Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland
John Joseph Mathews, who died in 1979, was one of Oklahoma's genuinely gifted writers. He was the author ofWah' Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road,a poetic description in prose of the spiritual life of the Indian, and a Book-of the-Month Club selection in 1932. His other books includeLife and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland(1951), about the controversial governor of Oklahoma and the founder of the company ���that later became known as Conoco, andThe Osages: Children of the Middle Waters(1961), a narrative history of his tribe.Talking to the Moonwas first published in 1945 and is reissued with a foreword by Elizabeth Mathews, his widow. Mathews was the great-grandson of Old Bill Williams, a noted frontiersman, and was a mixed-blood Osage. For many years he served as a member of the Osage Tribal Council. Educated at the University of Oklahoma in geology and at Merton College, Oxford, where he took his degree in natural sciences, Mathews was a fine American blend of scientist and poet, philosopher and producer, historian and storyteller, Indian and white.