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Ghosts of Crook County

An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land

Author Russell Cobb
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Hardcover
$32.95 US
Beacon Press
6.33"W x 9.31"H x 1.02"D   | 20 oz | 16 per carton
On sale Oct 08, 2024 | 304 Pages | 9780807007372
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The true—and unsolved—story of unabashedly greedy men, their exploitation of Muscogee land, and the hunt for the ghost of a boy who may never have existed

For readers of David Grann’s award-winning Killers of the Flower Moon

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, these counterfeit tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land.

Writer and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County. Problem was, “Tommy Atkins,” the boy in question, had died years prior—if he ever lived at all.

Ghosts of Crook County traces Tommy’s mythologized life through Page’s relentless pursuit of his land. We meet Minnie Atkins and the two other women who claimed to be Tommy’s “real” mother. Minnie would testify a story of her son’s life and death that fulfilled the legal requirements for his land to be transferred to Page. And we meet Tommy himself—or the men who proclaimed themselves to be him, alive and well in court.

Through evocative storytelling, Cobb chronicles with unflinching precision the lasting effects of land-grabbing white men on Indigenous peoples. What emerges are the interconnected stories of unabashedly greedy men, the exploitation of Indigenous land, and the legacy of a boy who may never have existed.
“[A] riveting legal thriller . . . superb historical sleuthing . . . It’s an astonishing exposé.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“True-crime and social science readers will find this tangled tale fascinating . . . This well-researched and vividly told account of Oklahoma’s oil boom highlights the corruption, opportunism, and racism that birthed the modern oil and gas industry.”
—Shelf Awarness, Starred Review

“The great-grandson of an Oklahoma oilman interrogates a legal conundrum that lays bare the corruption beneath the creation of his home state.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This powerful work is equal parts history and true crime. The result is a historical record illuminating a failure of law and policy.”
—Booklist

“Russell Cobb is a master storyteller. . . . Ghosts of Crook County is his best yet.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, American Book Award–winning author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Russell Cobb has delivered a bombshell of a book. Ghosts of Crook County isn’t just a deeply researched, gripping historical detective story. It is also a compelling meditation on wealth and power.”
—Scott Ellsworth, author of The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City’s Search for Justice

“If you’ve read Killers of the Flower Moon and were enraged but engrossed in the story, Ghosts of Crook County is also the book for you—and you’ll likely enjoy it more!”
—Kyle T. Mays (Saginaw Chippewa), author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

“An enthralling must-read story of Oklahoma oil . . . This is a masterful book that reveals Oklahoma’s past (hidden) encounters with crude with an eye to its enduring potential for violence and injustice today.”
—Darren Dochuk, author of Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America

“Like some bastard son of Angie Debo and David Grann, in Ghosts of Crook County Russell Cobb blends the archival acuity of the former with the reliable readability of the latter.”
—Jeff Martin, owner, Magic City Books

“A suspenseful story of corruption, power, and malice that you will never forget!”
—Donald L. Fixico (Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee, and Sac and Fox), author of The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State
Russell Cobb, a fourth-generation white Oklahoman, is professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta and the author of The Great Oklahoma Swindle, which won the 2021 Director's Award in the Oklahoma Book Awards. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, The Nation, and on NPR. His reporting appearing on This American Life was turned into the film Come Sunday, distributed by Netflix. He is also the host of History X, a podcast about buried histories and nonfiction mysteries, broadcast on 88.5FM in Edmonton, Canada, and across all major podcast platforms.
Russell Cobb View titles by Russell Cobb
PROLOGUE
“It Was Doubtful If Such a Person Had Ever Existed”

CHAPTER 1
Growing Up in the Territory with Minnie Atkins

CHAPTER 2
“Into the Light Before”: Minnie Atkins at Tullahassee and Carlisle

CHAPTER 3
Becoming a Lady: Minnie Lights Out for the West

CHAPTER 4
“My Nation Is About to Disappear”: Enrollment Begins

CHAPTER 5
Charles Page, the “Secular Saint” of Modern-Day Tulsa

CHAPTER 6
The Making of “Daddy” Page

CHAPTER 7
Oklahoma Joins the Dance: The First Oil Boom in Indian Territory

CHAPTER 8
Emarthla of the Snake Faction

CHAPTER 9
Bartlett’s Quitclaim: The Run on Tommy’s Land Begins

CHAPTER 10
“All Crooks at Tulsa”: Minnie Atkins and the Receivership Hearing

CHAPTER 11
Minnie Atkins in Seattle

CHAPTER 12
“Utterly Unworthy of Your Confidence”: The Campaign Against R. C. Allen

CHAPTER 13
“There Is No Justice for the Weak?”: Resistance Against Allotment

CHAPTER 14
“What a Fool We Have Been”: The Atkins Sisters Face Off in Federal Court

CHAPTER 15
“Nancy Shatters Own Chance”

“I AM A KING!”
The Sam Brown Interlude

CHAPTER 16
“You Know How a White Man Is About Money”: Sadie James Reveals All

CHAPTER 17
“Anything to Get the Coin”: The Aftermath of the Trials, and the Death of Minnie Atkins

CHAPTER 18
From Blood Quantum to Liquid Gold: Sally Atkins and the Erosion of Black Freedom During Oklahoma’s First Oil Boom

CHAPTER 19
“But Insists He Has Never Died”

EPILOGUE
Take Me Back to Tulsa

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photo Insert Credits

About

The true—and unsolved—story of unabashedly greedy men, their exploitation of Muscogee land, and the hunt for the ghost of a boy who may never have existed

For readers of David Grann’s award-winning Killers of the Flower Moon

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, these counterfeit tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land.

