12 years old multi-millionaire oil baron – Sarah Rector

Sarah Rector, a Black Native American or Black Creek descendants is best known as the “Richest Colored Girl in the world”, according to the Chicago Defender November 4, 1922. She became a multi-millionaire oil baron and the richest Black girl at just 12 years old when oil was discovered on the land that was allotted to her because it was “unsuitable for farming”. 

Sarah Rector was born in Muscogee Creek Nation to Rose McQueen and her husband, Joseph Rector. The Creek Nation or Muscogee Indians are a group of Black Native American people who originally lived in America prior to the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Including, members of other tribes who were relocated to Indian Territory during the 1830s, such as the Seminole, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek (Muscogee).

For generations, Black Creeks had been a part of the 5 tribes, (Muscogee Creek Nation) until the law was passed. The Creek people descend from Indigenous tribes who lived in the Southeastern U.S. for many generations before the arrival of the White settlers. The Muscogee were forced to move to Oklahoma in the late 1800s as part of the federal government’s Indian Removal policy. Muscogee Indians were some of the first Native Americans to be forcibly relocated by the US government, in what is now known as the Trail of Tears.

Report has it that as soon as the White settlers arrived in North America, they started to label Black Native Americans, the indigenous people as “Savages.” Some of their reasons included the fact that Native Americans bathed too often, owned land in common rather than individually, allowed women the freedom to divorce, traced ancestry through the female line, and on and on. White settlers speculated that Native Americans, the indigenous people did not deserve the lands they presided over. Perhaps their real motivation was a desire to gin control over their lands and valuable resources. The English, in particular, sought to settle and repurpose indigenous lands for themselves. 

According to a 2018 report by the National Geographic, until the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored indigenous Black people who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond labourers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché. Black Creek descendants like Rhonda Grayson have been fighting to regain citizenship in the Creek tribe. For generations, Black Creek ancestors like Grayson’s great-grandmother America Cohee had been a part of the tribe, Muscogee (Creek) Nation until one day they weren’t.

From the late 18th century up to the conclusion of the Civil War, there was a saga between people from the 5 native American tribes. It all began with the labelling of the African tribes as savages by White settlers that caused some native Indians, which were part of those 5 tribes, to start owning Black people eventually. The Europeans sought to subjugate Native Americans while also encouraging intertribal warfare, which was often prompted by the desire for captives which allows them to exploit Native labor. Not only did Europeans remove Native Americans from their land- they encouraged part of the tribes through enacted laws to participate in practices which supported oppression and exploitation.

During the War, in the case of slavery for Native Americans, it was sometimes less about being Black and more about who had control over whom. Take the Westo Indians for example: origination around Lake Erie, they could go from enslavers to enslaved depending on who they made deals with or whose side they took during battles. Talk about shifting alliances! It’s like a game of musical chairs where slavery is the only available seat when the music stops – never fun or fair.

This further led to the Black native removal from the Deep South which persisted even through the end of 19th century. Racial ideologies were formulated in order to justify this practice and also put free Black people down within those Indian nations. Consequently, when conflicts amongst Choctaw, Chickasaw & U.S law makers made laws that are to the disadvantage of Blacks, both former slaves and those adopted and their descendants found themselves void of citizenship rights in either the Native American communities or in United States at large.

The Muscogee Creek Nation was allottted to Muscogee Indians and Black Creek descendants in 1906 under the Dawes Act who maintains a strong presence in Oklahoma today. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, The Dawes Act was a critical moment in the history of tribal land rights in the United States. The act, named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, subdivided the Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments. The Dawes Act was a complex and controversial piece of legislation, but its impact on tribal land rights is still felt today.

The act had profound and far-reaching consequences for Native Americans. On one hand, it led to the breakup of traditional communal landholdings. On the other hand, it gave individual Native Americans the opportunity to own their own land. The Dawes Act was unpopular with many Native Americans, who saw it as a violation of their cultural and spiritual traditions. The Dawes Act led to the loss of millions of acres of Indian lands, as well as social and economic disruption for Native American communities. In 1934, the Dawes Act was repealed, but its legacy continues to affect Native Americans today.

The Dawes Act resulted in the break-up of tribal lands and the creation of individual allotments, which were then held in trust by the federal government. The break-up of tribal lands led to a loss of cultural identity and community for many Native Americans. In addition, the Dawes Act did not provide for adequate protection of Native American rights or resources, and as a result, many Native Americans lost their land to fraud and exploitation.

The Northern Midwestern United States also comprised of The Ojibwe or Chippewa who are a Anishinaabe tribe and speak Anishinaabemowin an indeginious language of Native America and are identified as one of the largest groups of the Native America. The Ojibwe are also known as The Council of Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi), an alliance comprised of three Anishinaabe tribes that can be found in vast parts of traditional Native American lands from Southern Canada to the northern Midwestern United States and the Northern Plains. The Council are also descendants from the first indeginous tribes who lived in the Southeastern United States. 

A critical decision by their leaders spared the Odawa group from total extinction and what the government had achieved with numerous other native American cultural and linguistic groups – relocation beyond the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Through official documentation, they famously relinquished their traditional ways of life, religious bundles and symbols of leadership due to pressure from White settlers and the Government in the Upper Great Lakes.

Although today there is an Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma, made up of those who were relocated due to Treaty of 1833, most Odawa remained in their traditional lands near Sleeping Bear Dunes (though they moved away from some arears they once occupied exclusively) as a result of this critical identification between state power and native identity. Based on the conditions that Odawa people resigned themselves to terminate their tribal rights as a sovereign nation, accomplished by a series of forced Treaties (1836, 1837, 1855), the Odawa were not relocated.

After the civil war, the Muscogee Creek Nation was re-established in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) under the Treaty of 1866. Sarah Rector was just a child when she became part of the Muscogee Creek Nation and was entitled to allotment of land and citizenship. The government allotted Sarah land in Tulsa, Oklahoma as part of the land-grant program for Native Americans. This was a mandatory step in the process of integration of the Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory to form the State of Oklahoma. She received 159.14 acres (64 hectares) of land in Glenpool, Oklahoma, United States, as part of the Land Run of 1908. 

Sarah Rector’s family was facing quite a challenge; the annual property tax of $30 required by law to be paid by Sarah’s family became too much of a burden. Despite her father’s attempts to petition the Muskogee County Court to sell the land, the land had been declared as unsuitable for farming, no solution seemed to be in sight – until Joseph Rector hit upon the idea of leasing Sarah’s land to Standard Oil Company.

Two years later, this breakthrough move yielded significant results than even they had dared dream: not only did Rector’s family receive a daily income of $300 per 2,500 barrels of oil drilled per day, but royalties from the expansive Cushing-Drumright Oil Field came pouring in too – a total sum of $11,567. What better way to show off her newfound wealth than to purchase a beautiful house on 12th Street – now known as the Rector House.