Book Review: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Let me preface this review by clarifying that I have not seen the award-nominated film of the same name by Martin Scorsese, so reading this book was my introduction to this horrific story. After oil is discovered on land belonging to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, the Osage people become wealthy, but local businessmen William Hale, his relatives, and criminals he hires conspire to murder numerous Osage who have headrights to the oil deposits so that they can take over their riches. The murders are perpetrated by shooting, poisoning, and bombing; it is almost unbelievable to what evil depths the local authorities, who ostensibly are the guardians of the Osage, will do in their greed to acquire their vast wealth.
The book is told in three parts. The first focuses on an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart. One by one her relatives are being killed, and investigations financed by Hale and others intentionally lead nowhere. The second part features Thomas White, a former Texas Ranger who is now an FBI agent. J. Edgar Hoover dispatches him to Oklahoma to solve the murders; he puts together a team and slowly unravels the intricate webs of deception that cover the involvement of Hale and his minions. The third part is a first-person account by the book’s author Grann describing his research journey to Oklahoma and his discoveries of documents that prove the Osage murder conspiracy was much more extensive than White discovered during his investigation.
This book’s significance goes far beyond a mere murder mystery. It uncovers the shame of white attitudes towards Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a shame that ascended to the highest levels of government. Because members of Congress considered the Osage to be childlike, incompetent, and incapable of handling their own affairs, they authorized the system of guardianship through which local whites managed Osage wealth. The whites used the system as an opportunity to plunder the riches they were supposed to be safeguarding; many of the guardians concocted elaborate schemes to rob their Osage clients of everything they owned, giving them poor advice, falsifying documents, and even resorting to murdering the people they were supposed to protect. Conspiracies ran so deep that they were nearly impossible to overcome; they included local lawyers, sheriffs, policemen, and businessmen. Only White, coming in from the outside as a federal agent, was able to meticulously expose the immense scandal – and Grann makes it clear that he had to do it despite the interference of his overseer J. Edgar Hoover, who was more concerned with his own personal image than with seeing to the welfare of the Osage.
It is a complex story, but Grann presents it with skill and acuity so that readers are never lost in the maze of plots and subplots. The amazing thing is that it is as wild and unpredictable and unlikely as a work of fiction, but it’s all true. It all really happened. It’s disheartening to know that such evil exists in the world, but we knew that already, didn’t we? The triumph is that Hale and his cronies did not succeed. Their plot was exposed and they were tried and sent to prison for life. The tragedy is that so many members of the Osage Nation died, and some of their killers were never caught. Sometimes when I am making a bit of extra cash online by taking surveys I come across a question like: “Are you proud of America’s history as a nation?” True stories like this cause me to take a long pause before answering.
* * *
After I finished writing this review and pondered the subject further, I realized I needed to add a postscript to touch on a couple of related topics.
Firstly, in reference to the demonic businessman Hale who relentlessly preyed upon the Osage, I thought of the similarities between him and modern television characters that are idolized such as Kevin Costner as the ranch owner in Yellowstone and basically all the nasty family members in Succession. These award-winning shows are so acclaimed that I tried watching the first season of each. In short, they disgusted me. On both shows there were no good guys whatsoever, only various shades of villains. And the families in each had acquired immense wealth by exploiting the poor. It made me think that the Osage murders were not a fluke in American society, but rather in fact the norm. All too often wealth is built by the rich on the backs of the poor, and the rich use their resources to consolidate their hold on power through generous donations (think bribes) to political patrons. It still happens. Where have all the heroes gone?
Secondly, I remembered my personal connection with Native Americans in Oklahoma. When I attended a renowned writing workshop in 1973, I met a full-blooded Kiowa named Russell Bates. I was just starting out as a writer, but Russ already had several credits, including sales to major science fiction magazines and anthologies and an internship as a screenwriter for Star Trek (the original series). (Russ would go on to co-write an episode for the Star Trek animated series that won an Emmy Award.) Anyway, Russ and I became friends and for a time roomed together in Los Angeles while we tried to write a teleplay. Shortly before I took off on my extensive world travels, Russ decided to return to Oklahoma, so Russ and I and another writing workshop grad named Paul Bond set out on a road trip to take him home. When we arrived at Russ’s parents’ house, they treated Paul and I royally, feeding us their specialty of fried bread and beans, which was oh my God so delicious. On one occasion Russ and his brother David and Paul and I went to a bar for a few pitchers of beer. When we were getting ready to leave, somehow I ended up first out into the parking lot, where a gang of white guys surrounded me, intending to punish me for hanging out with Indians. One of them punched me, splitting the skin open above my left eye, and then David exited the bar. When he saw what was happening, he let out a roar and advanced. He was a big guy and all the white rapscallions scattered and fled. Russ’s mom patched me up when we got home and that was that, but it was a stark reminder that our Kiowa friends sometimes still had to endure the prejudice of narrow-minded white assholes. Some people never seem to learn.
