Jackson Barnett

Who was Jackson Barnett?

Jackson Barnett was an Oklahoma landowner of the Muscogee or Creek people, who became known as "the world's richest Indian" when oil wells on his land produced as much as $24 million worth of oil starting in 1912. Barnett's 12.5% royalty share was worth between $3 million and $4 million, but due to Barnett's illiteracy and a court finding that Barnett was legally incompetent from a head injury, his money was administered by the Creek County courts and the U.S. Department of the Interior until 1920.

Jackson was the son of a mixed Creek-African farmer, Siah Barnett, and a Creek woman named Thlesothle. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his mother's relatives. He suffered a head injury after falling from a horse as a young man. As a result of the Curtis Act of 1898, Barnett received title to 160 acres in Creek County in 1903, but the land was administered in trust by the Department of the Interior. During the same decade, Barnett was a supporter of the Crazy Snake Rebellion.

With the discovery of oil on Barnett's lands in 1912, a series of court actions by interested parties litigated the control of Barnett's trust. Barnett was permitted a modest income and was installed in a house near Henryetta. In 1919 the courts allowed the diversion of money from Barnett's trust to the construction of the "Jackson Barnett Hospital" in Henryetta. In 1920 Barnett, then in his seventies, married Anna Laura Lowe, a fortune hunter whom he had met only once before. The couple had to marry in Kansas after a marriage license was denied in Oklahoma. Barnett's guardians were unable to annul the marriage and the hospital plans were never pursued. Instead, the trust was divided between Anna Barnett and Bacone Indian College.