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

by David Grann

He was named a reserve deputy sheriff in Fairfax, a position that he would continue to hold. The title was largely honorific, but it enabled him to carry a badge and to lead posses, and he sometimes kept one pistol in his side pocket and another strapped to his hip. They represented, he liked to say, his authority as an officer of the law. As his wealth and

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.”