The idyllic image of Ree Drummond, the “Pioneer Woman,” cooking on her Oklahoma ranch is beloved by millions. However, a darker narrative shadows this pastoral scene, one deeply intertwined with the history of the Osage Nation and the exploitation of their oil-rich land. This history, brought to the forefront by investigations and the film Killers of the Flower Moon, reveals a complex and troubling story behind the Drummond family’s vast land holdings in Osage County, land that was once the heartland of the Osage people.
The original article highlights the predatory “guardianship program” that plagued the Osage Nation in the early 20th century. These guardians, often appointed by courts to manage the finances of Osage individuals deemed “incompetent,” frequently abused their power. Instead of protecting Osage wealth, they often became instruments of theft, siphoning off fortunes through fraudulent schemes and land grabs. As the article points out, some guardians even operated as merchants, creating cycles of debt for Osage headright holders and then offering to “bail them out” by acquiring their valuable land allotments. This “bailout” was, in reality, a thinly veiled form of coercion, making it far “easier” to lose land to a guardian than to navigate the complex process of transferring headrights through proper channels.
Ernest Burkhart, a figure connected to the exploitation of Osage land during the Reign of Terror.
Everett Waller, the chairman of the Osage Nation’s mineral council, offers a stark assessment of this period. Living near Ree Drummond’s ranch in Pawhuska, Waller is acutely aware of this history. He describes the guardianship program and its associated schemes as “corruption,” a system designed to dispossess the Osage of their wealth and land. Waller himself appears in Killers of the Flower Moon as Paul Red Eagle, an Osage chief who famously mocked white men attempting to marry into wealthy Osage families to gain access to their fortunes. His perspective provides a crucial counterpoint to romanticized narratives of the Drummond family history on Osage land.
The Drummond family, according to the In Trust podcast, presents a different version of events, portraying their ancestors as “honorable men and savvy business people” who acquired their land fairly and maintained positive relationships with their Osage neighbors. However, Waller challenges this narrative directly. He suggests that the sheer scale of the Drummonds’ land ownership – “over a quarter million acres” – speaks volumes about the methods used to accumulate such vast holdings during the “Reign of Terror,” a period marked by violence and systemic exploitation of the Osage Nation. The article notes that Vanity Fair reached out to Ree Drummond and other Drummond family members for comment, but received no response, leaving Waller’s pointed questions unanswered.
Osage oil fields, the source of wealth that attracted corruption and violence to Osage land.
Further evidence of potentially unethical dealings surfaces in the story of Myron Bangs Jr., a member of the Osage tribe. In 1934, Bangs hired an auditor to scrutinize his finances, which were managed by the Drummond brothers as his guardians. The audit uncovered “five pages with discrepancies or issues,” raising serious questions about the Drummonds’ management of Bangs’s funds. A lawsuit was filed by the US government in 1941 alleging a “conspiracy and scheme to defraud” Bangs, although it was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge. This case, highlighted by Adams-Heard in the In Trust podcast, suggests a pattern of questionable financial practices by the Drummonds in their role as guardians on Osage land.
Perhaps most strikingly, Adams-Heard’s investigation revealed that the Drummonds allegedly used $15,000 from Bangs’s funds, seemingly without his consent, to purchase William Hale’s ranch. Hale was a notorious figure convicted of orchestrating the murders of Osage people for their headrights, the very heart of the “Reign of Terror.” The idea that an Osage man’s money might have been used to buy land from a man complicit in the murder of other Osage people is deeply disturbing. This connection casts a long shadow over the Drummond family’s land acquisition and raises profound ethical questions about the origins of their wealth and the legacy of the “Pioneer Woman’s” Oklahoma ranch, built on land with a painful and contested history.
