brought people from all over the world to this part of oklahoma. the oil tycoons all descended, and they bid for leases to drill osage oil. and the osages became incredibly wealthy. over the next two decades, the osage nation would produce more wealth than all of the american gold rushes combined. and little towns like bahuska, not much more than a trading post at the center of the osage reservation, were transformed. . this was pahuska before oil. and then after oil was discovered almost overnight, pahuska turned into this. with oil royalties rolling in, life for the osage changed in an instant.
mink coat. that kind of wealth could buy a young osage a very different life than the average american, and it gave sybil an education far from home. she went off to prep school, studied music in italy, and later pursued a degree at the university of kansas. sybil was seen as, you know, really fancy young person, part of the high society of pawhuska, osage and otherwise. but no number of degrees or accolades earned osages the proper respect. non-natives still saw them as unworthy of all they had acquired. an article in harper s monthly magazine reported the osage indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it. in the early 1900s, the government began to assign guardians to keep a finger on the affairs of the osage.