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Show Osage Heirs Give Big Headache to Oklahoma Courts One Indian Estate Puzzle: Grandchildren Are Also Nieces, Nephews. PAWHUSKA, OKLA. Solomon himself would have found it no easy task to untangle the involved Okla homa Indian estate cases cluttering the dockets of Osage county's courts. And for the county and probate judges who are called upon to decide de-cide the heirs to millions of dollars worth of oil property left by wealthy Osages, the task often approaches the impossible. While the Osages were in their heyday from 1906 to about 1927, many members of the tribe became rich on the discovery of oil on their lands. Then the older members of the tribe began to pass on to their happy hunting ground, most of them without making wills. The Indian inheritance cases started start-ed pouring into county and district courts. Settlement of these cases has been made more difficult by the fact that the Osages frequently were polygamous, polyga-mous, sometimes having as many as four wives at one time. Hazy on Relatives. Further confusion was created by the Osage manner of referring to their relatives. The Osages called their grandmothers' sisters "grandmothers" "grand-mothers" and their brothers-in-law "brother." The Osages, in their language, do not recognize relationship any farther far-ther removed than first cousin, and the Osage word for cousin so closely resembles the word for brother that evidence can easily be misinterpreted. misin-terpreted. Older members of the Osage tribe go on the witness stand unwillingly. . Attorneys for the litigants usually insist upon two interpreters, and the interpreters frequently disagree on the English translation of the testi-- testi-- mony. To supplement oral testimony, attorneys at-torneys bring into court the musty records of the Osage Indian Agency, dating back half a century. But even the most accurate of the agency's records sometimes add to the confusion. Listings of the family groups of the Osages was started in 1887 and records kept by missionaries among the tribesmen on occasion are produced to contradict contra-dict evidence from the agency records. Such a Mixup! In a recent case in Osage county district court, involving a $100,000 estate, one attorney introduced in evidence the records of the Osage agency which showed that a middle-aged middle-aged widow and her young daughter daugh-ter had married an old Indian man at the same time. The widow also had a young son, who, according to the records, became the step-son of the old Indian and at the same time his brother-in-law. Both women bore children, whose relationship to each other could be interpreted as half-sisters and half-brothers, half-brothers, or as uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews. The stepson of the old man also married and had children, who became be-came grandsons and granddaughters granddaugh-ters of the old Indian and at the same time his nieces and nephews. Today records are being kept to prevent such complications in future fu-ture Osage estate cases. But, in the meantime, thousands of dollars of county funds are being used and many weeks occupied with taking testimony to establish the rightful heirs to Osage fortunes. |