BOOK REVIEW – KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – DAVID GRANN

 KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – DAVID GRANN

Book Review By The  NEW-HARMONY GAZETTE Publisher, Dan Barton

What are “you” reading? I have once more (a third time) read Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann, a riveting and powerful account of the attempted extermination of the Osage Indian nation, living peacefully in and around the town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in Osage County, slain by citizens of that town and county in the 1920’s, all in the name of greed and avarice.

David Grann tells this story of the mass serial killings, usually done one by one, and the subsequent investigation by the newly formed FBI, with exciting realism. If you thought the attempt to wipe out all of the Indian Nations in America ended at the closing of the 19th century, think again.

In the 1920s the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, with just 2,229 tribal souls on the Osage roles, were thought to be one of the richest in the world. Oil was discovered on their land in the early part of the 20th century. The land was thought to be worthless by the federal government, but by some stroke of divine intervention or luck, the black gold soon made the Osage People multimillionaires and targets for murder. It brought on the biased interposition of the U.S.

Government, and the white citizens of Pawhuska and Osage County, who wanted a share of the wealth and more, all of it, if possible. At the bottom of this murderous pogrom was money, oil money, and race hatred. The United States had forcibly moved the Osage Indians several times as white settlers streamed across the land from east to west. “In the 1870s the Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, only to discover decades later, that this land was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States,” says author David Grann.

Greed, combined with what seemed to be a natural hatred by many Oklahoma citizens for the Native Americans, fueled the fury of killing and theft that went on for some two decades. john Ramsey, one of the triggermen in the Osage killings told the FBI, that in 1924, “…white people in Oklahoma thought no more of killing an Indian then than they did in 1724.”

As Grann explains, “ To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties.” Grann goes into detail about how this “Oil Head Rights” lease money was broken up and shared among the Osage. Eventually growing to,”… millions and millions of dollars, collectively! In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.” Each of the Osage got an equivalent fair share of this money, making them fantastically wealthy.

Pawhuska was the most heavily populated town, 6,000 people, and the capital, in Osageb County. Grann explains that, “The streets clamored with cowboys, fortune seekers, bootleggers, sooth sayers, medicine men, outlaws, U.S. marshals, New York financiers, and oil magnates.”

The Osage had staffs of servants – the “Indians’ Pot-Lickers,” – as many white citizens called them. “In the early 1920’s,” David Grann says, “a visitor expressed contempt at the sight of ‘even whites’ performing ‘all the menial tasks about the house to which no Osage will stoop.’”

Some of the many characters in this “Real Life Novel” are the Osage sisters, Mollie, Rita, Anna and Minnie, along with their mother, Lizzie. There are also many local citizens who were directly involved in the unbelievable crimes described by Grann. People like Earnest Burkhart,

Bryan Burkhart and William Hale, people without a conscience. There’s even famous lawmen like J.Edgar Hoover and the FBI, very new at the time, involved in cracking the identity and guilt of this gang of murderers.

There were former Texas Ranger agents, converted to G-Men, like Tom White, who worked oftentimes undercover and were able to solve a few of the murderous crimes against the Osage. Unfortunately, there were so many killings and so many citizens involved, many of them the most respected people in Pawhuska and Osage County, that even the G-men were only able to scratch the surface, and got very few significant arrests, and hard won prosecutions.

It’s said that most of the killers got away with mass murder and countless killings during the years of slaughter and terror. I watched a discussion on YOUTUBE with three of the descendants of the murdered Osage, Kathryn Red Corn, Margie Burkhart and Marvin Stepson, along with the book’s author David Grann and Commentator Prof. Hugh Foley from Rogers State University in Oklahoma, which was even more revealing.

Kathryn Red Corn said that this story, Killers of the Flower Moon, needed to be told and that David Grann was the one to tell it like it happened. They describe that there was corruption at all levels of the government in Oklahoma and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs.

One of the most shocking elements of this story involved the federal government’s involvement, where they assigned white Americans in Oklahoma to handle the money that the Osage were receiving from the Oil revenue. The politicians in Washington and Oklahoma thought that the Osage were not intelligent enough to handle it themselves.

Each full blooded Osage was assigned one of these Guardian overseers. That’s what they called these “good and upstanding, freeloading, thieves” of Osage County, Pawhuska Oklahoma, “Guardians”. These Guardians, and there were hundreds of them, many of them lawyers, judges, doctors, law enforcement officials, politicians and business people, who were considered the top citizens in Pawhuska. The Osage were reduced to groveling to these criminals to get enough money just to pay for a tube of toothpaste or to take care of a sick or dying child. Undertakers were charging the Osage as much as $80,000, in today’s dollars, for a funeral and burial at the height of their wealth. Sometimes the Guardian would deny the Osage access to any of their money.

It reminded me very much of what the English did to the Irish in the 19th century, and would have done to us in the 18th century, if our ancestors chose to be peaceful and not fight. The Osage, like the Cherokee, chose the path of peace and paid a terrible price for it.

David Grann stated in the televised discussion, that the story of the Guardians and who these individuals were, is a story unto itself. I concur! Let’s hope Mr. Grann takes on that project. As the Osage in the discussion all agreed, Grann is the person to do it. These names need to be published as much as the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust in WWII were outed. The blood of these victims cries out for it.

Kathryn Red Corn said that, “… it still goes on,” and, “…that there are still Guardians,” in Osage County. She said that, “… in the 1920s there were more than 75 lawyers in Pawhuska, in those days a town of 5,000 people.” She went on to say that, “…you still see the reminders today.

There’s still quite a few lawyers in Pawhuska.” More than 25 at last count!Grann, said that Congressional testimony from the 1920s attests to the fact that there was an obsession with Congressional members about scapegoating the Osage for their money. He said,”Members of Congress would sit around with self-righteousness and say, ‘What are we going to do with these Osage?’” Grann further noted, “It was literally a racist system, based on the quantity of a persons Osage blood. Full blooded deemed one to be incompetent, and so a Guardian was assigned to that person.” He said that, “The Guardians stole millions upon millions of dollars from these innocent Indian citizens and none of them were brought to justice.”

Grann states in his book that, “the Osage death toll was in the scores, if not the hundreds.”Reading the testimony of the Osage at the end of the book, Killers of the Flower Moon, had a tremendous impact on me, and should have the same effect on anyone who reads this fine book. My book report is just an introduction to so much that is in the book that I have left out.

An exciting and engrossing book to read

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