TULSA – Russell Cobb, author of the books “The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America’s Weirdest State” and “Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, A Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land” recently completed his time as a short-term fellow at the University of Tulsa’s Helmerich Center for American Research (HCAR). Cobb gave a talk on Aug. 28, wrapping up his tenure at the center.
Cobb, a native Oklahoman working as a writer and Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, gave an hour-long presentation on the history of one of Oklahoma’s biggest cities which has a unique history with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation: the city of Tulsa.
Specifically, Cobb spoke about Tulsa’s evolution from a small Muscogee village in Indian Territory to the “Oil Capital of the World” despite, according to Cobb, having no oil whatsoever. In fact, the only substantial sources of oil were located in Glenpool, and to a lesser extent, Cobb explained, the town of Red Fork.
Cobb also elaborated on the process of legal theft that oilmen used on Indigenous people, like the Mvskoke people, who had been forced into Indian Territory less than a century before. In this process, oilmen, compelled by greed, swindled Indigenous people out of any potential riches from the oil-rich lands, and took the profits for themselves.
The author drew from what he learned during his time as a fellow and his previous work to give the talk, which he hopes to give more of in the future.
In addition, Cobb found that Tulsa had essentially become a city of “magical thinking.” According to Cobb, there was a general view that if you believed in something enough, it would happen.
In Tulsa, strategies ranged from the underhanded to the absurd. This included finding oil and looking for ways to obtain the allotment land it was on after the fact. Some drillers even believed that oil was made from human bones, and drilled for oil near cemeteries.
Toward the end of his talk, Cobb elaborated on his goal when researching Tulsa and Oklahoma as a whole.
“What I’m after are the hidden stories behind the City of Magical Thinking,” Cobb said in his talk, referring to Tulsa.
“What are the stories that got covered up? I think we really have to look at this wholesale swindle of the Locv Pokv, and full-blooded allottees like the Locv Pokv… If we want to look into how this Mvskoke village became known as the Oil Capital of the World, we really need to reckon with that.”
