The Morrison matriarch- Mvskoke mastermind or manipulated mother?

Trigger Warning: This story discusses theft, abuse and other injustice relating to Indigenous history, which may be distressing and triggering for some individuals. Please proceed with caution and prioritize your mental and emotional well-being. If you need support, consider speaking to a mental health professional by calling 988, texting the Crisis Text Line at 741741, or reaching out to a trusted person in your life.

(TULSA, Okla.) Thousands of cases. Millions of acres of land. Countless lives lost. How do you start unraveling more than a century of Tulsa’s untold Indigenous history? The answer is one family at a time. 

When you search “Tulsa” in the Tulsa City-County Library’s “Indigenous Peoples of North America Archive”, 342 results show up. The online database is Part 2 of a larger archive, focused solely on the Indian Rights Association, and includes over 100 years of investigative reports, letters, newspaper clippings, and other historical documents. 

These files have largely been unavailable to the general public- until now.

Related Story: 350,000 Records of American Indian History Made Public Through the Tulsa Public Library System | Verified News Network

In the early 1900s, northeast Oklahoma was a hotbed of legalized theft of Native American land, oil and mineral rights, and even lives. Local government, state government, legal professionals, business owners. All in on it. And as the pages of some historical records indicate, people would even pit family members against each other to advance their greedy ambitions. 

After just a brief scan of the new American Indian history database at Tulsa libraries, VNN Oklahoma uncovered several disturbing cases of probate scandal involving Muscogee people in Tulsa County. Beginning with the first one, the case of Duffey Morrison, we contacted the Tulsa County Courthouse for more information. The Probate Supervisor told us probate records can be released for a cost, but guardianship records cannot without a court order.

And for complex investigations like these, the threads from the IRA database and the probate files from the courthouse still aren’t enough to get an accurate account of just what transpired with the Morrison family. With some additional documentation from land allotment jackets and enrollment applications, a clearer picture emerges from the murk. 

Allotment Era Background

Tulsa, a city that sits on three Native American reservations, Muscogee (Creek), Osage and Cherokee, and is home to 400,000 people, began in 1836 when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s (MCN) Locvpoka Tribal Town placed the coals and ash from their sacred fire at the base of Council Oak Tree. 

They and others rebuilt in what is now Oklahoma following the forced removal from their ancestral homelands. Land west of the Mississippi River, land that didn’t appear to be worth much. And then oil was discovered in 1901. 

Before that discovery, the federal government was doing everything they could to force Native Americans to assimilate to white society. This included breaking up their communally held land into land allotments through the Dawes Act, or General Allotment Act, in 1887, and forcing people to make their selections with the Dawes Commission beginning in 1893.

Land was allotted. Oil and minerals were discovered. Then the federal government decided that the Native American people with all the land, rights, and monies needed more protection. And the guardianship system was born. This corrupt probate system operated through Native Americans being determined “incompetent” and thus unable to handle their own financial and business affairs. They were then assigned a guardian to handle their affairs for them, supposedly in their best interest. This was normally a white person, but not always. 

The Life Of Sallie Morrison

Sallie and her husband Henry were approved for citizenship of Muscogee (Creek) Nation in 1899, along with their two children, Jerry and Duffey. Jerry was 10 and Duffey was 5. It is worth noting that Duffey was also later cited as “an imbecile and had been since infancy”. 

When their citizenship certificate was issued in 1902, all were marked down as 1/2 Creek by blood. But, as the records in 1904 show when Sallie tried to get her son John on the Dawes Rolls after he had died, she needed to speak through an interpreter, Mr. Alex Posey. Meaning she did not speak English, only Creek. 

Sallie was about 40 years old at the time. 

Timmie Fife, a member of the House of Kings of Hitchite Town and Sallie’s half brother, said John died just before the land office opened. John’s enrollment was later denied due to the date of his death. 

Fast forward six years after Sallie needed an interpreter to file documents with the Department of the Interior relating to her son John, something out of the norm was about to take place.

