Part 3: Barnsdall

1818 TREATY WITH THE OSAGES
  William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory and the Osage nation agree to terms of the 1818 treaty. Whereas property taken from citizens of the United States by raiding parties of the Osage nation were never returned and a continuing war with the Cherokees, the Osage nation would cede more of it’s land to the United States. The tract of land included, beginning at the Arkansas river, at where the present Osage boundary line strikes the river at Frog Bayou; then up the Arkansas and Verdigris, to the falls of Verdigris river; thence, eastwardly, to the said Osage boundary line, at a point twenty leagues north from the Arkansas river; and, with that line, to the place of beginning.

Chief White Hair signed six treaties
with the government

1825 TREATY WITH THE OSAGES
  William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory and the Osage nation agree to terms of the 1825 treaty. Whereas, The Great and Little Osage Tribes or Nations do, hereby cede and relinquish to the United States, all their right, title interest and claim, to lands lying within the State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas, and to all lands lying West of the said State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas, north and west of the Red River, south of the Kansas River, and east of a line to be drawn from the head sources of the Kansas, southwardly through the Rock Saline. Land the Osage nation would received would be reserved, beginning at a point due east of White Hair's Village (what is now Oswego, Kansas), and twenty-five miles west of the western boundary line of the state of Missouri, fronting on the north and south line so as to leave ten miles north, and forty miles south of the point of said beginning, and extending west, with the width of fifty miles to the western boundary of the lands hereby ceded. In consideration of the cession, the United States agrees to pay to the Osage nation, yearly, and every year, for twenty years from the date of the treaty, the sum of Seven Thousand Dollars.

1830 INDIAN REMOVAL ACT
The Removal Act paved the way for the reluctant and often forcible emigration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West. The tribes included the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. Today, known as the Five Civilized Tribes, they were participants in the Trail Of Tears which started in 1831 and last until 1838. The five tribes would be relocated in eastern Indian Territory (eastern Oklahoma).

1834 INDIAN INTERCOURSE ACT
  The formation of Indian Territory was applied to the United States setting aside land for Native Americans. No purchase, grant, lease, or other conveyance of land or of any title or claim thereto, from any Indian nation or tribe of Indians, shall be of any validity in law or equity, unless the same was made by treaty or convention entered into pursuant the constitution. In simple terms, nobody could buy or sell Indian land without consent from the government.

 1834 THROUGH THE 1860’s

James Bigheart

 The first Osage reservation was a 50 by 150-mile strip in Kansas. White squatters were a frequent problem for the Osage. Subsequent treaties and laws through the 1860s further reduced the lands of the Osage. By a treaty in 1865 they ceded another 4 million acres and were facing the issue of eventual removal from Kansas to Indian Territory. On May 27, 1868, James Bigheart signs his first treaty with the government, called the Drum Creek Treaty. In the treaty the Osages would agree to sell 8 million acres of their land to the federal government. Unknown to the Osages or to a majority of the settlers in the area, the treaty is controlled by William Sturgis, who has an interest in the Lawrence, Leavenworth and Gulf Railroad. Whether the railroad company had a blatant influence in the treaty remains unknown; however, the railroad would receive the newly acquired Osage land from the Federal Government without opening it to agricultural settlement, as had been done in all prior treaties. By 1869 the treaty was withdrawn under the premise that the white settlers did not have a chance to acquire the Osage land and it was an unjustifiable abuse to those by the railroad.

1870 ACT OF CONGRESS
After the failure to ratify the Drum Creek Treaty, a similar agreement between the Osages and the government came in the House of Representatives, Executive Document 131 which was passed by congress on July 15, 1870. Whereas the Osages would agree to sell the remainder of it’s land in Kansas and use the proceeds to relocate the tribe to Indian Territory in the Cherokee Outlet.