KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

(The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI)

By David Grann

Vintage Books

321 pgs

We discovered this book several years on sale at a local Costco and were fascinated by the title. Reading the back cover blurbs was enough to intrigue us into purchasing it. Never mind that added subtitle concerning the early years of the FBI, of which we confess to knowing very little other than what we’d seen in films and on TV. So the book sat, like so many others, on our To-Read-Shelf while we continued to plow through our usual fare of high-octane action and adventure pulp fiction titles. Then we learned that the book with the odd name had been optioned by the film studios and was to be adapted for the silver screen by the note director Martin Scorsese. That was more than enough to turn up the curiosity factor and we finally sat down to read “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

In the early 1920s rich oil deposits were discovered in Osage County, Oklahoma; beneath the land of the Osage reservation. Thus overnight members of the Tribe were set to become some of the wealthiest people in the entire country as they legally owned the mineral rights. Though initially reported whimsically in papers everywhere as a comical absurdity, i.e. the stereotyped ignorant redman about own mansions, a fleet of new automobiles and become a landed gentry, there were darker reactions emerging both locally and nationally. Strong prejudicial elements began to make their voices heard arguing at the “obvious” injustice of the situation.

 This led to corrupt government official establishing “custodianships” upon an Osage benefiting from the oil boom. It was argued only a white person could properly manage the monies coming in and would do so thus protecting the interest of the owner of the rights. This was a thinly disguise subterfuge that make it all too see for the Osage to be cheated and denied what was owed them. That alone was bad enough, but by 1923 several members of the tribe were murdered and others died of poisoning. Local police agents were ill-equipped and inexperienced to investigate these killings and in the subsequent months more were recorded until it became all too clear that the tribe was being targeted.

Mollie Burkhart, a prominent leader in the tribe’s had two murdered and her mother poisoned. She and other members began to fear for their lives. After several years of unproductive activity on the part of state officials, requests were sent to Washington and the Department of Justice. There a young director named J. Edgar Hoover made the decision to enlist the aid of one of his agents, Tom White, to go to Oklahoma and deal with the case. White, a former Texas Ranger and old fashion lawman, was given carte blanche by Hoover to recruit his own team of undercover. Over the next few years, they worked diligently to unravel the various crimes, to uncover a hideous conspiracy led by one cunning and soulless villain.

Grann’s genius is that he meticulously writes his book as if it were a traditional fictional mystery with a beginning documenting each case, a middle wherein White arrives on the scene and begins the investigations and an ending when the plot is revealed and devil unmasked. But wherein none of this is fabrication and the people are real, he ventures beyond the story’s public conclusion in a truly gripping epilogue that still managed to reveal further facts never brought to light during the actual events.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is a powerful testimony on the racial injustices perpetrated on Native Americans and the depth at which the human soul can sink. Here are indeed real monsters in human guise and the story of the few brave men and women who had the strength to combat them even though in the end many sacrificed everything to do it.

This book is riveting from the first page to the last. We can only wish Martin Scorsese luck in doing it justice. This is a tale that needs telling at long last.