In 1910, Sallie had two attorneys, H.B. Shaffer and another by the last name of Kerrigan. Through a court order approved by Tulsa County Judge N.J. Gubser, Thomas Blair was discharged as incompetent Duffey’s guardian and Sallie, his Muscogee (Creek) mother, was appointed as his replacement. “Sallie” started issuing oil leases beginning in 1911. Then more in 1912. It was an estate that would soon skyrocket to millions of dollars in value.

In 1914, Tulsa County Judge Conn Linn approved Sallie’s guardianship over her other son, Jerry, as he was also deemed incompetent. 

Linn allowed the mortgage of Duffey’s property that same year, and also permitted Sallie to start withdrawing $400 to take care of Duffey. 

In July of 1918, Sallie’s son Jerry was drafted in the first World War. His draft registration showed him as living in Broken Arrow at the time. Jerry died at Camp Dix in New Jersey just three months after he was drafted and is referred to as a World War veteran in court records. 

By then, much of Duffey’s millions were gone.

A National Blunder

During much of this time, from 1904 to 1914, a man named M. L. Mott served as national attorney for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. It was also during this time that the “Crime of 1908” occurred. Officially known as the Act of May 27, 1908, this act transferred probate jurisdiction from the federal government to the county courts, paving the way for sinister exploitation of Native American people, land, and rights. 

Its detrimental effects were well documented, including in Mott’s report “A National Blunder” in 1912 and follow up investigations, which highlighted the profound exploitation of Native American wealth through exorbitant fees, questionable allowances, and a significant loss of land, particularly relating to minors. The fees in question, mainly attorneys fees and guardian fees for managing Native American cases, were compared to those of white cases. The cost was, on average, 19.3 percent of the amount handled for Native cases compared to 2.3 percent cost for white cases. Nearly 10 times as much.

Mott’s report analyzed the records of 2,320 “professional guardianships” in the eight counties of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, as well as 534 “competent guardianships”, the latter of which were handled at an expense of 3.1 percent of the funds handled. 

His exhibit for Tulsa county highlighted case expenses at 21.8 percent, 60.8 percent, 26.1 percent, 22.2 percent and 18.6 percent. That’s $13,434.45 cost to administer just five cases, and just over $428,000 in today’s money.

Mott reported that more than 4,000 cases in the eight counties of Muscogee (Creek) Nation had filed no report at all. “And I think it is quite probable that in many of these cases the administration of the affairs of the minor has been so extravagant and wastefully conducted that the parties responsible therefore have a personal interest in withholding the acts from public record and inspection as long as possible,” Mott wrote. 

He also reported that “large sums of money” had been loaned out on inadequate securities, many of which were made out to the guardians themselves or even their family members. 

Charles Henry Burke served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1921 to 1929. Prior to that, he served as a Republican Congressman from South Dakota in the House of Representatives, often going head to head with congressmen from Oklahoma over their exploitation of Oklahoma’s Native American people. 

A month after Mott’s report was sent to the Secretary of the Interior, Burke gave an Indian Appropriation Bill Speech referencing Mott’s investigation and the devastation that the Crime of 1908 had caused. 

“Seven-eighths of these Indians who had their restrictions removed are to-day without any property or any money, and they do not pay any taxes,” Burke said. “I have said to the gentleman from Oklahoma that if they have not any concern from a moral standpoint of right and wrong in allowing the Indians to be defrauded out of their property, they ought to have some consideration for their own State, because if this thing continues you will soon have a pauper population upon your hands, and I think I can prophesy, and it will not be disputed, that when that time comes you can not come to Congress and have them taken care of at the expense of the Federal Government.” 

Duffey’s Case Goes To Washington

More than a decade later, in November 1923, conditions still had not improved. The Attorney General’s office ordered an investigation be made into the probate matters impacting the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Cherokee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation and Seminole Nation, known as the Five Civilized Tribes. Mott’s report was referenced. So was the case of Duffey Morrison. The investigation was conducted by Shade E. Wallen, Superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma.

