than $800. The following year, the Literary Digest published an
article headlined OSAGE OIL WEALTH FADING. It reported, “These
Indians became accustomed to lives of glorious ease. But now...
their income from oil is rapidly disappearing, and that was
practically all they had.” Compounding the situation was the
gradual depletion of the oil fields. In 1929, even before the stock
market crash, a national newspaper story reported, “In five years,
if the oil map continues to shift, the tribe may have to go back to
work.”
Over the next few decades, most of the boomtowns, including
Gray Horse, began to die off. “When I was little, I could hear the
oil wells pumping,” Margie recalled. “Then one day they stopped.”
Today more than ten thousand wells remain scattered across the
reservation, but they are generally what oilmen call “stripper”
wells, each one generating less than fifteen barrels a day. When an
auction for Osage oil leases was held in Tulsa in 2012, three leases
sold for less than $15,000 in total. Margie, who inherited a little
more than half of a headright from her father, still receives a
quarterly check for her share in the mineral trust. The amount
varies depending on the prices of oil but in recent years has
usually amounted to a few thousand dollars. “It certainly helps,
but it’s not enough to live on,” she said.
The Osage have found new sources of revenue, including from
seven casinos that have been built on their territory. (They were
formerly called the Million Dollar Elm Casinos.) They generate
tens of millions of dollars for the Osage, helping to fund their
government, educational programs, and health-care benefits. The
Osage were also able to retrieve at least a portion of the oil funds
mismanaged over decades by the U.S. government. In 2011, after
an eleven-year legal battle, the government agreed to settle a
lawsuit brought by the Osage for $380 million.