“There are few records, at least authoritative ones, of Mollie’s existence during this period. No record of how she felt when agents from the Bureau of Investigation—an obscure branch of the Justice Department that in 1935, would be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation—finally arrived in town. No record of what she thought of physicians like the Shoun brothers, who were constantly coming and going, injecting her with what was said to be a new miracle drug: insulin. It was as if, after being forced to play a tragic hand, she’d dealt herself out of history.” (pp. 98-99). Kindle Edition.
This book is the true story of a conspiracy to kill rich Indians. According to historians, the Osage Reign of Terror lasted from about 1921 to 1926. David Grann and others believe that the systematic murdering of the Osage lasted much longer, perhaps from 1918 to 1931 or beyond. The Osage had been driven from their land in Kansas to Oklahoma in the 1870s. When oil was discovered on the seemingly worthless Oklahoma land, many Osage became wealthy. Since they had been granted headrights to tracts of land upon which oil could now be extracted, white people went through extraordinary means to murder the Osage, obtain their headrights, and hijack their wealth.
The first part of the book focuses on Mollie Burkhart, a registered member of the Osage tribe. She is married to a white man, Ernest. Like other wealthy Osage, Mollie was required to have a financial guardian since the American government treated Indians like children; the whites didn’t think they could and didn’t want them to manage money. So, they were considered wards of the government and assigned guardians. Ernest is Mollie’s guardian. Throughout the story, we learn that many of the guardians have ulterior motives, are dishonest, and use their positions to steal from their wards and profit from their roles.
When Mollie’s sister Anna is brutally murdered, the reader meets a cast of characters who are supposed to investigate and protect the family from further tragedy. Instead, another sister is killed when her house is bombed, There is one murder after another, and it becomes apparent that the county and state officials are corrupt. It is years before the unscrupulous methods of gathering evidence and conducting investigations are noticed.
William Hale, Ernest’s uncle, is seemingly the paragon of law and order. It seems that he is a supporter of the Osage and intends to protect their rights. However, as federal officials finally investigate the murders, it becomes apparent that he is involved in multi-layered schemes of duplicitous behavior designed to appropriate money from the Osage tribe members.
During the years of this story, the FBI is in the early stages of development. Criminal activity detection is beginning to become reliant on emerging technologies such as handwriting and document analysis, wiretapping, and fingerprints. J Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI figures prominent in this book, and a man named Tom White, who worked for Hoover, becomes a hero figuring out the atrocities during the Osage Reign of Terror.
It was horrifying to read of the massive crimes committed against the Osage. It was incredible how many people were poisoned, shot, or killed in other ways. Additionally, the author describes corrupt banking and lending businesses. Tom White found instances where they were expected to pay 10 to 50 percent interest rates. Life insurance policies with bogus heirs were designed to embezzle money from Osage. When accused of crimes or in need of legal advice, they were faced with ridiculous legal fees designed to steal their wealth. Rigged juries were commonplace, and undertakers, doctors, and police officers covered up horrendous crimes committed by white men. David Gran successfully depicts, with much documentation, the systematic exploitation of the Osage. It was an eye-opening and disturbing read.
