25 The Lost Manuscript

In June 2015, vis­it­ing the Osage Nation at Kathryn Red Corn’s insis­tence, I observed a sprawl­ing wind­mill farm across the prairie west of Pawhus­ka, Okla­homa. Dom­i­nat­ed by tow­er­ing wind tur­bines, this new ener­gy instal­la­tion spanned over eight thou­sand acres, intend­ed to pow­er tens of thou­sands of homes but stir­ring con­tro­ver­sy among the Osage. Over a cen­tu­ry after the dis­cov­ery of oil beneath their land, the Osage faced anoth­er chal­lenge to their sov­er­eign­ty. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, on behalf of the Osage, sued Enel, the Ital­ian firm behind the wind farm, for vio­lat­ing their rights under the 1906 Allot­ment Act by not obtain­ing per­mis­sion for exca­va­tion work essen­tial for the tur­bines’ foun­da­tions. Despite a court rul­ing favor­ing Enel—on grounds that it was­n’t engag­ing in min­er­al extrac­tion and thus did­n’t infringe on Osage min­er­al rights—tensions remained, high­light­ing ongo­ing dis­putes over under­ground reser­va­tions.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, strin­gent 2014 envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions imposed on oil drilling sig­nif­i­cant­ly dimin­ished new explo­rations in Osage Coun­ty, mark­ing a his­toric low in drilling activ­i­ties and impact­ing the local econ­o­my.

Amid these con­tem­po­rary issues, my research into his­tor­i­cal Osage mur­ders led to a sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery at the Pawhus­ka pub­lic library: a man­u­script detail­ing the 1918 mur­der of Mary Lewis by Thomas Mid­dle­ton, a betray­al for finan­cial gain root­ed in Osage head­rights. This account, assem­bled by Anna Marie Jef­fer­son, Lewis’s descen­dant, revived a for­got­ten sto­ry of deceit, mur­der, and injus­tice, where Lewis, a pros­per­ous Osage, was lured to Texas and killed by Mid­dle­ton and an accom­plice, aim­ing to cash in on her wealth through a grue­some scheme involv­ing imper­son­ation and deceit. Despite a con­fes­sion lead­ing to Mid­dle­ton’s con­vic­tion, his death sen­tence was com­mut­ed, and he was released ear­ly on, a deci­sion that deeply angered Lewis’s fam­i­ly.

This rev­e­la­tion broad­ened the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the Osage mur­ders, sug­gest­ing that such atroc­i­ties pre­dat­ed the wide­ly rec­og­nized Reign of Ter­ror ini­ti­at­ed by William Hale in 1921 and per­sist­ed longer than pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed. This chill­ing nar­ra­tive under­scored the broad­er and more sys­temic exploita­tion and mur­der of the Osage peo­ple for their valu­able head­rights, extend­ing beyond Hale’s infa­mous con­spir­a­cies.