6 MILLION DOLLAR ELM

Even with the murders, they kept on coming, the greatest oil

barons in the world. Every three months, at ten in the morning,
these oilmen—including E. W. Marland and Bill Skelly and Harry
Sinclair and Frank Phillips and his brothers—pulled in to the train
station in Pawhuska, in their own luxurious railcars. The press
would herald their approach with bulletins: “MILLIONAIRES’ SPECIAL”
DUE TO ARRIVE; PAWHUSKA GIVES CITY OVER TO OIL MEN TODAY; MEN OF
MILLIONS AWAIT PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT.

The barons came for the auction of Osage leases, an event that
was held about four times a year and that was overseen by the
Department of the Interior. One historian dubbed it the “Osage
Monte Carlo.” Since the auctions had begun, in 1912, only a
portion of Osage County’s vast underground reservation had been
opened to drilling, while the bidding for a single lease, which
typically covered a 160-acre tract, had skyrocketed. In 1923, the
Daily Oklahoman said, “Brewster, the hero of the story,
‘Brewster’s Millions,’ was driven almost to nervous prostration in
trying to spend $1,000,000 in one year. Had Brewster been in
Oklahoma...he could have spent $1,000,000 with just one little
nod of his head.”

In good weather, the auctions were held outdoors, on a hilltop
in Pawhuska, in the shade of a large tree known as the Million
Dollar Elm. Spectators would come from miles away. Ernest
sometimes attended the events, and so did Mollie and other
members of the tribe. “There is a touch of color in the audiences,