The chap­ter titled “Under­ground Reser­va­tion” explores the extra­or­di­nary his­to­ry of the Osage peo­ple, detail­ing their jour­ney from a once-dom­i­nant pres­ence across vast regions of the Unit­ed States to their forced migra­tion and even­tu­al rise to unex­pect­ed wealth through the dis­cov­ery of oil beneath their lands. In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Osage con­trolled mil­lions of acres, thriv­ing as skilled hunters and stew­ards of the land, their lives deeply inter­twined with the spir­i­tu­al and com­mu­nal bonds that defined their soci­ety. How­ev­er, their domin­ion began to erode fol­low­ing the Louisiana Pur­chase, when encroach­ing set­tlers, fueled by west­ward expan­sion, began to claim Osage ter­ri­to­ries.

By the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, the Osage faced mount­ing pres­sure to cede their lands. Though Thomas Jef­fer­son­’s 1804 meet­ing with the Osage start­ed diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, it quick­ly gave way to treaties forc­ing the tribe to relin­quish large por­tions of their ter­ri­to­ry. Even­tu­al­ly, the Osage were relo­cat­ed to a reser­va­tion in south­east­ern Kansas, where they adapt­ed their tra­di­tion­al lifestyle—centered around buf­fa­lo hunt­ing and deep cul­tur­al practices—to their new cir­cum­stances. How­ev­er, even this land proved tem­po­rary, as set­tlers, dri­ven by the ris­ing val­ue of Kansas farm­land, pushed the Osage off once again, leav­ing them to search for a per­ma­nent home­land amidst increas­ing dis­place­ment and loss.

In a bold and strate­gic move, the Osage pur­chased land in what is now north­east­ern Okla­homa, land con­sid­ered worth­less by set­tlers due to its rocky ter­rain and poor agri­cul­tur­al prospects. This deci­sion, though seem­ing­ly des­per­ate, would prove fortuitous—the land sat atop vast reserves of oil, hid­den beneath the sur­face. This unfore­seen twist turned the Osage’s new ter­ri­to­ry into the first “under­ground reser­va­tion,” a term that reflect­ed their own­er­ship of the min­er­al rights beneath their land. As oil was dis­cov­ered and extract­ed, the Osage became immense­ly wealthy, with the prof­its trans­form­ing their socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus and draw­ing the atten­tion of oppor­tunists and crim­i­nals alike.

The chap­ter intri­cate­ly weaves this trans­for­ma­tion­al peri­od into the life of Mol­lie Burkhart, who serves as a lens through which the Osage’s strug­gles and tri­umphs are explored. Mollie’s fam­i­ly, like many Osage, nav­i­gat­ed the chal­lenges of sud­den wealth while grap­pling with the loss of tra­di­tion­al ways of life. Her father, Ne-kah-e-se‑y (lat­er known as Jim­my), embod­ied the Osage her­itage, but the cul­tur­al pres­sures of assim­i­la­tion into a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white soci­ety strained the inter­gen­er­a­tional ties that once defined their iden­ti­ty. Mollie’s sto­ry high­lights the cul­tur­al shifts, per­son­al sac­ri­fices, and resilience of the Osage, illus­trat­ing their fight to main­tain their iden­ti­ty amid new­found pros­per­i­ty.

The chap­ter also under­scores the sys­tem­at­ic injus­tices the Osage endured, from forced land ces­sions to the imple­men­ta­tion of allot­ment poli­cies designed to assim­i­late Native Amer­i­cans into white cul­ture. These poli­cies frac­tured com­mu­nal land­hold­ings, assign­ing indi­vid­ual plots to Osage mem­bers and open­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for exploita­tion by white set­tlers. Yet, the Osage dis­played remark­able fore­sight by ensur­ing they retained exclu­sive min­er­al rights dur­ing the allot­ment process, inad­ver­tent­ly secur­ing the foun­da­tion for their immense oil-dri­ven wealth.

While their new­found afflu­ence brought sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties, it also exposed the Osage to prej­u­dice, greed, and betray­al. Many white Amer­i­cans resent­ed the idea of a Native Amer­i­can tribe enjoy­ing such wealth, fos­ter­ing envy and schemes to seize con­trol of their for­tunes. The guardian­ship sys­tem, which placed many Osage under the finan­cial over­sight of white guardians, epit­o­mized this exploita­tion, as it allowed unscrupu­lous indi­vid­u­als to manip­u­late and steal from the Osage while cloaked in legal author­i­ty.

This chap­ter cap­tures a piv­otal era in the Osage’s history—a sto­ry of resilience amidst pro­found loss and an unex­pect­ed rise to wealth that reshaped their future. It exam­ines themes of col­o­niza­tion, cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion, and the pro­found impact of nat­ur­al resources on indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, serv­ing as both a cau­tion­ary tale and a tes­ta­ment to the Osage people’s endur­ing strength. While oil wealth may have trans­formed their for­tunes, it also intro­duced a new era of chal­lenges, plac­ing the Osage at the cen­ter of one of the dark­est chap­ters of greed and betray­al in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.