Writer and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County. Problem was, “Tommy Atkins,” the boy in question, had died years prior—if he ever lived at all.

Ghosts of Crook County traces Tommy’s mythologized life through Page’s relentless pursuit of his land. We meet Minnie Atkins and the two other women who claimed to be Tommy’s “real” mother. Minnie would testify a story of her son’s life and death that fulfilled the legal requirements for his land to be transferred to Page. And we meet Tommy himself—or the men who proclaimed themselves to be him, alive and well in court.

Through evocative storytelling, Cobb chronicles with unflinching precision the lasting effects of land-grabbing white men on Indigenous peoples. What emerges are the interconnected stories of unabashedly greedy men, the exploitation of Indigenous land, and the legacy of a boy who may never have existed.

Praise

“[A] riveting legal thriller . . . superb historical sleuthing . . . It’s an astonishing exposé.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“True-crime and social science readers will find this tangled tale fascinating . . . This well-researched and vividly told account of Oklahoma’s oil boom highlights the corruption, opportunism, and racism that birthed the modern oil and gas industry.”
—Shelf Awarness, Starred Review

“The great-grandson of an Oklahoma oilman interrogates a legal conundrum that lays bare the corruption beneath the creation of his home state.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This powerful work is equal parts history and true crime. The result is a historical record illuminating a failure of law and policy.”
—Booklist

“Russell Cobb is a master storyteller. . . . Ghosts of Crook County is his best yet.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, American Book Award–winning author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Russell Cobb has delivered a bombshell of a book. Ghosts of Crook County isn’t just a deeply researched, gripping historical detective story. It is also a compelling meditation on wealth and power.”
—Scott Ellsworth, author of The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City’s Search for Justice

“If you’ve read Killers of the Flower Moon and were enraged but engrossed in the story, Ghosts of Crook County is also the book for you—and you’ll likely enjoy it more!”
—Kyle T. Mays (Saginaw Chippewa), author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

“An enthralling must-read story of Oklahoma oil . . . This is a masterful book that reveals Oklahoma’s past (hidden) encounters with crude with an eye to its enduring potential for violence and injustice today.”
—Darren Dochuk, author of Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America

“Like some bastard son of Angie Debo and David Grann, in Ghosts of Crook County Russell Cobb blends the archival acuity of the former with the reliable readability of the latter.”
—Jeff Martin, owner, Magic City Books

“A suspenseful story of corruption, power, and malice that you will never forget!”
—Donald L. Fixico (Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee, and Sac and Fox), author of The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State

Author

Russell Cobb, a fourth-generation white Oklahoman, is professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta and the author of The Great Oklahoma Swindle, which won the 2021 Director's Award in the Oklahoma Book Awards. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, The Nation, and on NPR. His reporting appearing on This American Life was turned into the film Come Sunday, distributed by Netflix. He is also the host of History X, a podcast about buried histories and nonfiction mysteries, broadcast on 88.5FM in Edmonton, Canada, and across all major podcast platforms.
Russell Cobb View titles by Russell Cobb

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE
“It Was Doubtful If Such a Person Had Ever Existed”

CHAPTER 1
Growing Up in the Territory with Minnie Atkins

CHAPTER 2
“Into the Light Before”: Minnie Atkins at Tullahassee and Carlisle

CHAPTER 3
Becoming a Lady: Minnie Lights Out for the West

CHAPTER 4
“My Nation Is About to Disappear”: Enrollment Begins

CHAPTER 5
Charles Page, the “Secular Saint” of Modern-Day Tulsa

CHAPTER 6
The Making of “Daddy” Page

CHAPTER 7
Oklahoma Joins the Dance: The First Oil Boom in Indian Territory

CHAPTER 8
Emarthla of the Snake Faction

CHAPTER 9
Bartlett’s Quitclaim: The Run on Tommy’s Land Begins

CHAPTER 10
“All Crooks at Tulsa”: Minnie Atkins and the Receivership Hearing

CHAPTER 11
Minnie Atkins in Seattle

CHAPTER 12
“Utterly Unworthy of Your Confidence”: The Campaign Against R. C. Allen

CHAPTER 13
“There Is No Justice for the Weak?”: Resistance Against Allotment

CHAPTER 14
“What a Fool We Have Been”: The Atkins Sisters Face Off in Federal Court

CHAPTER 15
“Nancy Shatters Own Chance”

“I AM A KING!”
The Sam Brown Interlude

CHAPTER 16
“You Know How a White Man Is About Money”: Sadie James Reveals All

CHAPTER 17
“Anything to Get the Coin”: The Aftermath of the Trials, and the Death of Minnie Atkins

CHAPTER 18
From Blood Quantum to Liquid Gold: Sally Atkins and the Erosion of Black Freedom During Oklahoma’s First Oil Boom

CHAPTER 19
“But Insists He Has Never Died”

EPILOGUE
Take Me Back to Tulsa

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photo Insert Credits
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