He consequently sent former Texas Ranger Tom White to head the investigation. For instance, Mollie’s husband Ernest was involved in a large conspiracy of murdering the Osage headed by self-titled “King of Osage Hills” William Hale. In contrast to the French, the Americans were not interested in trading with the Osage, but rather in taking the tribal lands for themselves. You Could Face Jail Time For Leaving Your Dog Out In The Cold, Per New Law, Jim Hutton: The Story Of Freddie Mercury's Longtime Partner, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch.
Early on, all fingers pointed at William Hale (pictured below), the so-called "King of the Osage Hills." In March of 1922, Mollie’s sister Rita was killed alongside her husband and white servant by a bomb planted under their house. By 1923, the Osage were earning over $30 million dollars from leases and royalties a year, an amount equating to around $400 million dollars today. The Osage were convinced not only that they were being systematically murdered, but that the local authorities were in on the sinister plot. In 1924, “under the pretense of enlightenment that the Osage needed protection,” Congress insisted that every tribe member be appointed a white guardian to manage his or her assets and supervise how they spent their oil wealth. He finds many problems with the narrative of the Osage murders as they were resolved in court, and undertakes his own investigation into the facts of the murders. Despite attempts at negotiating treaties with the United States to preserve their property rights, the Osage were pushed farther and farther west as the Americans encroached deeper into their territory. The locals weren't talking. Mollie Burkhart’s mother died two months later to a suspect poisoning. In May 1921, the badly decomposed body of Anna Brown—an Osage Native American—was found in a remote ravine in northern Oklahoma. They are at the same time well-proportioned in their limbs and good-looking.”. 29-year-old William Stepson, who had been a healthy and athletic man, fell ill and died within a matter of mere hours.

As a result, many Osage became very rich… very quickly. It is more than just a story of murder and how to catch a killer. Getty / BettmanThe horrifying death of Rita Smith helped finally trigger a federal investigation into the Osage murders. At the beginning of “Chronicle Three” (I listened to this on audiobook and each “chronicle” is read by a different narrator, a unique and well-employed tactic), Grann takes the reins of the narrative personally and talks about his research into the Osage murders. However, what happens next takes it to a higher level. If Anna, her mother, and two sisters died—in that order—all of the "head rights" would pass to the nephew...and Hale could take control. And, Zionism is about lies, commercialism, and capitalism for profit. Anna’s sister, Mollie, was once such Osage who had married a white man named Ernest Burkhart. Getty / BettmannAnna Brown was one of the first victims of the Osage killing spree. Library of CongressAn Osage camp in Oklahoma. are less than six feet in stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet. The structure hopefully allowed the reader to experience it as the FBI and the Osage did, as history unfolded, and as they struggled to make sense of events. The agents were able to prove that Hale ordered the murders of Anna and her family to inherit their oil rights...cousin Roan for the insurance...and others who had threatened to expose him. The depth of reporting and characters in Killers of the Flower Moon is impressive, and its technical brilliance is astounding. Wikimedia CommonsA depiction of the Osage by painter George Caitlin. That's what the terrorized community wanted to find out. I borrowed an audiobook of Killers of the Flower Moon from my local library. Some families instigated their own private investigations, which often ended in the deaths of those involved. They could see many things, but they couldn’t always see everything.
Osage County, Oklahoma Tourist Information Office. Most of these government-appointed money managers sought only to siphon off what wealth they could for themselves. Now they were forced to lease land from the tribe in order to mine the black gold under the reservation property. Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover, meanwhile, wanted to reinvent the FBI. But a slew of private detectives and other investigators turned up nothing (and some were deliberately trying to sidetrack honest efforts). Next, read about Chief Big Heart’s granddaughter, Maria Tallchief, who became a world-famous ballerina. The wealth that had saved the Osage from starvation had also damned the tribe because of the immense avarice amongst white settlers who surrounded them. One Osage World War I veteran said, “I fought in France for this country, and yet I am not even allowed to sign my own checks.”. “They lived in mansions and had chauffeured cars. White recruited an undercover group of cowboys to survey Osage County. Since the discovery of large oil deposits beneath the land of Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma, the tribe had become some of the wealthiest people in the world. The Osage are a Native American tribe that lived in present-day Missouri, Kansas, and my native Arkansas until they were, like others, forcibly relocated to present-day Oklahoma, then called Indian Territory. By the early 20th century, the oil rush instigated a flood of intermarriages where white men wanted a taste of the Osage wealth. The Osage tribe originally inhabited the area that is today Western Missouri along the Ohio River. A trial document connecting the various murders back to the ringleader of the murder spree. But, while billed as a murder mystery for good reason, the depth of Killers of the Flower Moon lies in its perspective on history. A dedicated FBI agent recalls the agency's battles against the Klan, organized crime and Communist spies.