Osage: Native American murders, birth of FBI

David Grann (goodreads.com); Xochitl, Diego Rivers, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"Man belongs to the earth. Earth does not below to man." - Chief Seattle

  

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

The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

This is a true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

 In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were? 

They were Native American members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

I'll administrate your funds, boys!

Then, one by one, they began to be murdered. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was killed of. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances. 

In this last remnant of the Wild West -- where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed -- virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

 

State-sanctioned genocide of natives

As the death toll surpassed more than 24 Osage, the newly created F.B.I. (FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation) took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. 

But the Bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. 

Tom White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the Bureau. They infiltrated the region struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history. More
 

DAVID GRANN 

D. Grann

is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, who has written about everything from New York City’s antiquated water tunnels to the hunt for the giant squid to the presidential campaign. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, published by Doubleday, is Grann’s first book and is being developed into a movie by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company and Paramount Pictures. More