Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Winter 2024 edition of La Posta and is republished with permission.
At European contact, Father Jacques Marquette first encountered the Osage tribe of Native Americans in June 1673. The priest noted large Osage communities in an area that would later become western Missouri (Figure 1). At that time, the territorial homeland of the Osage encompassed all of the present-day state of Missouri and much of Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
Marquette phonetically spelled out the name given to him for these people, the “Wah-Zha-Zhi.” In French, that name started with “Oua” and Marquette’s phonetic record was eventually corrupted to “Osage.”
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 brought the Osage homeland into the territory of the United States. Facing the same curse as other native people in the crosshairs of western expansion, the tribe was eventually removed from Missouri into the Osage Diminished Reserve in southeastern Kansas in 1864.
Despite being moved to an area a small fraction of their original homeland, outsiders continued to invade. This invasion was romanticized by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her book Little House on the Prairie. The Ingalls family squatted illegally on the Osage Diminished Reserve near present-day Independence, Kansas, from 1869 to 1871. Continued outside pressure from families like the Ingalls led to the last removal of the tribe in 1872, this time just across the border to the southwest into Indian Territory.
During treaty negotiations to uproot and move out of Kansas, the Osage and their representatives fought hard for their land to be purchased outright by the federal government at a price of $1.25 an acre. This sale allowed them to buy a new 1.5-million-acre reservation in the Indian Territory from the Cherokees.
The new Osage Indian Territory reservation was bounded to the north by Kansas, to the west by the Arkansas River, to the south by the Creek Nation, and to the east by the 96th Meridian, creating a new eastern border with Cherokee lands (Figure 2).
Soon after purchasing the reservation in Indian Territory, the Osage sold off the northwest corner to their distant relatives, the Kanza people, the Kaw Nation. The Osage then owned their resulting reservation outright, fee simple, an important fact that would reveal itself later.
When the Osage came to Indian Territory in 1872, they were composed of five bands. Three bands joined generally together in the middle of the reservation, in and around the tribal headquarters of Pawhuska, named for the famed Chief White Hair, or Paw-Hiu- Skah in the Osage language.
The Upland Forest Band was located south of Pawhuska at a place now known as Hominy. Conflicting reports explaining the name Hominy have lost the source meaning to the fog of time.
The Big Hill Band moved to the southwest area of the reservation and formed the community of Gray Horse. This settlement honored Ko-wah-ho-tsa, an Osage medicine man whose name translates to Gray Horse. The above 1890 map shown in Figure 2 has these three main Osage communities highlighted with red dots added for Pawhuska, Hominy, and Gray Horse.
Oil was found on the Osage Reservation in 1894. John N. Florer, the first white man licensed to trade with the Osages, was shown a rainbow sheen of petroleum in a section of Sand Creek. The Osage who brought Florer to this discovery was able to lay his blanket in it and sponge out a sample of Osage crude oil.
Florer then became a major driver to encourage the Osage to issue a lease for oil production which they did in 1896 with the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company. Limited oil production then began but it would not gain much traction until after Oklahoma statehood in 1907.
From 1872 to 1906, the new reservation was held as communal property. The desire for Oklahoma statehood included a federal requirement that all remaining Indian reservations be allotted to individual ownership of the land. Other tribes saw their reservations allotted to small parcels for individual tribal members and the remaining “surplus Indian land” was then given away to outsiders via land runs and lotteries.
The Osage and their fee simple property were very different from the other tribes. When the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention convened in 1906, the Osage were the only tribe that had delegates in special representation due to this unique status. Some Osage were indifferent to Oklahoma statehood and wanted their hard-fought reservation to stay communal property forever. Other progressive Osages saw the economic and political benefits of statehood and pushed for the required allotment to form the forty-sixth state.
In the end, a compromise of sorts was struck. Townsites were established and lots were sold to outsiders and the funds from these sales were retained by the tribe. Indian Villages of 160 acres were set aside in Pawhuska, Hominy, and Gray Horse. A large campus for the Osage Nation headquarters was also reserved on a hill overlooking downtown Pawhuska. The remaining acreage was then assigned to every man, woman, and child on the tribal roll in 1906. All 2,229 Osages on the roll each received approximately 658 acres, resulting in no surplus land.
