Over a cen­tu­ry after dis­cov­er­ing vast oil reserves beneath their ter­ri­to­ry, the Osage found them­selves once again in a legal strug­gle to pro­tect their rights. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, act­ing on behalf of the Osage, filed a law­suit against Enel, an Ital­ian ener­gy com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for the wind farm, alleg­ing that it had vio­lat­ed the 1906 Allot­ment Act. The Osage argued that the exca­va­tion work required for the wind tur­bines’ foun­da­tions infringed on their min­er­al rights, yet the courts ruled in Enel’s favor, deter­min­ing that the com­pa­ny was not engaged in min­er­al extrac­tion. Despite the legal set­back, the case reignit­ed dis­cus­sions about the ongo­ing strug­gles indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties face in safe­guard­ing their lands from cor­po­rate and gov­ern­men­tal encroach­ment.

At the same time, new envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions intro­duced in 2014 sig­nif­i­cant­ly restrict­ed oil drilling in Osage Coun­ty, lead­ing to an unprece­dent­ed decline in explo­ration activ­i­ties. As a result, the local econ­o­my, his­tor­i­cal­ly reliant on oil rev­enue, suf­fered a notable down­turn. The dwin­dling drilling oper­a­tions under­scored the con­tin­ued ten­sion between envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, leav­ing the Osage com­mu­ni­ty grap­pling with the con­se­quences of shift­ing poli­cies that affect­ed both their finan­cial future and their con­trol over nat­ur­al resources.

While inves­ti­gat­ing the broad­er his­to­ry of the Osage mur­ders, I made an unex­pect­ed dis­cov­ery at the Pawhus­ka pub­lic library: a long-for­got­ten man­u­script detail­ing the 1918 mur­der of Mary Lewis. The doc­u­ment, com­piled by Lewis’s descen­dant, Anna Marie Jef­fer­son, unveiled a chill­ing tale of betray­al dri­ven by greed. Lewis, a wealthy Osage woman, was deceived by Thomas Mid­dle­ton, a man she trust­ed, who con­spired with an accom­plice to lure her to Texas, mur­der her, and claim her head­rights through fraud and imper­son­ation.

Despite Middleton’s con­fes­sion, which led to his con­vic­tion, his death sen­tence was lat­er com­mut­ed, and he was released early—a deci­sion that enraged Lewis’s fam­i­ly and rein­forced the sense of injus­tice faced by the Osage. This case, large­ly over­shad­owed by the more infa­mous Reign of Ter­ror orches­trat­ed by William Hale in the 1920s, revealed a pat­tern of exploita­tion that had begun long before and con­tin­ued well beyond Hale’s reign. The real­iza­tion that sys­tem­at­ic killings and finan­cial schemes tar­get­ing the Osage pre­dat­ed Hale’s con­spir­a­cies added new lay­ers to the trag­ic his­to­ry of their strug­gle for auton­o­my and jus­tice.

The dis­cov­ery of Lewis’s sto­ry deep­ened my under­stand­ing of the pro­longed and cal­cu­lat­ed efforts to dis­pos­sess the Osage of their wealth. It became clear that the mur­ders were not iso­lat­ed acts of vio­lence but rather a wide­spread and per­sis­tent pat­tern of exploita­tion that had been over­looked in main­stream his­tor­i­cal accounts. The Osage had faced relent­less attempts to strip them of their land, wealth, and rights—whether through fraud­u­lent guardian­ships, legal loop­holes, or out­right mur­der.

As the chap­ter unfolds, it draws unset­tling par­al­lels between the past and present, illus­trat­ing how the Osage con­tin­ue to bat­tle against exter­nal forces seek­ing to con­trol their land and resources. From the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry head­right mur­ders to con­tem­po­rary legal bat­tles over ener­gy devel­op­ment, the strug­gle for sov­er­eign­ty remains an ongo­ing fight. These sto­ries of resilience and resis­tance serve as a reminder that his­to­ry does not exist in iso­la­tion but con­tin­ues to shape the chal­lenges faced by indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties today.