"There is good in everything if only we look for it."
- Laura Ingalls Wilder
In 1869 when just 2 years old Laura moved with her family from Wisconsin to modern-day
independence Kansas and what was at that time Indian country. They only stayed a short time because not long after her sister Carrie was born they learned they were sold a lie.
Charles Ingalls had been told that the location would be open to white settlers, but when they arrived this was not the case. The Ingalls family had no legal right to occupy their homestead because it was on the Osage Indian reservation.
....Did you know?.....
In the 1870's, the Osage were forced by the United States to relocate from Kansas to what was considered barren land in present-day Oklahoma.
In the early 20th century the budding automotive industry had been creating a growing oil demand and when oil was discovered on Osage land they soon realized they lived on top of a fortune.
They gained communal mineral rights, and the Osage used these rights to make money through leasing fees generated by their headrights. These headrights were distributed equally amongst the Osage and could not be bought or sold only inherited.
This caused their fortunes to grow rapidly and they were soon one of the wealthiest communities in the world.
The Osage, however, were not white, and most didn't speak English so to many this could not be tolerated. In the late 1910's what was known as the Reign of Terror picked up speed.
This was an event that in some ways can be compared to the events of Tulsa happening around the same time. The Osage suffered 60+ murders, fraud, and manipulation in the form of financial guardianship laws imposed on any Osage less than 50% white. This bigotry fueled plundering eventually led to the Osage loosing most of their fortune by the 1930's.
Today, despite all the horrors of their past, the Osage survive as a resilient and beautiful culture that should inspire us all...
...Now you know...
The Ingalls had just begun to farm when they learned they were being evicted. then began the race back to Wisconsin to reclaim their former land because the buyer still had not paid the mortgage.
In the following year's there were more difficult moves, a cramped dirty sod house, multiple years of failed crops, disastrous winters...
They endured challenge after challenge throughout her life and she could have easily given in to that hardship .but instead she not only became a teacher and author but she wrote a series of stories that are remembered and loved to this day, books that have given millions upon millions of HAPPY childhood memories.
The moral of this story is that the world truly is what you make it.
Go out into the world today striving to look for the good an-d do your best to spread that good wherever you go.
-Jason Lee Brown
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