Mural in Oswego, Kansas, depicting the Osage village of White Hair circa 1841 (via Wikimedia Commons)

When my mother died in late 2019, I was the executor of her estate, so it was my job to divide her assets fairly between me and my three sisters. For the most part, that was pretty easy—but one of her assets, an Osage headright, proved a bit more complicated.

An Osage headright entitles the owner to royalty payments from oil produced in Osage County Oklahoma, home of the Osage Nation of Native American people. Prior to the creation of headrights, Osage land was held collectively by the tribe. In 1906, as part of the process of Oklahoma becoming a state, the U.S. Government required the Osage Nation to divide their land and distribute it to their people (a process called “allotment”).

During the allotment negotiations, Osage Chief Bigheart negotiated an agreement that separated the mineral rights from the surface rights to the land, and allotted only the surface rights to individuals from the Osage Nation. The mineral rights were retained collectively, as an asset of the Osage people. That collective asset was then divided into 2,229 shares, called headrights, which were distributed to the members of the Osage Nation, so they could benefit from all the oil beneath Osage County, and not just from the oil beneath the parcels of land they were allotted.

Over the years, the laws surrounding Osage headrights have changed multiple times—but for the most part, Osage headrights could only be acquired through inheritance, and were not allowed to be gifted or sold. The Osage Nation’s hope was that this restriction would help them to retain wealth from oil and gas production within the tribe.

I started getting involved with my mom’s financial affairs when she was admitted to hospice, a year or so before she died. When I discovered a quarterly statement showing payments my mother had received from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), I asked her about the reason for those payments. She said that her grandfather, Herbert Randall Straight, had “done something nice” for the Osage people, and they had given him a headright to thank him for that service. When Herbert died, my mom said that his headright was passed down through her family. She didn’t know what exactly Herbert had done for the Osage, but as he was an oil man, she believed it had something to do with the Osage oil reserves.

I should note that my mom had dementia at this time, so sometimes her memories were not exactly accurate. This memory seemed consistent with the statement I had found from the BIA, however, and the math made sense—if Herbert had one headright, and left equal shares to each of his daughters, who then each left their share equally to their children, my mom would end up with the portion of a headright the BIA statement said she had. So, I believed my mom’s story. At that time, I was unaware of the many controversies surrounding Osage headrights.

In 2023, I saw an interview with David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon. He was asked about the “reign of terror” in which members of the Osage Nation were killed or manipulated for their headrights. This was the first I had heard about the exploitation of the Osage people for their oil, but it was certainly not the last. I immediately bought and read Killers of the Flower Moon, and an earlier book on the same topic: The Deaths of Sybil Bolton, by Dennis McAuliffe Jr. Then I listened to all 11 episodes of Bloomberg’s In Trust podcast, which investigated the current distribution of land, money, and power within Osage County. These sources led me to fear that maybe my great-grandfather, Herbert Straight, instead of “doing something nice” for the Osage, had played a leading role in their reign of terror. I had to admit that he fit the profile of the exploiters:

• He was not an Osage himself
• He was a successful businessman who lived nearby in Bartlesville, Washington County, Oklahoma, from 1912 until his death in 1963
• He was in the oil business and so understood the value of a headright

Instead of panicking, I turned to my genealogical skills to determine the source of my mom’s headright. I started by trying to obtain Herbert’s probate records, thinking that the headright would have been named as one of his assets in the inventory. But Herbert had set up a trust, so his estate was not probated in the usual way which would now be available to the public. So then I turned to property records, thinking that perhaps he had found a way to pass it to his heirs either before he died—or at his death—via a deed. Unfortunately, I did not find any deeds that showed he ever had a headright.

I then had to consider whether Herbert Straight might have done any of the nefarious things the authors had described to obtain an Osage headright. For example, some non-Osage people obtained headrights by marrying Osage citizens and then killing them and/or their children, so the non-Osage could inherit their headright. Thankfully, marriage and death records made this an easy option to dismiss. Herbert Straight had married Katharine Haskell in London in 1901. She was a non-Osage woman he knew from his youth in Pennsylvania. They remained married until his death in 1963.

Herbert Straight & Katharine Haskell marriage record

Herbert Straight's death certificate, indicating that he was married at the time of his death

Some non-Osage people obtained headrights by becoming appointed legal guardians of Osage citizens deemed “incompetent” by the local authorities. Unfortunately, this option was quite difficult to dismiss. I first reviewed Osage guardianship records held at the National Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, and did not find Herbert Straight. However, other guardian records are sealed in the Osage County Court Clerk’s office, and are not indexed by guardian name. It would take a court order to unseal all the guardian records, and then a giant manual search effort to review them. I did not pursue the court order, so it is still a possibility that Herbert Straight was a guardian of Osage citizens.

Some non-Osage people took headrights as collateral for loans—then, if there was a default on the loan, they acquired the collateral as compensation. By researching mortgage records in Osage and Washington Counties, I learned that some members of my Straight family did extend mortgage loans, but that those loans were all collateralized by homes, not headrights. I haven’t found any evidence that my family extended any non-mortgage loans to anyone, but it’s possible that they did so and I just haven’t found the documentation.

After months of research with no conclusive findings, I despaired of ever finding an answer to the question of how we got the Osage headright. So, as a last-ditch effort, one of my sisters and I planned a trip to Osage County, Oklahoma this spring. What we learned provides a cautionary tale for all genealogists. Our answer came from the Osage Agency BIA office in Pawhuska, where a fabulously helpful employee told us that Herbert Straight was not the source of our headright at all—it was his daughter, my great aunt Lois Straight. In 1952, during a period when it was legal for non-Osage citizens to buy and sell headrights, Lois had bought a portion of a headright from Dennis Jones, a non-Osage, who had inherited it in 1938 from his Osage wife Bertha (Metsa) Big Eagle (allottee #2143). Lois had no children of her own, so when she died in 2001, she divided it among numerous heirs, including my mother.

My cautionary tales are as follows:

• Family lore, no matter how plausible, is often wrong.
• Journalists and authors of best-selling novels write about dramatic, compelling stories. Your family’s part in those stories may be much more mundane, so don’t let their drama lead you down rabbit holes of endless research.
• Government agencies often have the official answer to genealogists’ questions and so should be consulted first, not last. Visiting in person often works better than contacting them from home.

My sisters and I wish to return our Osage headright to the Osage Nation. While it turns out that our family member obtained it legally, we feel like returning it will be more in line with Chief Bigheart’s original intent to keep oil wealth within the tribe. Unfortunately, current law makes returning the headright difficult, as we are not legally allowed to gift or sell our portion. Representative Frank Lucas in the U.S. Congress is working with Adam Trumbly, Superintendent of the Osage Agency and Osage Nation leadership to change the law so that people in our situation can more easily return the headrights to the tribe. My sisters and I wish them well in that endeavor, and look forward to the day we can finally return the portion of the headright that we inherited to the Osage people.

Family History Roundtable: Traveling for Your Research

It’s a common misconception that all family history research can be completed online—there are treasure troves of undigitized records and resources in libraries and archives that are worth making a trip to in order to take your research to the next level. There are also many meaningful experiences to be had when traveling for genealogy that don’t involve sifting through records. This engaging panel discussion explores the benefits of traveling for genealogy and offers tips and strategies for making the most of your family history trips. Watch Now