty-first century.
By situating the 2004–6 Osage Nation reform process within its historical and current contexts, Dennison illustrates how the Osage have creatively responded to continuing assaults on their nationhood. A fascinating account of a nation in the midst of its own remaking, Colonial Entanglement presents a sharp analysis of how legacies of European invasion and settlement in North America continue to affect indigenous people’s views of selfhood and nationhood.

Chapter 1 Reform

One of the first people I met when I began my research in the summer of 2004 was Leonard Maker, the head of the Planning Department at the Osage Nation. A small, middle-aged man with long Osage lineages on both sides of his family, Maker quickly impressed me with his grasp of Osage history, both ancient and recent, as well as his willingness to talk openly about Osage politics. Walking into his office for our first meeting, I was struck by the transient state of the room. There were boxes piled everywhere and books stacked up on each shelf of the bookcase. Watching me as my eyes scanned the room, Maker commented that every couple of months he had been moved to another location, so he had stopped bothering to unpack. As one of the smallest programs, he was repeatedly moved to make room for the expansion of other programs, such as those concerning Osage education and health care. With the opening of casinos, the Osage government began investing more money into its service programs, but it had little space to house all of its new employees. Maker did not have a large staff or even a stable project, so he was moved from one office to another, sometimes in his home town of Hominy, and other times in Pawhuska, the capital of the Osage Nation. Some of the buildings had the quality of the hurriedly erected prefab structures that litter twenty-first-century reservations, with thin walls and hollow floors. Others had ancient shag carpeting and lead in the paint, with the homey feeling that only older buildings can have.

In many ways the state of Maker’s office could be read as symbolic of the state of the Osage Nation at the beginning of the twenty-first century—a patchwork of well-worn and temporary structures all exceeding their capacity. Even though it was clearly a moment of great expansion and excitement, there was also a sense of bracing anticipation, as if the floor was about to shift beneath our feet. The reform process promised much-needed change, but also insecurity, as we reimagined what our Nation ought to look like in the twenty-first century.

In the chaos of his office, I noticed his dry erase board. Scrawled across its clean white surface was a detailed schematic. Maker was in the midst of planning a process of governmental reform. Public Law 108-431, “To reaffirm the inherent sovereign rights of the Osage Tribe to determine its membership and form of government,” had just passed the U.S. House and was now being debated by the Senate. Attorneys for the Osage Tribal Council had crafted this bill to fulfill a campaign promise the councilors had made to expand membership beyond annuitants in the Osage Mineral Estate.

The Osage have a complex colonial history, which has possibly made them unique among the federally recognized American Indian nations in the continental United States. In the 1906 Osage Allotment Act (34 Stat. 539), when the reservation was allotted, the Mineral Estate underneath the reservation was separated from the surface lands. This meant that while the land was allotted to individuals, the subsurface oil and gas remained in national ownership. The proceeds from the sale of oil and gas were to be distributed evenly among all 2,229 people listed on the 1906 Osage allotment roll. Many people today hold only partial shares in the Mineral Estate because their parents’ or grandparents’ shares were divided among multiple siblings. Additionally, one-quarter of all headrights left the Osage Nation before laws were in place forbidding non-Osage from holding more than a lifetime estate, meaning that after the individual’s death, the headright would be returned to a descendant of the 1906 allotment roll.

The goal of the 2004 legislation, however, was to allow the Osage Nation to reform not only its citizenship standards but also its government, which was operating under a single council system established by U.S. law. Maker was developing a plan for reform that could be immediately implemented if the bill became law.

As I sat down to talk with Maker about his plans for the reform process, he explained how he expected the reform to proceed—and also the histories leading up to this moment and what was at stake in writing a twenty-first-century Osage constitution. In a similar way, this chapter will provide a context for the Osage reform process. By foregrounding an understanding of Osage history and the process through which reform took place, this chapter will investigate the tensions that surrounded the process itself. In considering not only the challenges inherent within citizenship-based reform but also the role various U.S. policies have played in creating the issues that plagued the reform process, it becomes clear that the process of reform itself is deeply entangled.

A History of Entanglement

The Osage first encountered Europeans, specifically the French, in 1673. According to historian Willard Rollings, it took only twenty years of contact to fully equip the Osage with horses and guns, allowing them to control westward trade on the prairie-plains of what would later become Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. By the late eighteenth century, the Osage controlled the trade not only between the French and the western American Indian nations but also among the different European frontiers.¹ In 1795, when the French built a trading post in the area, they were able to convince half the Osage to resettle near the Arkansas River, allowing for the easier exchange of trade goods. While this in some ways gave the French more control over the Osage, it also increased Osage control of trade in the area.

