John Joseph Mathews | |||||||||
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| Member of the Osage Nation Tribal Council | |||||||||
| In office June 1934 – 1942 | |||||||||
| Member of the Oklahoma State Board of Education | |||||||||
| In office January 1935 – June 1936 | |||||||||
| Governor | E.W. Marland | ||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||
| Born | November 16, 1894 Pawhuska, Osage Nation | ||||||||
| Died | June 16, 1979 (aged 84) | ||||||||
| Resting place | The Blackjacks, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Osage County, Oklahoma, U.S. | ||||||||
| Citizenship | Osage Nation American | ||||||||
| Political party | Democratic Party (United States) Progressive Party (Osage Nation) | ||||||||
| Children | 4,[a] including John, Virginia, and John Clinton Hunt | ||||||||
| Parent |
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| Education | University of Geneva (certificate) | ||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Oklahoma (B.S.) Oxford University (A.B.) | ||||||||
| Occupation | Writer | ||||||||
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John Joseph Mathews (November 16, 1894 – June 16, 1979) became one of the Osage Nation's most important spokespeople and writers of the mid-20th century, and served on the Osage Tribal Council from 1934 to 1942. Mathews was born into an influential Osage family, the son of William Shirley Mathews an Osage Nation tribal councilor. He studied at the University of Oklahoma, Oxford University, and the University of Geneva and served as a pilot during World War I.
Mathews' first book was a history, Wah'kon-tah: The Osage and The White Man's Road (1929), which was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club as their first by an academic press, became a bestseller. His second book, Sundown (1934) is his most well known, an exploration of the disruption of the people and their society at the time of the oil boom, which also attracted criminal activities by leading whites in the county and state, including murder of Osage.
His third book, Talking to the Moon (1945), has been compared to Henry David Thoreau's Walden and was written while living at The Blackjacks. The work is a reflection on his time living in Osage County. In 1951 Mathews published a biography of E. W. Marland, a noted oilman, governor of Oklahoma, and friend of Mathews. His book fifth book The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (1961) was a life work, preserving many collected stories and the oral history of the Osage.
In 1996 Mathews was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame. The Blackjacks in the Osage Hills, where he did much of his writing, was acquired in 2014 by the Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma to be incorporated into the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. He is buried in his garden near the home.
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