Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1919-11-28
SEEK OIL LAND
UNDER RED RIVER
Wichita Indians Now Set Up An
cient Title to River
Channel.
HISTORY INVOLVED IN SUIT
Question Engrosses Attention Of Law.
yers, Oil Men, Land Owners and
Federal and State officiaIs-Gives
History Of Wichita Claim.

Austin. Tex.-Seldom has a case
been filed in American courts in which
history has been involved to the ex-
tent that ii is in the question of the
ownership of the channel of the Red
river, beneath the bed of which are
valuable oil deposits.
This question has been engrossing
the attention Of lawyers, oil men, land
owners and federal and state officials.
The state of Texas claims ownership
in the bed of the river to the center
of the channel, while the federal gov
ernment and the state of Oklahoma
oppose the claim of Texas under the
terms of the treaty of Spain in 1919
by which the northern boundary of the
Spanish dominions in Texas was desig-
mated as the south bank of the Red
river.
The federal authorities hold that
the ownership of the Red river bed
areas in dispute belong to the Indian
tribes which owned the adjacent res
ervations, and the state of Oklahoma
thdts
stream, the bed of the Red river is
state property and should be leased
for the benefit of the state school fund
Another Claimant.
Joseph B. Thoburn, secretary of the
Oklahoma Historical society, has ad-
vanced the suggestion that there is
still another claimant to the owner
ship of the oil bearing area of the
channel of the Red river, namely, the
Wichita Indians. Mr.. Thoburn in the
course Of an extended statement says:
solder than any of the claims of
ownership which are now being
pressed for the possession of the oil
bearing areas of the channel of the
Red river-older than any claim Of
the State of Texas by rights derived
from Mexico or Spain, and older than
any claim of the State of Oklahoma
have been derived from France
through the purchase Of Louisiana
is the right Of the aboriginal owners
Of the land on both sides Of the river,
and these are the people Of the Wich-
ita tribe of Indians.
"The ancestors of the Wichita In
dians have lived In Oklahoma and ad-
jacent states for thousand years, and
for approximately five hundred years
past they have occupied the country
on both sides of the Red river in that
part of its course where II traverses
the Burkburnett oil fields. In using
the word occupied In this connection,
I do so advisedly, for these people
have always been sedentary in their
habits, living in fixed villages and de-
pending largely upon the cultivation
of the soil for their subsistence.
"The rights of the Wichita Indians
to the ownership of these lands has
never been extinguished by purchase,
exchange or otherwise, though state
and federal governments have SEEM
ingly proceeded on the theory that no
such right ever existed. From the time
Of it's foundation the federal govern
ment has always paid due regard, at
least in form, to the extinguishment
Of title to lands which were claimed
by the several Indian tribes under alb
original occupancy. The one exception
to this has been that of the Wichita
Indians, who lived in the upper Red
river country, between the Canadian
and Brazos rivers.
Indians Cede Land.
"In 1918 certain chiefs and warriors
Of the Quapaw tribe of Indians, in
council at st. Louis with William
Clark and Auguste Chouteau, as COM
missioners representing the govern
to treaty by the terms of which they
ceded all of the lands in Oklahoma and
Texas between the Arkansas and Can
adian rivers on the north and the Red
river on the south to the government.
The fact that the Quapaw Indians
lived in eastern Arkansas, that they
seldom went as far west as the eastern
boundary of Oklahoma and that they
never by occupancy or otherwise exer-
cised any form of ownership or juris-
diction over any of the lands within
200 miles of the region where the
Wichitas were living, do not seem to
have entered into the consideration
at all, If, indeed, the government COM
missioners had any knowledge of the
existence of the Wichitas at that time.
Yet, with this Quapaw transaction as
a basis, the government of the United
States executed grant of these lands
to the people later. More than thirty