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

by David Grann

This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

(In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.) The Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world.

For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression.

Only in the mid-nineteenth century, after the growth of industrial cities and a rash of urban riots—after dread of the so-called dangerous classes surpassed dread of the state—did police departments emerge in the United States.

Many Osage, unlike other wealthy Americans, could not spend their money as they pleased because of the federally imposed system of financial guardians.

President Theodore Roosevelt had created the bureau in 1908, hoping to fill the void in federal law enforcement.