Killers of the Flower Moon The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

I had never heard about any of the Osage being coldly and systematically murdered for their oil money before the movie came out. This is one of countless shameful crimes committed against our Indigenous American citizens. After seeing the movie I became curious about the source material and bought this book. The first few sections were the basis for the movie. The last section covers many more murders that were not investigated by local law enforcement or the FBI. Incredibly sad to read how all the deaths are still causing such pain to Osage families. Read this book. Get ready, you won’t be able to put it down.

Perhaps it is because this falls under the realm of Modern History, I never knew anything about this until reading this book. This was an absolutely fascinating read, and you wonder how such events could have occurred in modern America. It is quite chilling to think of the degree of Greed and power that led so many astray and brought so much sadness to the Osage people . This book has been an eye opener for me and I cringed to think what still goes on.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David GrannNew York: Doubleday$28.95 – 339 pages“The whites have bunched us up down here in the backwoods,the roughest part of the United States, thinking ‘we will drive theseIndians down to where there is a big pile of rock and put them therein that corner.’” Now that pile of rock has turned out to be worth millionsof dollars; now everybody wants to get in here and get some of the money.” –Osage Chief Bacon Rind.Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon is the fact that despite the author’s painstaking research, and his marvelous use of period photographs and documents, this factual account of historic events attending “The Osage Murders” contains the atmospheric suspense and tension that is normally associated with a classic murder mystery. In fact, Grann has written a murder mystery – One that asks who methodically killed hundreds of Osage Indians during a four-year reign of terror (1920-24). Osage history reveals the tragic details of how and why. Forced to move from Kansas to Oklahoma, the Osage tribe seemed to be destined to lives of abject poverty when they suddenly found itself catapulted into a world of excessive wealth. Oil is discovered on tribal land. Suddenly, every member of the tribe is potentially wealthy. In an attempt to control the chaos that ensued, the federal government created a document called a “headright” which gave each Osage household legal rights to the oil on their land. After a period of uncontrolled spending in which members of the Osage tribe acquired mansions and fleets of automobiles, the government attempted to control the excessive spending by establishing a “guardian system” which assigned a “legal guardian” to each Osage family. This “guardian” (usually a white banker, businessmen or “civic-minded citizen” was given the power to approve or deny all expenditures for the Osage tribal member (who had been judged to be “incompetent”) by the government. The system was badly flawed, and many of the guardians used their position to embezzle huge sums of money. In time, the guardian documents became bargaining chips in investing in business ventures. Hundreds of guardians used their position as a means of acting as a “middle-man” who would purchase items on behalf of Osage tribal members. The guardian would then sell the item to the Osage for an inflated price. For example, guardians could purchase automobiles on behalf of the Osage tribal member for $250 and then sell them to the Osage member that they represented for $2,500. As the wealth of the Osage grew, so did the schemes for exploiting the tribe. Hundreds of criminals were drawn to the region with schemes designed to acquire a portion of Osage wealth. Many of these new arrivals openly stated that they had come to Oklahoma “to marry an Osage squaw.”It was a method that frequently succeeded. However, some of these opportunists sought a more direct method: murder. Author Grann’s research discovers one individual, William Hale who had arranged for the murder of 24 members of the Osage tribe. By soliciting the help of associates, Hale became one of the wealthiest men in Oklahoma. The astonishing catalogue of slaughter is carried out by men willing to resort to any means to accomplish Hale’s goal. Dozens of victims were poisoned with tainted moonshine and corrupt medical personnel performed autopsies that listed “acute alcoholism” as the cause of death. Others were dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head or between the eyes and the victim’s body was found in his new car on a remote road. One family was killed by a dynamite blast that demolished their home. Often, Hale simply paid an assassin to kill a designated victim. Then, Hale would frequently hire a second assassin to kill the first. In those instances in which murderers were apprehended, Hale bribed juries and law officials and if all else failed, he simply paid another killer. Time and time again, government agents are assigned to investigate and in some instances, just as they uncover significant evidence, they are murdered and the evidence destroyed. One dedicated investigator called the FBI headquarters to report that he was on his way back with conclusive evidence against Hale. The next day his mutilated body is found near a railroad track. He had been murdered and thrown from the train. Another investigator’s body was found in another state, hundreds of miles away. What is most disquieting about the crimes in Killers of the Flower Moon is the awesome extent of corruption that is revealed in the book. State and government officials, medical personnel and lawyers – all are contaminated with the vice of greed. The corruption is so pervasive, the few moral and courageous individuals seem helplessly outnumbered. However, there are two remarkable people in this gruesome tale. One is Molly Burkhart, and Osage who survived the systematic murder of her family…murders in which her husband was implicated. Molly was diagnosed as a diabetic by two doctors who poisoned her insulin injections, in an attempt to slowly kill her. Molly survived and divorced her husband. The second remarkable character is Tom White, the FBI agent that pursued Hale until he brought him to justice. Much of the credit of for this amazing piece of investigative work went to the Director of the newly-created FBI agency, Hubert Hoover who turned out to be a man dedicated to his own self-interest. Through much of the investigation conducted by Tom White, Hoover managed to take credit for White’s courageous work. Jealous of any publicity directed toward agents other than himself, Hoover invariably succeeded in manipulating the factual data to his advantage. This is a remarkable work. Most noteworthy is Grann’s comprehensive account of the primitive nature of investigations in a time before forensics emerged. As a consequence, much of Tom White’s heroic pursuit of a villain who seemed to have the protection of most of Oklahoma’s judges, lawyers and public officials. However, Grann’s greatest achievement is the fact that he uncovers evidence that the total number of victims in the Osage murders exceeded the original 24 and possibly exceeded over 200.