While the surface of the reservation was allotted, the compromise included that the mineral rights of the reservation were still held by the federal government in trust for the benefit of the Osage Nation, with benefits distributed to individual Osages. Each of the 2,229 Osages received one equal share of these collective mineral rights, something called a “headright.”
It is a sad testimony that an enormous tribe of people who once controlled a four-state area at European contact were now reduced to just 2,229 tribal members in 1906. Ethnologists estimate that this was a population reduction of ninety-five percent due to disease from things like smallpox, starvation from the loss of the buffalo, and outright murder.
The 1920s saw the discovery of vast reserves of oil and the Osage became the richest minorities on the planet. Money flowed like the gushers popping up all over the Osage Reservation. History would repeat itself as outsiders once again made their way to the Osage to try to take from the rightful owners.
The concept of money was new to many Osages and theft, graft, murder and other nefarious means were employed to steal this newfound wealth and even the headrights themselves.
This period became known as the “Osage Reign of Terror.” The author David Grann covered this terrible period of history in his 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon—The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The book was then adapted to the film Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023, starring Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert DeNiro. The movie was directed by Martin Scorsese.
When the first railroad entered the far western section of the Osage Reservation in 1902, the Santa Fe Railroad regrettably decided to route the line about three miles to the west of Gray Horse. The community of Fairfax was then born as a railhead and most of the Gray Horse business then moved to Fairfax.
To this day, Fairfax and Gray Horse are considered as generally the same, with tribal facilities located at both. Killers of the Flower Moon primarily takes place in the two sister communities of Gray Horse and Fairfax.
Typically, each June, the Osage ceremonial dances are held in the Gray Horse Indian Village (Figure 3), as well as at the other Osage villages in Pawhuska and Hominy. These three primary Osage communities that were formed when the Osage came from Kansas hold great importance to the Osage people.
Tribal members typically identify as Pawhuska, Hominy and/or Gray Horse district(s). Additionally, these three locations were the first three post offices of significance. Pawhuska received a post office in 1876 after being required to run to Coffeyville, Kansas, for the mail since the Osage’s arrival in 1872. Gray Horse received a post office second in 1890, followed by Hominy in 1891.
In 1884, the Big Hill band of Osages appealed to the government to provide a local trading post. The closest licensed traders were then at the tribal headquarters in Pawhuska, more than twenty miles away. The Big Hills needed the convenience of their own local general store and a post office that would eventually come along too. A suitable location with good water on Gray Horse Creek was found and John N. Florer was approved to open a U.S. Indian Trading Store in Gray Horse (Figure 4). Not only would the licensed trader help encourage the Osage oil industry, Florer was also central to the early development of Gray Horse and the post office that would come later.
Then, on April 22, 1889, a land run gave away two million acres of unassigned federal lands in western Indian Territory. Other land runs and lotteries brought in even more newcomers for surplus Indian land.
A large population of non-Native settlers in the western half of Indian Territory was without a government and the Oklahoma Territory Organic Act of 1890 carved out the Oklahoma Territory from the Indian Territory as shown in the map in Figure 5. The Five Civilized Tribes remained in their own Indian Territory and many of the “uncivilized” tribes like the Osage were assigned to Oklahoma Territory. The Oklahoma Territory Organic Act went into effect on May 2, 1890.
On May 5, 1890, just three days after Oklahoma Territory was created, a fourth-class post office at Gray Horse was opened with Louis A. Wismeyer as the first postmaster. Wismeyer came to the Osage Reservation in 1878 to work for the government. In 1884, he resigned from his job as a bureaucrat to become a licensed Indian trader.
He first opened a business in Pawhuska but then moved to Gray Horse. The subsection of the 1894 Sanborn fire insurance map of Gray Horse shown in Figure 6 locates the Louis A. Wismeyer U.S. Trading Store across the street from the Florer store. This map is from the time when Wismeyer was the first postmaster and the Gray Horse Post Office was located in the Wismeyer store.
