Osage Man Describes Spiritual Connection To His Family's Original Allotment

The movie Killers of the Flower Moon will be released worldwide on Friday. It tells the story of the real-life Osage murders, known as the “Reign of Terror.” 

The Osage people have a strong connection to the land in Osage County. At one point the tribe owned all of it. 

"Dear God Almighty, I wanna thank you for the life of my great grandfather, here. Who brought our people here. And this was his land, Lord...,” John Maker said during a prayer at Albert Penn’s grave site.  

Penn's headstone stands tall among the grass that covers several of his children's graves. His life is honored by his great-grandchildren, more than 100 years after Penn's death. 

Maker is related to Albert through his mom's side of the family. 

"It's a connection with her, and all her people,” Maker said. “It's kinda like a connection with our old-time, full-blood Osage family. And we never want them to be forgotten about." 

The cemetery sits on land his family no longer owns. 

While the Maker family still makes money from oil royalties, the land belongs to a neighbor. Maker said they have permission to visit the cemetery whenever they want. 

"We call this our old home place. And ya, and my mother tried to buy this from her aunt. Back in the 60s. But they sold to a non Osage, instead of my mom,” Maker said. 

A short drive away is another part of Albert's original allotment, about 300 acres of it. 

"Here I've got my brother, this is my brother Larry Maker, and he does all of our work out here. He's out here more than I am. Almost every day. This is my sister, Ann Maker Freeman. And we've lost three brothers. But we're the last of our generation and we own this out here,” Maker said. 

Maker said his ancestors moved here in 1871 when the Osage made their way from Kansas. 

The tribe and the U.S. government came to an agreement 35 years later that would forever change the reservation, by splitting it up among individual owners. 

"Then, allotment came,” Maker said. “And we were pretty lucky that our great grandfather got to have this place here, I think because he was a chief, he kinda got to pick his own spot. Cause they were already living out here, along that creek." 

Hundreds of years before allotment, Osage ancestral homelands covered a vast section of what became the United States and included all of Oklahoma. Eventually, the tribe was forced out of Kansas, and purchased land from the Cherokees. The boundaries of the Osage Nation Reservation match Osage County today. 

"In 1906 we owned every square inch of this property on the map. And that is almost 1 million, 500,000 acres,” Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said. 

A 2022 map from the county assessor's office shows who owns land in Osage County today. The largest landowners are members of the Drummond family, the Nature Conservancy, a business arm of the Mormon Church, and the Osage Nation. 

"That is some of the best grassland in the world. That's not bragging or anything like that -- this bluestem country is as good as it gets,” Osage Nation Assistant Principal Chief RJ Walker said. 

About half of what the Osage Nation owns today is the former Bluestem Ranch, which was sold by media giant Ted Turner. 

Walker was instrumental in the purchase several years ago, which involved going to a mortgage broker in Kansas. 

"We did pass a gentleman with a cowboy hat and a briefcase going up the elevator as we were going down and I said, ‘See.’ And anyway, we got the call on the way back from Hutchinson, about I don't know, 45 minutes or an hour later, from the mortgage broker and said that we won the bid,” Walker said. "We won a battle against others that had probably won battles against us." 

That marked the third time the Osage claimed that piece of land. It was part of their ancestral homeland; then the tribe purchased it in 1872, and again in 2016. 

Turner said in a letter to the tribe, “It is my sincere hope that our transaction is the last time this land is ever sold..." 

"This rain is a blessing to our people,” Maker said the day News On 6 met him for an interview. 

John said his connection with his family's land, is spiritual. 

"When I'm really worried about something, or there's something going on that's maybe when my parents died, I'd come out here and I get -- I get my strength out here. I come out here and I'll sit and pray. I'll come out here for hours by myself,” he said. 

That connection goes far beyond the boundaries of what his family owns. He served in the US Army, spending two years in Germany in the 80s. While that may seem ironic to some, Maker’s decision to serve for the United States was simple, as he explained to someone overseas. 

"He said, 'May I ask you sir, why would join the army that tried to, you know, destroy your people?' I was sort of stunned for a second and I thought real hard on it. I said 'Well sir, it's like this. Ya you're right. Our land's back in the United States. We're always gonna claim that as our home, Native Americans. And even though I'm in the United States Army, I still feel like I'm protecting all of our original homelands." 

Maker’s family still owns a slice of those original homelands, and while it's not where his ancestors are buried, he is forever connected to it. 

“So Almighty God, I wanna thank you for the life of all these people that came here. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen,” Maker said. 

Editor’s note: With help from the Osage Nation Real Estate Services Department, News On 6 highlighted a map from the county assessor’s office to show some of the current largest landowners of Osage County today. Director Natasha Yancey and Geographic Information Systems Coordinator KP Gilmore spent time looking at the map with Amy Slanchik in this effort before the News On 6 graphics team digitized it.