It feels almost superfluous writing a review of this book seeing all the reviews out there already and all of the notoriety it has gotten. I bought this book sometime last year, before anyone heard of the movie, and then forgot about it. When going through my horde of Kindle books for a book to read next I came across this. The movie has made such a big splash on streaming I decided to read it, not even looking to see what it was about. At first, I was disappointed to see that it was an all-narrative non-fiction book. Add to that that the style was a bit matter-of-fact, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. Boy was I wrong! This book should be compulsory reading in every high school. We are all aware of how the native Americans were persecuted, massacred and robbed of their lands by the settling Europeans, but how many people really know the story of the Osage Indians (as they are referred to in the book)?You might think this a story that happened in the seventeen or eighteen hundreds. But you’d be wrong. This all took place in the twentieth century – during the roaring twenties. I won’t give away any more of the story but, despite being all narrative and written by a journalist in a not very literary style, the story is so captivating, well-researched and so incredible that the book is one that I will not soon forget. It was, in essence, the massacre of a people that happened under the watch of our government in Washington, in fact aided by anti-Indian laws, and in which many people got away with and would have gone completely unsolved if not for the newly formed FBI and a brave man name Tom White. Most who read this account will come away angry at the events portrayed here. I will not say more but I highly recommend this book.

The author’s writing style was direct and easy to read. Chapters were short but left one wanting to not put down the book, as they ended with teasers or cliffhangers which directly poured into the next chapter.The Osage people were really domestically terrorized in a multi-decade money grab (theirs!!!) by the caucasian residents of Indian Territory and later Oklahoma. People who were set up to be their guardians and posed as their friends were the ultimate in “backstabbers”. This is a sickening account that I never heard of prior to the story of “doing the movie” or reading this book.The search for the guilty and their punishment was a fight against graft and corruption and the bad people often got off too easy for their crimes. J. Edgar Hoover was too interested in a quick solution which would pump up the nascent FBI’s image rather than rooting out the full extent of the crimes and outrage. This book spells out what was left undone regarding this in the last section of the book. It almost seems that everything before this last section had been written and edited maybe a decade earlier….and then this additional research was added.This is a gripping story that warns us that crime and corruption was firmly in place 100 years ago, but that we still have it today, albeit with different players.I recommend this book very highly.