An Indian and His Oil

Near sandy Henryetta, Okla. (pop. 6,000), in the Old Indian Territory, Jackson Barnett, full-blooded Creek, worked his 160-acre allotment by day, rested his tired bones in a not-too-clean four-room shack by night. He was old#&151;60, maybe 70--he didn't know exactly. He was poor. He was illiterate. But he was a Govern-ment ward and he had learned that, so long as he stayed a good Indian, the Govern-ment would provide.

One day he saw strange men poking around his farm. They tapped the ground and from down below where you bury people, oil flowed out. Jackson's bronzed face wrinkled in astonishment. His neighbors told him he was rich. That made him grin. He continued to live in his shack and tend his garden. In far-off Washington a ledger under his name began to show mounting figures of royalty oil profits.

At dusk one evening in 1920 a taxicab rolled up to Jackson Barnett's door. A well-dressed white woman stepped out. She said she was interested in oil and asked him to go for a ride. It was getting dark; he did not want to go. But he was a good-natured Indian who could not say no. He grinned and went. They drove to Okemeh, 18 miles away, and there spent the night. She was not a bad looking white woman.

On a ride the next day the woman asked "Jack" if he had ever thought of getting married. He had not. She said she would marry him. He did not want a wife, he said. She insisted he ought to have one. His inability to say "no" again overpowered him. They drove to Coffeyville, Kan., and were married.

There were some sharp-eyed men, friends of the white woman's, at the ceremony. After it they shook their heads dubiously. The Kansas marriage laws relating to Indians might be tricky, they said. So the sharp-eyed men and the woman--he had learned her name now: Anna Laura Lowe--took Jackson Barnett to Independence, Mo., and had the marriage performed a second time. That struck Jackson as unfair. He had not cared much about getting married once. Twice was much big nuisance, too much.

The sharp-eyed companions of the now Mrs. Barnett busied themselves with papers. They asked Jackson to sign them. He did so by smudging his thumb in ink and across the documents. One of the men (Barnett guessed they were lawyers) later told him that he had given to the American Baptist Home Mission Society $550,000 of his royalty oil account, and a like amount to his wife.

Mysterious trips to Washington followed, whispered conferences at the huge Interior Department Building--things Jackson did not try to understand. More papers were signed and everybody seemed delighted, particularly Mrs. Barnett and her Kansas friends.

Mrs. Barnett took her Indian to Holly-wood and they moved into a $50,000 home, as fine as any movie actor's. They lived happily enough, except that the heat some-times bothered the old man and he occasionally pined for his Henryetta neighbors. His wife gave him petty cash to spend. . . .

Last spring, Assistant Attorney General Bertice M. Parmenter, in Washington, ordered Charles Selby to go to Okmulgee, Okla.; to convene a special Federal grand jury and, as an assistant to the U. S. Attorney General, winnow the Jackson Barnett case thoroughly from a criminal angle. Evidence was presented--evidence de-signed by Selby to show a conspiracy between Anna Laura Lowe (twice married before), and her Kansas attorneys Harold McGugin and M. L. Mott, and Creek Tribal Attorney A. J. Ward, and the then Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall, and U. S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles H. Burke--conspiracy to defraud Barnett out of his oil wealth by kidnaping and marriage. The Baptist gift, Selby claimed, was only an artful dodge to conceal the real purpose of the deal behind a false front of philanthropy. He was ready to show that Mrs. Lowe's lawyer received $150,000 for originating and executing the entire scheme.

In June from Washington to Okmulgee went a telegram from Attorney General Sargent ordering suspension of the Jackson Barnett investigation. Secretary of the Interior Work had heard that Indian Affairs Commissioner Burke was about to be indicted. He had appealed to Mr. Sargent to halt the grand jury on the ground that Burke's wife was ill. The grand jury disbanded. . . .

Now the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is probing the Barnett case. Last week the wrinkled old Indian on the witness stand gave his version of his marriage to Anna Laura Lowe. She refused to testify, claiming immunity in the face of possible criminal action in Oklahoma. In rambling broken style that belied all his fine clothes, he told of his wife's proposal, of his reluctance to part with single blessedness, of the two marriage services in two States. Mrs. Barnett pinned him under a beady stare until he wriggled and giggled uncomfortably and professed great lapses of memory.

A Federal court in New York has set aside the $550,000 "donation" to the Baptist Home Mission Society, on the ground that Barnett is mentally incompetent. His "donation" to his wife is still in litigation.

At the Senate Hearing Barnett was asked if he knew the difference between $5 and $20 bills. He convulsed the learned Senators by replying: "Yeah, do you-- Later, however, he was confused between a $10 goldpiece and a quarter-dollar. He exhibited a vast childish pride in pictures of his Hollywood home.

Pierce Butler Jr., son of Associate Justice Butler of the U. S. Supreme Court, was assigned by Attorney General Sargent to review all evidence in the Barnett case to determine the justification if any for continuing criminal proceedings before the Federal grand jury in Oklahoma.