The June 9, 1890, Daily Postal Bulletin No. 3131 announced this brand-new Gray Horse Post Office as being in the Indian Territory. It was not until July 23, 1890, that Post Office Department records were officially updated to reflect the Organic Act and reassign the Osage Reservation post offices from Indian Territory to Oklahoma Territory (Figure 7).
Postmaster Wismeyer apparently paid close attention to his daily postal bulletins as shown by the cover in Figure 8. Posted the exact same day that notice of the reassignment to the Oklahoma Territory was given, this July 23, 1890, manuscript cancel correctly reads “Gray Horse O.T.” (Oklahoma Territory).
The impression that Postmaster Wismeyer was a stickler for details is brought into question when the cover in Figure 9 with the first Gray Horse circular date stamp came to light. From the same correspondence as above, this example is dated about two weeks later on August 4, 1890. The circular date stamp reads “GRAY HORSE IND. T.” (Indian Territory). This postmark is unlisted in Signorelli & Caldwell’s Indian Territory Mail. It is the only documented use of this first device.
When the post office in Gray Horse was originally applied for, it was in the Indian Territory. However, when it was commissioned and opened, it was already in Oklahoma Territory but still on the Post Office Department books as being in Indian Territory.
When this first postmark device was delivered to the postmaster after the Gray Horse Post Office opened, it was already obsolete to the Organic Act.
Out of convenience and a level of complacency, the Indian Territory device was used weeks after postal records were updated to reflect Gray Horse as no longer being part of the Indian Territory.
The covers in Figures 8 and 9 are addressed to Maud Florer, oldest child of John N. Florer. In 1891, she married John L. Bird who was an employee at the Florer store. It is assumed that John Bird was using Postmaster Wismeyer’s stationery and this correspondence carried love letters between the two who would be married the next year. Thanks go to Maud Florer-Bird for saving her mail to document the early days of the Gray Horse postmarking methods. However, she could have taken greater care in opening her letters!
It is worth noting where Maud Florer was when she received these letters—Colorado Springs, Colorado. Osages have a longstanding tradition of escaping to Colorado Springs when the heat of Oklahoma gets oppressive. Postal history between the Osage Reservation and Colorado Springs during the summer months is not uncommon. This fact was documented in the movie Killers of the Flower Moon in a scene when Lily Gladstone, playing Mollie Burkhart, was with her husband Earnest Burkhart, played by Leonard DiCaprio. Mollie is being torn apart by the realization that her husband was involved with the plot to murder her immediate family for their headrights. This Osage love affair with Colorado Springs was conveyed with these haunting lines by Lily Gladstone in the film:
“I had a dream. We went to Colorado Springs. You told me all your secrets, and I held them in a box for you. Then we went to the river and dumped them all away. We were happy there.”
On May 11, 1896, first Postmaster Louis A. Wismeyer was replaced by Elza M. McCague, the only female postmaster of Gray Horse. She served until January 31, 1898, when John N. Florer himself was made the postmaster. While postal bulletins do not report a move, it is rightfully assumed that the post office would have been taken across the street to Florer’s store when he was made postmaster.
In Figure 10 is a June 28, 1899, CDS reading correctly “GRAYHORSE, OKLA.” This cover includes a John N. Florer & Company corner card that accurately gives their location at Gray Horse, Osage Nation, Oklahoma Territory. When this cover was mailed, Florer was still the postmaster.
Figure 11 is a photograph of John N. Florer. The importance of Florer cannot be understated. The Osage called him “Johnny Shinkah.” Modern Osage linguists are not entirely familiar with this word, but understand it just to be an endearing term, meaning something like “little/young” Johnny. Florer was fluent in Osage, was a trusted advisor, and referred to the reservation as “God’s Country.”
