Teepees and Petroleum Companies, 1885

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I was working on this 1885 pamphlet¹ on petroleum in Wyoming territory, and was stopped by the cover illustration. As you can see, the cover shows a teepee (which would be about right seeing that most of the numerous Indian tribes there in the territory before White incursion were nomadic)—behind it though we see oil derricks, which I am sure was not the case, unless the derricks were on Indian land. In 1880 the (non-Indian) population of Crook County was 239, which “jumped” to 2,300 in 1890, (then to 6k in 1910 where it has stayed about constant since). In 1890 the Indian population in all of Wyoming was 2,063 (or thereabouts, according to the U.S.1890 census special volume Indians Taxed and Indians Not Taxed), and of that figure nearly the entirety of the population--1,861--were on reservations. And according to the census report of the 189,000 reported Indian population in the country 133,000 were on reservations, while another 50,000 were living in Indian Territory which did not in the government's mind count for being on a reservation, making for something like 5,000 Indians not on reservations or I.T. territory in the entire U.S. and territories. So, picturing the teepee set before a petroleum industry scene was exceedingly and vapidly prosaic.

Notes:

1. Gilbert Ellis Bailey (former State Geologist of Wyoming). Petroleum in Wyoming Territory and special report on the Stockade oil district and the property of the Lakota oil and coal mining company in Crook County, Wyoming. No publisher or place of printing is noted. No date (though it is certainly before statehood in 1890); Stanford guesses 1885.  8.25”x5.75”, 19pp, with a small folding map of the county.  Printed wrappers. Provenance: U.S. Geological Survey Library, gifted to the Library of Congress in 1921. One copy only (Stanford) located by WorldCat.