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Killers of the Flower Moon

This nonfiction book by investigative journalist David Grann investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage Nation people in the 1920s Oklahoma. The book presents the evidence and tactics that a nascent FBI gathered to find the killers and bring them to book. The book starts with a narrative of the story of the Osage Indian Mollie Burkhart and the mysterious deaths of their family. After a week, her body was discovered with a bullet wound at the back of her head (Grann 2017). This was shortly followed by the murder of Mollie’s mother who became ill from a mysterious condition, withering to her death. Then, in the middle of the night, Mollie was woken up with a loud explosion from her house and upon looking through the window, saw a massive fireball rising from her sister's house killing the sister, her husband, and a live-in servant.

The book traces Mollie's search for justice for her family among other victims of the Osage during that time and place. There were at least 20 other individuals that died, according to the official count. This formed part of the long and multi-generational betrayals and tragedy series faced by the Osage people. During the past years and decades, the government of the United States had been breaking promises and treaties as it had been forcing these people off their lands again and again. Finally, these people settled in a piece of land in Oklahoma that is unsuitable for farming due to the fact that this land was unwanted by white settlers. They bought this piece of land with their provisions, only to learn later that the land had minerals and oil ling beneath it. The oil set the Osage people for the profit underlying beneath as they leased the land to oil-hunting prospectors. The Osage people were the wealthiest per capita population at the time in the world. The made over $30 million of their land, which translates to over $400 million in modern dollars out of their land, a fact that drew a large amount of envy from those around them.

Matters got even worse for the Osage as the federal government deemed them incompetent to oversee their accounts and would need a guardian to do this. The term incompetent became a description of the Indian people at the time and was in for trouble as easy targets for cons, grafts and business-like marriage proposals from suitably white brides and grooms. This marked the start of the death of the Osage en masse. They died in suspicious ways, including poisonings, disappearances and nitroglycerin bombing (Sachs 2018). These events came to be known as the Osage Reign of Terror. The survivors of the Osage people, including Mollie, were terrified but continued to seek answers and justice for their fallen kin.

During these times, the law enforcement was not well organized as it was made of a piecemeal network of sheriffs, lone detectives and, in the West, vigilantes that sought their own brand of justice as the local law enforcement did the least to solve the case. The Osage people resolved on taking the search for answers and justice further when they asked a white oilman, Barney McBride, to go to Washington DC and ask the government to intervene. This trusted emissary never made it to Washington and his body was found in Maryland, stripped naked with wound and marks of a stabbing. This attracted everyone's attention as they realized that there was a conspiracy going on.

With the FBI getting a new face under Hoover, a young FBI agent J. Edgar was appointed the director of the bureau, and Tom White to head the Osage case. He put an undercover team together to infiltrate the Osage community center and gather information first hand. They discovered a vast, far-reaching plot to murder wealthy Osage Indians and take their land. They slowly gained the trust of the locals, many of whom had been bribed or threatened to remain silent with all they knew. The investigations pointed a finger at William Hale, a white cattle rancher and settled proclaimed King of the Osage Hills (Sachs 2018). His nephew was Mollie’s husband. The family of Millie was killed so that their land rights would fall to Mollie and by extension, to Ernest, Hale’s nephew. The remaining step was poisoning Mollie so that all the land inheritance falls to Ernest. The murders were corroborated by Hale, working with a network of conspirators and contract killers and bribed and threatened to locals suspecting him to remain silent.

After persistent investigative work by the FBI, the deadly scam was uncovered and lead to the confession of Ernest and charging of Hale, hired a killer and their lawyer. Hale was only charged for the murder of only one person out of the many he had a hand in their murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment and was paroled in 1947. This act raised the FBI from obscurity to a reputation of a powerful investigative agency (Grann 2017).

In October 2011, the Osage Nation received $380 million settlement from the United States government due to alleged government mismanagement of the Osage nation's oil and gas mineral estate. But questions as to whether the compensation was enough to the death and losses of the Indian nation came up. The government settlement with the Osage for the $380 million came with the agreement and commitment to strengthen the management of the tribe’s trust assets and improve communications between the tribe and the government of the United States Department of Interior. However, this amount looks insignificant in the face of the victims of the murders and the loss of Osage head rights to the whites in questionable ways, several unsolved murders, loss of human life, illegal confiscation of wealth that was rightful of the Osage people.

Before and during the reign of terror, the subsurface minerals within the Osage Nation Reservation were held by the government of the United States in trust but were owned tribally. The royalties from the minerals were paid to the tribe who distributed it equally to each allottee in shares named head rights that were passed down to heirs of the deceased. The fact that these head rights were inheritable led to the motive of the Reign of Terror that claimed over 60 Osage Indian lives. Many head rights had been lost to the white settlers whose values have been accruing for about 100 years. The $380 million settlement was an underestimation for these value accruals and therefore the settlement was insufficient coupled with the unresolved murders and mysterious deaths (Sachs 2018). All these can be blamed on the government of the United States as it failed to protect the wealth of the Indians.

In the wake of oil discovery in the Osage Indian lands on Oklahoma, the government of the United States appointed white Guardians to help the then wealthy Indian nation to guide them on how to spend their monies as the government of the united states viewed the native Americans as naïve and incompetent. This opened a window for the swindling of the Indian money and murder of the natives so that white conspirators would inherit their lands and wealth. The government of the United States failed in its mandate to protect the wealth of the nation and allowed the continuation of the culture of complicity for long as many guardians appointed by the government were involved in these plots. There were weak law enforcement institutions and lack of sufficient political will to protect the interests of the Indian nation. There were several orphans who lived in desperate lives after the murder of their parents. The $380 million settlement is therefore insignificant to the lives lost already and the bad state and conditions that the orphans grew in (Fletcher 2018). The government allowed utter contravention of the law by the white community with lawyers, doctors and even morticians involved in the plot. Doctors were involved in administering and distributing poison to the hired killers and covering up causes of death, morticians were involved in covering up murders and burying bodies as lawyers, prosecutors, and reporters who cover the ongoing and oilmen who wouldn't speak out (Sachs 2018). Institutional racism paved way for stealing the oil wealth of the Osage Indians.

Works cited

Fletcher, Matthew LM. "Failed Protectors: The Indian Trust and Killers of the Flower Moon." (2018).

Grann, David. Killers of the flower moon: The Osage murders and the birth of the FBI. Vintage, 2017.

Sachs, Stephen. "Review of David Grann" Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI"." Indigenous Policy Journal 28.3 (2018).