In my year of reading dangerously™, I’ve become immersed in the world of crime stories. I’ve focused — until now — on fictional accounts. But with Indigenous Peoples Day and a major movie release of this book both scheduled for October, I turned my attention this month to the true-life story of one of the most heinous crimes in American history: the Osage murders.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017) by David Grann is a well-known and highly praised work, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Awards for Nonfiction. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma, whose land sat above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States. “To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties . . . In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.” And in 1921, one of the Osage, Anna Brown, was brutally murdered.

Grann’s story begins with that killing, and in a tightly woven tale he takes the reader through an evil crime spree arising from white settlers’ attempted dispossession of an Osage family’s Oklahoma lands. This shocking series of crimes saw dozens of people murdered in cold blood. Many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. Grann’s work exposes once again the dark and odious underbelly of race in America. White wealthy robber barons of the 1920s — openly displaying their wealth as they stole their way to riches — were often celebrated in contemporary accounts as captains of industry. But commentators and neighbors expressed contempt for the Osage, who had servants and chauffeurs — blacks, Mexicans, and “even whites” — to work in their homes. In contrast to many of the robber barons, the Osage came by their wealth honestly.

After white settlers pushed them out of Kansas and from land they were assured would be their home forever, the Osage were forced into a corner of Oklahoma that most whites regarded as “broken, rocky, sterile, and utterly unfit for cultivation.” However, smart tribal leaders and attorneys insured that the underground oil and mineral rights on this land belong to the Osage. And then oil was discovered.

In something of a perfect storm, the wealth that came to the Osage arrived at the same time as Prohibition. Both brought out some of the worst criminal elements in American history. And the government’s paternalism toward the Osage meant that most of the wealth that was rightfully theirs had to be “managed” by white “guardians.” These events came together to put a target on the back of the Osage nation.

Grann tells a parallel story as part of his narrative. Local and state justice systems — as well as the courts — were notoriously corrupt. Murders of the Osage went unexamined and no one was held accountable. Seeing this situation from a distance in Washington, a very ambitious J. Edgar Hoover, the newly appointed head of what was then known as the Bureau of Investigation, saw a chance to score a major win for this small agency and begin to build the national police force he coveted. Fortunately for the Osage, Hoover selected a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White was a rarity — a principled lawman who approached everyone with empathy and understanding — and he put together an undercover investigative team that solved a key murder in the Reign of Terror. After a protracted trial with bogus confessions, changing witness testimony, attempted bribes, and dramatic courtroom scenes, the men primarily responsible — including one pillar of the community — were given life sentences.

But as Grann reports in the final portion of the work, Hoover didn’t follow through and many of the other murders were covered up. Through dogged detective work and research almost 100 years after the fact, Grann was able to uncover more of the mystery. Again, Hoover’s desire to control the narrative about the FBI coupled with general racism against the Osage meant that the story was buried and forgotten until Grann brought it forward in this haunting true-life murder mystery. The FBI said twenty-four people died over a roughly five-year period from 1921 to 1926. In fact, the number is probably in the hundreds and the Reign of Terror as the Osage called it probably began as early as 1918 and lasted until 1931. History, he writes, is a merciless judge, laying bare “our tragic blunders and foolish missteps.” The historical record told stories that the principals at the time could not see.

The granddaughter of an Osage man who was poisoned in the 1920s during the Reign of Terror points out the vast expanse of prairie, and then quotes what God told Cain after he killed Abel: “The blood cries out from the ground.”

This “is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.”

More to come . . .

DJB

Photos: Mollie Burkhart and her sisters (credit: Osage Nation Museum); The graves of Mollie and her murdered family members (credit: Aaron Tomlinson); Phillips Petroleum workers strike oil in Osage territory (credit: Bartlesville Area History Museum)