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But John would not be forgotten. He revived. When he returned to the kinfolks to claim his property, they insisted that he was a dead Injun. John was ostracized and he became a hermit. Grimly determined to recover his horses, he took them, one by one, in the darkness of several nights.
There are Osages who declare that he did not draw the line at his own horses.
When the Osages struck oil, royalties were not paid to individual Indian land owners, but were received communally and distributed, equally, to the "headrights." Some of the tribesmen took legal steps to be declared competent and proceeded to have a hilarious time with the new wealth. The incompetent Osages are now most competent, for they have cash reserves in Washington and their incomes are stable, amounting to $1,000 per quarter-year, with special cash dispensations for special needs. The competent Osages are now, with a few fine exceptions, busted, except for meagre funds that filter in from new oil production and lease sales.
John Stink refused, for many years, to live in a man-made shelter of any kind. A member of the firm of McLaughlin & Farrar, Indian traders and storekeepers, was appointed guardian for the eccentric old fellow and his simple needs were met with supplies that cost very little of his accumulating cash.
Once, during a bitter winter, the guardian begged him to sleep on a pile of blankets in the store. John seemed to agree but when closing time came and he was locked inside the store, he set up a warlike screeching and threatened to wreck the place. He was turned out and he took to the woods to sleep in his usual way.
John's companions were dogs—scads of them, all the imaginable cur-mixtures. In summer he would come into Pawhuska—Osage capital— choose a sunny spot at a principal intersection and curl up on the sidewalk to sleep, a heavy blanket keeping off flies and scorching sunrays. His dogs would curl up about him to doze or to snarl and snap at passersby. Once, the city dog-catcher captured his pets and shot them. John disappeared for a few weeks, then returned to town with more dogs than ever.
A few years ago, government officials, realizing the old boy to be something of a menace to paleface citizens—he carried a long knife and was somewhat irascible—enclosed a part of his land with a high, man-proof, woven-wire fence and put him inside. A comfortable house was built for him and an Indian man and wife were employed to care for him. At first, he resented his caretakers, running them off the place with the knife and he absolutely refused to sleep in the house. When he became slightly more reconciled, an elaborate teepee was built for him. It must have been 20 feet across its circular, hardwood floor; the poles were of polished hardwood and the covering was gaudily decorated with Osage hieroglyphic figures. He conceded that this might be a fit place for a red man to sleep. Much later, he was induced to spend a night in the house. He lay down upon a bed but, when morning came, the mattress had been dragged to the floor and John slept there.
The writer is convinced that John Stink never lived in a tree. It was his custom to hang his few utensils in a tree when he left a hideout. In fact this writer was once a member of a young hunting party that shot holes through his crude pot and pan.