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 that the Osage had discovered oil seeps on their hilly, rocky land, or that some small wells were already in operation. 

The oil boom of the early 20^th Century made the Osage rich.  So rich that Osage County had the highest per capita income in the country.  Osage tooled around in motorcars and hired white servants.  The nation was fascinated by the “rich savages.”  Grann covers this well, quoting examples of racist newspaper and magazine articles.

But by the 1920’s the Osage were dying at a high rate and more and more of the “headrights” (shares in the oil wealth) were falling into white hands.  Some died of mysterious lingering illnesses.  Some in automobile accidents.  Some were shot.  A family died when their house blew up.  So many were dying that the problem came to the attention of the new young, ambitious director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.  Hoover wasted no love on the Indians, but recognized that solving a mass murder case would be good publicity for him and his agency.

To solve the mystery, Hoover assigned special agent Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, to the case.  White hired several undercover operatives who took jobs in the area and won the trust of the locals.  “The more White investigated the flow of oil money from Osage headrights, the more he found layer upon layer of corruption.”  White men would marry Indian women and then kill them to inherit their headrights.  Sometimes they would kill entire families so there would be no Indian heirs.  They were aided by doctors who would slowly poison their patients under guise of treating them, coroners who would “lose” evidence and cover up the true cause of death, and businessmen who profited from the whole sordid business.

Grann tells this tale through the story of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage whose white husband killed several of her relatives and almost succeeded in killing Mollie before he was caught.  Tom White traced those murders, and others, to William Hale, a successful local cattleman, and, amazingly, got a jury of white men to convict Hale and his associates.   Grann leads us through the crimes, the investigations, the coverups, the trials, and what happened after.

After the Burkhart murders were solved, J. Edgar Hoover declared victory and withdrew.  But modern research, some of it by Grann himself, shows there were many more murders over a longer period of time than the FBI turned up.  Grann summarizes what is known, and calls out the racism that enabled the crimes and also assured incomplete justice.

Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, tells his story well, expertly weaving together its multiple strands.  I have only two minor complaints.  One is that there is a whole lot less about the FBI than the subtitle would lead you to expect.  Second, there is no index, which makes it hard for a reviewer to check his facts!

But, as I said, these are minor complaints.  Killers of the Flower Moon is a worthy and readable contribution to the history of racism in the United States.  Recommended.

Image Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55453123 

David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI

Doubleday, 2017, 352 pp (Hardcover)

Knopf Doubleday, 2018, 400 pp (Paperback)