Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

by David Grann

The allotment system, which had already been imposed on many tribes, was designed to end the old communal way of life and turn American Indians into private-property owners—a situation that would, not incidentally, make it easier to procure their land.

The Osage had seen what had happened to the Cherokee Outlet, a vast prairie that was part of the Cherokees’ territory and was near the western border of the Osage reservation. After the U.S. government purchased the land from the Cherokee, it had announced that at noon on September 16, 1893, a settler would be able to claim one of the forty-two thousand parcels of land—if he or she got to the spot first!

During much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, private detective agencies had filled the vacuum left by decentralized, underfunded, incompetent, and corrupt sheriff and police departments.

In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in advertisements, the company’s motto, “We Never Sleep,” was inscribed under a large, unblinking, Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term “private eye.”

The U.S. government, contending that many Osage were unable to handle their money, had required the Office of Indian Affairs to determine which members of the tribe it considered capable of managing their trust funds. Over the tribe’s vehement objections, many Osage, including Lizzie and Anna, were deemed “incompetent,” and were forced to have a local white guardian overseeing and authorizing all of their spending, down to the toothpaste they purchased at the corner store. One Osage who had served in World War I complained, “I fought in France for this country, and yet I am not allowed even to sign my own checks.” The guardians were usually drawn from the ranks of the most prominent white citizens in Osage County.

In 1905, when Tom was twenty-four, he enlisted in the Texas Rangers. Created in the nineteenth century as a volunteer citizen militia to fight American Indians on the frontier and, later, Mexicans along the border, the Rangers had evolved into a kind of state police force. American Indians and Mexicans had long despised the Rangers for their brutal, shoot-first methods. But among white Texans they were widely mythologized.

An Osage chief said, “I made peace with the white man and lay down my arms never to take them up again and now I and my fellow tribesmen must suffer.”

Despite the brutality of the crimes, many whites did not mask their enthusiasm for the lurid story. OSAGE INDIAN KILLING CONSPIRACY THRILLS, declared the Reno Evening Gazette. Under the headline OLD WILD WEST STILL LIVES IN LAND OF OSAGE MURDERS, a wire service sent out a nationwide bulletin that the story, “however depressing, is nevertheless blown through with a breath of the romantic, devil-may-care frontier west that we thought was gone. And it is an amazing story, too. So amazing that at first you wonder if it can possibly have happened in modern, twentieth-century America.” A newsreel about the murders, titled “The Tragedy of the Osage Hills,” was shown at cinemas. “The true history of the most baffling series of murders in the annals of crime,” a handbill for the show said. “A Story of Love, Hatred and Man’s Greed for Gold. Based on the real facts as divulged by the startling confession of Burkhart.”

A local historian later ventured that the Osage murder trials received more media coverage than the previous year’s Scopes “monkey trial,” in Tennessee, regarding the legality of teaching evolution in a state-funded school.

Such CHRISTIAN nation!

There was one question that the judge and the prosecutors and the defense never asked the jurors but that was central to the proceedings: Would a jury of twelve white men ever punish another white man for killing an American Indian? One skeptical reporter noted, “The attitude of a pioneer cattleman toward the full-blood Indian…is fairly well recognized.” A prominent member of the Osage tribe put the matter more bluntly: “It is a question in my mind whether this jury is considering a murder case or not. The question for them to decide is whether a white man killing an Osage is murder—or merely cruelty to animals.”

When Ernest Burkhart was on the stand, the prosecutor Leahy questioned him about his marriage to Mollie. “Your wife is an Osage Indian?” Leahy asked him. “She is,” Ernest replied. At an earlier proceeding, he was asked what his profession was, and he said, “I don’t work. I married an Osage.” One of Hale’s lawyers now asked Ernest if he’d pleaded guilty to murdering his wife’s sister by blowing up her house while she was inside. “That is right,” he said. Hoping to place the blame for the killings on Ernest, Hale’s lawyer recited the names of Mollie’s murdered family members, one after the other. “Has your wife now any surviving relatives outside of the two children she has by you?” “She has not.” There was a hush in the courtroom as Mollie looked on; her gaze could no longer be avoided.

“In early missionary journals Osages were often described as being ‘the happiest people in the world.’…They had a sense of freedom because they didn’t own anything and nothing owned them.

She explained that Hale had sent the letter from prison to a member of the tribe and that not long ago a descendant had donated it to the museum. As I read through the letter, I was struck by the buoyant tone. Hale wrote, “I am in perfect health. I weigh 185 lbs. I haven’t got a grey hair.” When he got out of jail, he said, he hoped to return to the reservation: “I had rather live at Gray Horse than any place on earth.” And he insisted, “I will always be the Osages true Friend.”

Like the suspicious death of Red Corn’s grandfather, the plot against Whitehorn—and the failed plot against his widow—exposed the secret history of the Reign of Terror: the evil of Hale was not an anomaly.

In 1926, the Osage leader Bacon Rind remarked, “There are men amongst the whites, honest men, but they are mighty scarce.”

Indeed, virtually every element of society was complicit in the murderous system. Which is why just about any member of this society might have been responsible for the murder of McBride, in Washington: he threatened to bring down not only Hale but a vast criminal operation that was reaping millions and millions of dollars.