Her body was found a week later in a ravine. Her sister Minnie died at 27 of what doctors ruled a “peculiar wasting illness.” A few years later, her sister Anna, who was known to enjoy speakeasies and whiskey, left one night and never came home. But despite their windfall, their lives were fraught and ended too soon. Grann approaches his narrative by way of Mollie Burkhart, a full member of the Osage tribe and one of four sisters who all became wealthy and married white men. A white woman sent a letter to the tribe, offering herself to any willing Osage bachelor: “Will you please tell the richest Indian you know of, and he will find me as good and true as any human being can be.” Not surprisingly, the Osage became popular targets for theft, graft and mercenary marriage. Full-blooded Indians could expect to be deemed “incompetent” and in need of oversight, whereas those of mixed blood were allowed to manage their own affairs. The federal government, ostensibly concerned about the Osage Indians’ ability to manage their windfall, required many Osage Indians - those it classified as “incompetent” - to have a guardian oversee the management and spending of their money. … The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.” A magazine writer at the time wrote: “Every time a new well is drilled the Indians are that much richer. The Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world.” They built mansions and bought fleets of cars. “In 1923 alone,” Grann writes, “the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million. The Osage leased the land to prospectors and made a fortune. No one but the Osage knew there was oil under that rocky soil. Thus they owned the land above and whatever was below, as well. The Osage bought the parcel for roughly a million dollars, later adding a provision that the land’s “oil, gas, coal or other minerals” would be owned by the Osage, too. It was hilly and unsuited to cultivation. Looking for a new home, the Osage found an area of what was to become Oklahoma that no one else wanted. White settlers began squatting on Osage territory, skirmishes ensued and eventually the tribe had to sell the land for $1.25 an acre. This land would be theirs forever, the United States government told them.Īnd then - as David Grann details early in his disturbing and riveting new book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” - this promise, too, was broken. Over the next 20 years, the Osage were stripped of their land, ceding almost 100 million acres, and were forced onto a parcel in southeastern Kansas that measured about 50 by 125 miles (four million acres). Jefferson was impressed, calling them the “ finest men we have ever seen.” He promised to treat their tribe fairly, telling them that from then on, “they shall know our nation only as friends and benefactors.” The Osage representatives were tall, many of them over six feet, and they towered over most of their White House hosts. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson hosted a delegation of Osage chiefs who had traveled from their ancestral land, which Jefferson had recently acquired - from the French, not the Osage - in the Louisiana Purchase. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.
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