The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-27
OSAGES WANT AUTOS
RICHEST PEOPLE IN WORLD WANT TO GET THEIR MONEY.
They Have Ss, ,B36, ,ooo in the Trea- sury and They Have Asked President Roosevelt to Divide
 the Sum Among Them.
Washington specia Ito Charleston News.

Washington Specia Ito Charleston News.
 The osage Indians of Oklahoma, want Sic!r money. On the books of the United States Treasury the sum of sS,5S60O0 stands to their credit. and they have sent a delegation to Wash ington to ask that 1t be divided up among them. Up to the present time they have received only the interest on the amount, paad quarterly. President Roosevelt told the delegation that he would see what he could do. When he inquired what the Osages needed the cash for. one of the chiefs replied that they were much in need of automobiles.
 This was 8 joks. of course. but thero i5 really no reason why the Osages should not have automobiles if they want them. It Is an old story that they are the richest people in the world. Every young woman in the tribe is an heiress in her own right and each buck, squaw and child Is worth not far from S10, 900. Every individual among them owns 763 acres of land. or considerably over a square mile, worth at the least calcula- tion $8 an acre; to which must be added $l.657 in cash in the Treasury.
 Forty years ago the osages owned a large slice of the State of Kansas, ex- tending from Medicine Lodge, eastward, to Neosho. They sold the strip to the Government for SIPS an acre. and part of the money equivalent was paid by the Indian Bureau for a tract of 1,4O0.000 acres of fertile land to which the tribe was removed, the balance, amounting to S, ,536,0O0, has been held in trust for them ever since by the Treasury. As inter- est on the sum they receive annually s421 713, of which $9OO0O in cash. Is dis tributed among them each quarter, the balance of $61.71S being expended by Un- cle Sam on schools and in various other ways for their benefit
 The Osages lease g large part of their lands to cattlemen. in this way adding considerably to their annual income Where, as frequently happens, a house. hold consists of father and mother and six or seven children, the family is worth something like $s0,0Oc or S90.O00. and each new infant born adds s10.000 or so to the wealth of the establishment. This iiI- cludes no reckoning of accumulated prop Crty. of which many members of the tribe possess a great deal. including we'll built houses. agricultural tools and do- nestle animals. There are 1900 cattle and 6,OO0 horses on the reservation, all of them belonging to the Indians.
 It Is not surprising, then, that the Osages are called the richest people in the world. Every year each member of the tribe receives from the Government S230 the income of a family of ten from this source alone being, accordingly, $500 per annum. Add to this the in- come from 7.6so acres of land, worth at &S an acre s61.000. and 1t is obvious that starvation Is not imminent No wonder that those Indians employ white men to WCrk for them. while for the most part they themselves pursue an existence of elegant leisure.
 The earlier. history of the Osages seems to have been one of repeated mtgrations They were continually at war with other tribes. and this may have been a cause of their moving about from place to place. For while they dwelt near where the city of St. Louis now stands: thence they moved up the Missouri River to the Csage River. and from the mouth of the latter stream up near to it's source. In 1885 they resided on the Osage River. in seventeen villages. and they remain