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Friday, January 26, 2018

Killers of the Flower Moon--Another Example of the Abuse Shown the American Indian

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBIKillers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For most students of history the term Reign of Terror refers to the revolutionary days in France when mobs carted royals through the streets of Paris to their beheadings . In Oklahoma the term has a more personal meaning to the members of the Osage tribe. These were the Indians to whom Jefferson extended his hand and called himself their Father. These were the Indians who once held the land that covers Missouri, Kansas, parts of Oklahoma to the Rocky Mountains. These were the Indians who found themselves forced by settlers, like the family of Laura Ingalls, to occupy a small corner of Kansas and eventually to buy some land in Oklahoma from the Cherokee. Their chief felt that the rocky, hilly terrain was undesirable enough that the white interlopers would not want it. How they ever managed to sign a treaty that guaranteed them the rights to any minerals that might be found beneath this worthless ground is totally amazing, but in 1870 the Osage were finally at " home."

Within a few decades oil was discovered on the land and this provision was to be a double-edged sword. It created millionaires among the individuals on the Osage roll--each of them a holder of a headright that provided an annual payment of a percentage of the value of the oil on their allotment. Not being oil diggers themselves the people leased lots to prospectors who used geologists and maps to determine likely sites for a successful rig. People with the surnames Getty, Phillips, Sinclair arrived on private railcars to bid on lease sites. The headright owners were rolling in the money.

Naturally, the government who had confined these people to a reservation now devised a system to protect them--from themselves. A guardianship was set up for any individual deemed unable to handle his or her money competently. The guardian had total control of the money and so, even for food or medicine or supplies or education the person had to ask the guardian to release the funds. In one instance, a woman sick enough to require hospitalization was denied the funds to seek it and died. Another family required medication for a sick child, they, too, were denied and the child died. Obviously, there was no real oversight of how the money was spent by the guardian so a few fortunes were made through embezzlement. But the real money was to be found by owning the headright. This could not be sold and could only pass within a family through inheritance.

Along about 1918 or so mysterious deaths started to occur within the Osage reservation. Some people died of an undetermined wasting disease, others were shot mysteriously. One particular woman, Mollie Burkhart had three sisters and her mother--her father having died. Her youngest sister was taken by the wasting disease at the age of 27--otherwise healthy she quickly and mysteriously succumbed. Three years later, another sister, Anna, was found in gully outside of town shot in the back of the head. Within that same year, the mother, Lizzie, also died of the wasting disease. A few years later the remaining sister, her husband and her maid, died in a house that exploded when a bomb was planted in the cellar. All of these deaths left Mollie a very rich woman--for all of the headrights came into her possession. There were several other deaths within the tribe during this period as well and though the Tribal Council demanded investigation the level of corruption among the lawmen, coroners, doctors, etc was such that none of them led anywhere.

Finally, demands were made on Washington to get involved and a new government agency, the Bureau of Investigation established a crew of investigators under the direction of a man named Hoover, who put a former Texas Ranger, Tom White, in charge. At last the investigation went somewhere and several men were found to be responsible for this wave of murders. The motive was simply greed and the men were sent to prison.

Although the mystery seemed to be solved the author, David Gramm, wondered if the condemned men were responsible for ALL of the murders--at least the murder of two prominent white men did not seem to fit well into the story. As he researched these deaths he was led to the Osage reservation where he met relatives of the persons involved in a period of over a hundred years ago. His discoveries made the story even more gruesome.

As I read so many things swirled in my mind--disbelief and horror--no mystery novel could EVER be as awful as this true story. How could people have allowed these fellow humans be so abused and robbed? And at the end, in tears and heart-sick, I wondered why there are no marches, no demands that Native American lives matter, no mention of free education for them, or reimbursement to any of the tribes who suffered in one way or another at the hands of the white man. Where is the support for the dreamers among them? As I've seen the poverty of the reservations that still exist I wonder why the lack of care for the Indian hasn't changed much since the Osage Reign of Terror which was much longer than any one ever knew.

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