Summary: After the Osage Nation was forcefully displaced to reservation land in Oklahoma, it was discovered that the land sat atop one of the largest oil fields in the continental United States. Members of the Osage Nation listed on the tribal roll were granted headrights to revenues made from leasing the oil rights. In the early 1900s, these headrights brought millions of dollars to members of the tribe.
Around the same time, members of the Osage Nation began to mysteriously die. When the Burkhart family suffered loss after loss, a team of private investigators were hired to solve the crimes. But they failed. As more and more Osage began to die, the case caught the attention of new Bureau of Investigations director J. Edgar Hoover. Coming off a big scandal and seeing the opportunity for good publicity, Hoover decided to send one of his "old school" agents to Pawhuska to investigate the murders. Former Texas Ranger Tom White was given charge of the Oklahoma field office and charged with solving the case.
"Killers of the Flower Moon" is a true crime history that lays out the history of the Osage Nations great wealth, the governmental policies that made the Osage prey for greedy, horrible killers, the subsequent systematic murders of hundreds of people and the investigation that uncovred one of the worst times in American History,
I couldn't put it down.
Thoughts: It's hard to put my thoughts on this book into words, I think because there are just so many. Please bear with me.
I have a bachelor of arts in History and am particularly fascinated by early American and Native American history, so I feel like choosing this book to read was a no brainer. However, I think even a casual reader will enjoy "Killers of the Flower Moon".
"Killers of the Flower Moon" is broken into three parts. Part one is a brief history of the Osage Nation from their displacement to Osage County, OK to the string of murders and disappearances that eventually caught national attention. Part two focuses on Tom White, the investigator brought in to unravel the web of lies surrounding the systematic murder of Mollie Burkhardt's family. Part three digs beyond the initial investigation to reveal something even more sickening than initially thought.
The book is well researched, with reams of noted original source material and footnotes. While the topic is gruesome and enraging, I feel like Grann did an excellent job letting the details unfold in a similar way that Tom White and team would have ferreted them out. This makes the end of part 2 and all of part 3 that much more shocking and sickening. It also makes the story a little hard to follow. You have to think a bit when you read this book to make sure details, people and places can be kept straight. It doesn't have the seamless flow of a fiction novel, which some will find hard to follow.
But enough about the structure of the book and the author's (excellent) telling of a forgotten part of American History. Let's get to what will keep me up at night for weeks and what I feel like anyone who reads this book and has a heart or sense of compassion will feel:
I felt horror at the story of people of all ages exploited, tortured and killed for money. I felt anger at the government for putting the Osage in a position that made them victims who could not seek help and had no avenue for self defense. "Flower of the Killer Moon" goes into detail on how the government mandated the majority of adult Osage be declared as incompetent in order to force them into wardships so white men could manage their money. It detailed how many of those same guardians exploited their wards for money by charging extreme fees, mandating where money could be spent (such as at the guardian's stores, where prices were marked up 100%( and even going so far as to deny health care in the hopes the ward would die and the guardian could then handle the estate.
I felt disgust and rage that something like this could even happen less than 100 years ago. And then dismay that in 100 years not much has changed. Even now I feel ill that the same things still happen and are ignored because the larger population isn't paying attention and those with power hide it too well.
The story of the Osage murders is absolutely horrific, but it's a story that must be told and must be heard. Read it. Then talk about it.
Reviewed by: Tami
Author's Website: https://www.davidgrann.com/
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