Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bugo]

Osage County is coterminous with the Osage Indian Reservation. But it isn't a reservation like most reservations are. It is just another county. There are folks of all races who live there. It's 66% white, 11.4% black, and only 14.4% Native American. It has towns, highways, freeways, Indian casinos, businesses and other things that other counties have. It also happens to be the largest county in the state. Was it once a typical rez that has changed with time, or was it always like this?

[NE2]

Oil. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/O/OS004.html

[bugo]

that didn't really answer my question

[wxfree]

I believe the linked page answers your question.  It's a mix of "typical rez that has changed" and "always been that way."

The reservation was part of Oklahoma Territory since 1890.  The Osage Allotment Act was passed the year before statehood.  Land was allotted to enrollees with townsites withheld.  At statehood, it became a county.  It changed, because it originally wasn't part of a state, but it's "always been that way" in the sense that the county has been as it is now, reservation land with towns mixed in, since the state (and county) formed.

[Road Hog]

The southeastern corner of the county abuts Tulsa and is prime for development.

[Desert Man]

My Mom's father (grandfather) was born and raised in Skiatook, a town few miles north of Tulsa in 1922. They were of Osage and Cherokee indian descent, and were sharecroppers. He with his family then moved to Kern county, CA in the town of Arvin south of Bakersfield when he was 12. He then moved to L.A. and joined the Marines after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And he wasn't born a US citizen, the US government granted American Indians their citizenship rights in 1925, so the Marines replaced his BIA birth certificate with an official one, and he "passed as white" (my great-grandma is "full-blood" and greatgrandpa is 1/4 with white Scottish). Osage County is in my roots and heart of my family tree, and I've been there in a family trip to Tulsa in 2006.

[bugo]

A lot of "Okies" (not necessarily Oklahomans, but residents of the Dust Bowl states) went to California at about the same time your family did. My new job is with the Osage Nation in the extreme southeastern corner of Osage County.