In Wallen’s report, Duffey Morrison is referenced as about 30 years old and “an incompetent, invalid, crippled, and helpless person” that constantly requires an attendant. His legal guardian is still his mother, the same woman who needed an interpreter because she could not speak English, only her Native language, when she was trying to get her deceased son on as a Muscogee citizen in 1904. 

The case showed that more than a quarter million dollars was received and spent from Duffey’s accounts from 1910 to 1915. That’s more than 7 million dollars in today’s money. Those disbursements included just over $76,000 of allowance for Sallie Morrison to care for Duffey and pay herself. 

The case also showed the court approved on multiple occasions for Sallie Morrison to borrow from Duffey’s estate, including thousands on unsecured personal note which was never repaid. And large investments of Duffey’s money in loans on real estate securities which were not repaid. Other expenses involved more than $21,000 owed to a chauffeur who “apparently” drove Sallie around nearly every day from 1918 to 1923. But the rides weren’t related to Duffey or Sallie’s guardian duties and no information was made available as to destinations or purposes of any of the trips. In fact, no detailed statement of expenditures for the use and benefit of the ward were provided at all.  

In 1924, Sallie resigned from being Duffey’s guardian, citing old age. She passed away in 1931 after a series of illnesses. Duffey died four years later. 

Those Tulsa County Judges

Tulsa County Judges N.J. Gubser and Conn Linn signed off on a majority of Sallie’s dealings during her time as Duffey’s guardian, part of the approval process that permitted Sallie to buy up so many mortgages and borrow and lend so much money from her estate. 

While whispers of corruption were hand in hand with Oklahoma’s probate scandal, Gubser was one often called out by name for his shady dealings. One such case was that of a Muscogee (Creek) minor named Robert Pitman. A man named D.A. McDougal was appointed temporary guardian of Pitman’s estate with the qualification that no funds were to be lent, as the case was to be transferred to Colorado where the minor had moved to. Gubser then wrote to McDougal telling him he could loan out the minor’s funds anyway. 

That same day Gubser borrowed $4,000 from Charles Page. The next day, McDougal purchased that loan from Page with money from Pitman’s estate, leaving Gubser indebted to the same estate he was issuing judgements on. Pitman’s estate funds were also loaned to Gubser’s court clerk George W. Davis. When the application to transfer the estate came to Gubser the following month, Gubser denied it. The battle over the transfer continued for years. 

Judge Conn Linn was even more connected to those he ruled over. 

While authorizing motions such as increases of Sallie’s compensation for taking care of Duffey, he was also close with Sallie’s nephew, Walter Anderson. So close, in fact, that when Walter Anderson died in 1927 he had three wills with three beneficiaries, and Sallie and Linn were two of them. 

Anderson, a 3/4 Muscogee citizen, had allegedly created a will with Sallie as the beneficiary in 1921, a will with Linn as the beneficiary in 1924, and one with someone named J.L. Moore in 1926.

He was about 30 years old when he died. 

Six days after Anderson’s death, Linn filed a petition asking that the will in which he was named beneficiary be probated. Sallie contested it saying it was obtained by undue influence, suggestion, and persuasion on the part of Linn because Linn had been Anderson’s attorney for a long time and that Anderson was a drug addict and “would do anything to obtain narcotics when the craving for such narcotic was upon him”. 

The case went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court where it was determined that Anderson did believe the county judge to be his best friend, and the judgment in Linn’s favor was affirmed.

Tulsa’s Indigenous Truth is a collaborative investigative reporting project focusing on the systematic transfer of wealth from Indigenous people to build the City of Tulsa and benefit its European American settlers. This data-driven approach aims to uncover patterns of wrongdoing and provide key details of this exploitation. Tulsa’s Indigenous Truth is funded by the Commemoration Fund, which supports bold and innovative efforts to correct social, political and economic injustices that impact Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color in the Tulsa community.