The movie Killers of the Flower Moon tips their hat to John N. Florer. In a scene that recounts the events that led up to the murder of Anna Brown, sister of Mollie Burkhart, a taxi driver tells where he drove Anna before the murder. On the streets of Fairfax, the man states after being asked if they went straight to Mollie’s house:
“We didn’t go straight there. Where’d you go? Graveyard out past Florer’s. She wanted to look at her land, and then she wanted to visit her father.”
John Florer served for more than seven years until he was replaced May 16, 1905, by Thomas M. Finney. The Figure 12, August 24, 1907 postcard with a Doane postmark was serviced when Postmaster Finney was in office. This Doane postmark is the discovery example. Postmaster Finney served until February 17, 1913, when Scott S. Mathis was made postmaster.
Under Postmaster Mathis, some of the only known Gray Horse population data shows there were only fifty-eight people recorded as living in the community in 1915. The circa 1915 era lithographed postcard in Figure 13 shows a view of Gray Horse and one of the residents, a small child standing in a garden.
On December 18, 1916, Warren B. Mathis, an assumed relative to the previous postmaster, was then made the next postmaster. The postcard in Figure 14 was canceled on June 15, 1917, during the term of postmaster Warren Mathis. The postcard bears a standard four-bar cancel that has a different font and character spacing than the Doane device shown in Figure 12.
November 3, 1920, saw the appointment of the next postmaster, a man named Harry L. Moore. He served for just about three years but was witness to some of the worst of the Osage Reign of Terror as documented in Killers of the Flower Moon.
While Moore was postmaster, Anna Brown, sister of Mollie Burkhart, was shot and murdered on May 21, 1921. Their cousin Henry Roan Horse was also assassinated on February 8, 1923. Most dramatic was the killing of Rita Smith, the sister of Mollie and Anna.
On March 10, 1923, several gallons of nitroglycerin were planted in the basement of her home in Fairfax. The explosion completely obliterated the structure, killing Rita and a servant immediately and her husband a few days later. Many other Osages were killed during this terrible period. When Harry L. Moore stepped down, Robert S. Duke, the last Gray Horse postmaster, was commissioned on October 2, 1923.
Postmaster Duke took advantage of the loophole in postal regulations that allowed for twentieth-century fancy cancels to come into being. Postal regulations at the time required a mute cancellation on the stamps on the front of registered items. The name/date postmark was to be placed on the reverse on the flap to help ensure the item was securely closed.
For small fourth class post offices with an interesting name like “Gray Horse,” inventive philatelists would send a fancy mute killer and request the creation of eye-catching postal history. Fourth class postmasters like those at Gray Horse were paid, in part, by the number of items processed, so playing along with the philatelist’s request meant more money in the postmaster’s pocket.
This led to covers like the example in Figure 15 before the Post Office Department caught on and outlawed the practice. The Loso-DeWindt twentieth-century fancy cancel catalog only lists this cancel in black ink. This example, in previously unreported blue ink, is also the earliest documented use of the fancy cancel, postmarked October 8, 1929, on the reverse. This was an exciting new discovery, a horse of a different color!
The December 10, 1931, Daily Postal Bulletin 15777 announced the sad news that the fourth class post office of Gray Horse, Oklahoma, would be discontinued effective December 31, 1931. The people of Gray Horse then received delivery of mail from a rural route out of Fairfax.
The last day cover in Figure 16 documents the end of postal operations from Gray Horse.
While the community of Gray Horse has been without a post office since the early days of the Great Depression, it is still a very important location for the Osage people. Every year during the ceremonial dances, Osages from across the country come back home to the Gray Horse Indian Village to dance and participate in the I’n-Lon-Schka, the cultural and social event of the year.
Finding postal history from early Oklahoma is a significant challenge in general. Uncovering postal history from one very small fourth class post office on a rural Indian reservation is exceedingly difficult.
This comprehensive showing of the postal markings of Gray Horse is the result of tireless searching to create the most comprehensive and complete collection of Osage postal history in Oklahoma ever assembled. It is a story that needs to be told and retold, especially since the release of Killers of the Flower Moon that put the Osage people and their community of Gray Horse in the hearts and minds of people around the world.