In 1803, the American government acquired this area from the French as part of the Louisiana Purchase, and the Osage’s trade advantage, and thus authority in the area, was heavily threatened by the removal of eastern American Indian nations into Osage territory. Lewis and Clark sent Osage representatives to Washington in the hope of smoothing the way for Indian Removal.² After his first meeting with the Osage delegation, Jefferson wrote a letter to the secretary of the navy, Robert Smith, describing them as “the finest men we have ever seen” and saying, “We shall endeavor to impress them strongly not only with our justice and liberality, but with our power and therefore shall send them on to see our populous cities, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston . . . because in their quarter we are miserably weak.”³ In addition to this strategy, Jefferson proposed in a speech to the Osage a few days later that they increase the interaction between the “two great nations” through trade and an Indian agent.⁴ These two strategies of entanglement would drastically change Osage lifeways.

Jefferson’s plan for this area was to increase the numbers of trading posts and to provide unlimited credit, encouraging Indians to run up large debts, which could later be used to acquire Indian land. These efforts, however, only strengthened Osage authority, giving them more control over trade in the area. In 1808, therefore, territorial governor Meriwether Lewis banned all trade with the Osage and ordered the Nation to move to a site on the Missouri River. At this new site, threatened with war and an end to all trade, two of the three Osage groups were forced to sign a treaty, according to which they ceded 50,000 square miles of land in exchange for a new trading post and an annuity payment of $1,500 per Osage citizen. By 1814, the U.S. government was able to control all trade with the Osage, making the Osage vulnerable to the wishes of the American government.⁵ Control of trade and greater access to guns and horses allowed the U.S. government to gain the upper hand in negotiations with the Osage in a very short period. From 1808 until 1839, there were seven treaties under which the Osage lost control of over 151 million acres of land, gaining only minimal compensation.⁶

On the American side, acquisition of Indian land was typically justified in terms of meeting the needs of the growing American population, but it was also connected to notions of “civilization.” As the 1865 Osage treaty reads, “The remaining proceeds of sales shall be placed in the Treasury of the United States to the credit of the ‘Civilization fund’ to be used under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior for the education and civilization of Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States.”⁷ In this way, the Osage were forced to contribute to the building of colonial schools across America, including Carlisle Indian School and Haskell Institute.

From the beginning of the treaty process, it was clear that the existing form of Osage government was not suitable for negotiating the changes under way. On the one hand, Osage governance was decentralized, meaning that there was no one leader who could speak for all Osage in negotiation with European nations and later with the U.S. government. Many Osage were disgruntled that each of the treaties was signed by only a small fraction of the Osage leadership but had severe ramifications for all Osage. Furthermore, the loss of land and the dispersal of the annuity checks led to drastic changes in daily routines, rendering older forms of governing authority unworkable for current lifestyles. Finally, in negotiating the colonial situation, some Osage were persuaded by ideas of “civilization” in circulation, giving older practices an air of “savagery.” With all of these factors working in unison, it was clear that by the late nineteenth century, Osage life had become deeply entangled within colonial systems of expansion.

In a final attempt to escape the ongoing territorial expansion of the United States, the Osage were persuaded to sell their lands in Kansas and buy back a small tract of their Oklahoma lands in what was by then known as Indian Territory. They were assured that here they could live free from invasion by white squatters. Instead of allowing the promised isolation, however, the federal government immediately began a whole new series of invasive tactics, this time focused on dismantling the Osage governing structure. For Vine Deloria and Clifford Lytle, a central aspect of the colonial process was the destruction of many of the American Indian governments. Frustrated by the slow and deliberative process by which most of these nations made decisions, the U.S. government began creating more “workable” councils, which could quickly make decisions that supported federal mandates.⁸ By creating small “tribal councils,” the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) not only tried to take control of the decision-making processes across Indian Country but also often succeeded in destroying the ways of life that were supported by older governing structures.

