In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were the wealthiest people per capita in the entire world. After being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas, they settled on a reservation in “Indian” Territory by 1872. The forced sale of their land by an Act of Congress in 1870 led to their ultimate settlement in Oklahoma, where the land was rocky, infertile, and insufficient for white settlement.
Unlike many tribes removed from their ancestral lands, the Osage sold their properties in Kansas to the U.S. government, allowing them to legally purchase their 1.47 million acre reservation in Oklahoma from the Cherokee Nation with the revenue from Kansas.
As one of the only tribes to purchase their reservation lands with their own money (rather than receiving the land from the US government), they secured ownership rights and, perhaps most importantly, retained the mineral estate.
After the discovery of oil, the tribe organized a “headright” system, where mineral royalties were shared equally across the tribe, which resulted in the wealth per capita. Led by the newfound wealth, the Osage built mansions, rode in chauffeured automobiles, and even sent their children to boarding schools abroad.
However, between the years of 1921 and 1926, Osage members began dying under mysterious circumstances. The first killing occurred with the murder of Anna Brown, originally ruled an accidental death by alcohol poisoning in a remote ravine, was instead the result of a gunshot wound to the back of her head.
Brown’s death prompted the first investigation into what became known as the “Reign of Terror”, a subsequent five year period where an estimated over 60 Osage tribal members were killed. Shootings, poisonings, being thrown from a moving train, and even a house bombing were all reported during this period.
As more and more Osage were murdered, it became clear this case ran even deeper than violent bigotry. Many of the murders began to center around Mollie Burkhart, who lost three sisters, her mother, and her cousin all in the span of six years.
As the death counts increased, the newly formed FBI took up the case, after years of local and state investigators coming to no conclusions (or dying under mysterious conditions when they finally made progress). The FBI deployed Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, to manage the case. Under the management of director J. Hoover, White created an undercover team (including a Native American that infiltrated the region) and worked with Osage to expose one of the most chilling, systemic conspiracies in American history.
Book Review
David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, tells the “twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery” about the despicable crimes committed against the Osage nation.
With a strong journalistic lens, chronological structure, and vivid writing style, readers are immediately immersed in the dangerous and corrupt setting of Osage County, Fairfax, and Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Grann vigorously recounts the story of dozens of individuals, victims, and conspirators, with meticulous research.
The book reads as a fiction narrative, with a plot so unfathomable, it seems imagined. Combined with Grann’s use of first person accounts, FBI reports, and federal records, his writing peels back the deceptive layers of history and intentional cover ups to show the rotted reality of the justice system found in Oklahoma during the time period.
I read the entire book in a two day period, so compelled by the descriptive imagery and immersion of interviews within the writing, that I couldn’t put the story down. Grann’s gritty style serves as a constant reminder of the true horrors of the “Reign of Terror”, and the continued suffering the Osage Nation has suffered at the hands of the American government and white settlers in the area. While I won’t spoil the discovery of the true conspirators, or the mastermind behind some of the murders, the reveal in the book was a shock to myself. The fallout of this discovery revealed an even more tragic side to the story, as Grann depicts the treachery that truly permeated the conspiracy.
One of the most significant details of the book is Grann’s personal account in the third and final section of the story. He describes his own experience of traveling to Oklahoma, meeting the grandchildren of Mollie Buckhart, and seeing firsthand the influence of generational trauma and the coercion her family suffered under.
He even inputs quotes from interviews with descendants of Osage victims and describes the continued research put into unsolved cases. Since many officials, lawyers, and doctors intentionally mislabeled cases or destroyed evidence during the period, most of the victims’ families were never able to investigate or reach conclusions about what happened in their ancestors’ murders.
While the FBI initially reported around 24 deaths at the hands of the conspiracy, modern historians and researchers believe the actual death toll could be anywhere above 60, and potentially into the hundreds.
Many public records of Osage deaths are attributed to suicide, illness, or accidental deaths from bootleg alcohol (a factor of the Prohibition in 1920). After reviewing the number of Osage whose money was managed by government appointed “guardians”, and the amount of money that was stolen and exploited after these mysterious deaths, the already horrific case seems to be that much worse.
Grann’s book serves as a blunt, meticulous recount of one of the worst crimes in American history- ignited by the racism, bigotry, and corrupt legal system that ran rampant even in the more modern “Wild West”. With additional details about the development of the FBI, its attempts to maintain public image, and the mishandling of justice, Grann’s story is a brutal reminder of the horror of American development, the continued trauma from the “Reign of Terror”, and a reminder that the “history” we recognize today often hides a darker truth underneath it.
