Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann tells a chilling story of a murderous white conspiracy that stole oil wealth from the Osage Indians. When the Osage were kicked out of Kansas in the 1870’s, they bought 1.5 million acres of northeastern Oklahoma from the Cherokee at 70 cents an acre. In the 1890’s, the Federal government attempted to “civilize” the Osage (i.e., convert them from a communal way of life to individualist capitalism) by dividing the tribal lands into individual “allotments”. The Osage were unable to stop this allotment. But Chief James Bigheart hired a sharp lawyer, John Palmer, and together they were able to slip a curious provision into the allotment agreement: “that the oil, gas, coal, or other minerals covered by the lands … are hereby reserved to the Osage Tribe.” In other words, the land would be individually owned, but the minerals would remain communal property. The Federal negotiators didn’t think much of it at the time, because they didn’t know tha...