Hoping to avoid these OIA-created governments, the Osage passed the 1861 Constitution (see appendix 1).⁹ This effort succeeded for almost fifteen years, but in 1876, the OIA created the first federally created Osage Council. In 1877, the OIA’s Osage agent, Cyrus Beede, described his creation of this structure, including his selection of Osage to sit on the council. He argued that the earlier system had created much jealousy and that the leaders did not always maintain complete control over their populations. He concluded by saying, “Another year’s experience proves the wisdom of the course adopted on taking charge of the agency, in the selection of an executive committee, consisting of governor, chief councilor, and business committee of five, making seven persons selected from among the leading men of all the different factions. These seven men, regardless of character, are recognized as the representative men of the tribe, and through them its business with the agent and government is transacted.”¹⁰ In this annual report, it is possible to see the intentional colonial entangling of the Osage Nation. In addition to being transferred to increasingly smaller land bases and witnessing the extinction of the buffalo and other resources, the Osage people had to endure Beede, who appointed his own leaders, “regardless of character,” ignoring their governing structure. By completely disregarding the authority of the existing Osage governance, Beede delivered a powerful blow to Osage autonomy.

The Osage did not passively accept this reconfiguration, in 1881 adopting a constitution that once again allowed them to govern themselves (see appendix 2). According to Terry P. Wilson, this effort to reestablish self-governance was directly motivated by the success of an Osage delegation that, without approval from their OIA agent, Leban J. Miles, traveled to Washington, D.C., where they negotiated for treaty annuities to be paid mostly in cash. By taking over the OIA’s annuity payments, which served as a tight control mechanism, the Osage delegation reasserted their ability to speak for themselves, rather than through the agents of the OIA. This 1881 Constitution was copied directly, almost verbatim, from the 1839 Cherokee Constitution, with its three-part government, democratic elections, and autonomous boundary control. The Osage thus adopted a governing structure that was fundamentally recognizable to the U.S. federal government, in the hope of being left alone to manage their own affairs.¹¹

For Osage scholar Robert Warrior, the 1881 Osage Constitution was a classic example of the Osage practice of “moving to a new country.” Following the Osage practice of accepting radical change as part of ensuring a strong Osage future, the Osage set out to reestablish their autonomy. Warrior writes: “The 1881 constitution sets out the parameters of a self-determined, self-imagined, autonomous Osage Nation. They undid the lie that Indian people were not capable of living out the challenges of modernity.”¹² This Osage willingness to change was predicated on the insistence of maintaining themselves as a distinct people. The implementation of the 1881 Constitution shows how change was accepted as a necessary part of survival rather than a threat to some sort of fundamental Osage identity linked to an immemorial past.¹³ In describing the 1881 constitutional government, Agent H. B. Freeman wrote: “The Osage regard themselves as a nation with a big ‘N.’ . . . This government is a very real thing to the Osage.”¹⁴

No matter how real the government was to the Osage, in 1900 the OIA dismantled the 1881 Osage Constitution, once again establishing a tribal council–style government, with officials appointed by the OIA. Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock justified this move by criticizing the Osage Nation government’s disputed elections, an unwillingness to listen to agency recommendations, a poor choice of elected officials, and what he saw as a profligate use of tax monies.¹⁵ The most threatening clash, however, was over the ongoing policy of allotment.¹⁶

The federal policy of allotment officially began in 1887 with the Dawes General Allotment Act, which called for the widespread surveying of native tribal lands. Once the surveys were completed, these lands were parceled out, usually in 160-acre tracts, to individual Indians. The remaining lands were then opened up for white settlement, reducing 2 billion acres of Indian-controlled land to 150 million acres.¹⁷ This large-scale policy of allotment was justified at the time by both the federal government and an array of humanitarian organizations, including the Indian Rights Association, the Indian Protection Committee, and the Friends of the Indians, as a solution to the “Indian problem.” Allotment, it was argued, would create American citizens by allowing each Indian to become propertied and thus a full part...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Colonial Entanglement
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acronym Guide
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Reform
• Chapter 2 Blood
• Chapter 3 Culture
• Chapter 4 Minerals
• Chapter 5 Sovereignty
• Appendix 1 1861 Constitution of the Osage Nation
• Appendix 2 1881 Constitution of the Osage Nation
• Appendix 3 1994 Constitution of the Osage Nation
• Appendix 4 BIA Letter on Osage Citizenship
• Appendix 5 Public Law 108-431
• Appendix 6 2005 Osage Government Reform Referendum Results
• Appendix 7 2006 Constitution of the Osage Nation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index