George Edward Tinker was
born September 24, 1868, at Osage Mission, Kansas (present-day St.
Paul), the son of George and Genevieve "Jane" Revard Tinker. The
family was related to or associated with many notable figures in Osage
history. In the 1890s "Ed" Tinker, as he was known, served on the
Osage Tribal Council, and married Sarah Ann Swagerty in 1886. George
Edward Tinker died October 31, 1947. His son was the well-known Major
General Clarence Tinker, killed at the Battle of Midway in World War
II, for whom Tinker Air Base is named.
Tinker was
engaged in several publishing ventures, including The Wah-shah-she
News, a weekly newspaper published at Pawhuska, of which he was a
co-founder and editor. In November, 1909, he and Curtis J. Phillips
founded The Osage Magazine, which later became The Oklahoma
Magazine.
When Tinker was writing
for and editing The Osage Magazine, a major issue facing the
Osage people was ownership of the mineral rights under their lands.
Important oil and gas deposits had been discovered, and oil companies
were eager to exploit them. While the federal government had allotted
Osage lands in severalty in 1906, mineral rights, including oil and
gas, were reserved to the tribe and royalties paid to the Nation
instead of to the individual under whose land the minerals lay.
Unscrupulous oil men, land agents, and other grafters attempted at
this time to change the law to their advantage. Tinker’s editorials
against these attempts are included in his history.
See Louis F. Burns, The Turn of the Wheel: A
Genealogy of the Burns and Tinker
