Killers of the Flower Moon

“In the early 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. To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. In the early twentieth century, each person on the tribal roll began receiving a quarterly check.”

This series of events presages the conflicts to come: the Osage Nation being pushed west by white settlers, the discovery of oil on their land (the treaty for which explicitly gave the Osage people rights to any deposits beneath the surface), and the immense wealth that came with the oil. It was the last of these that led greedy men to inflict the Reign of Terror on the tribe that resulted in scores of murders.

“Undertakers charged the Osage exorbitant rates for a funeral, trying to gouge them, and this was no exception. The undertaker demanded $1,450 for the casket, $100 for preparing and embalming the body, and $25 for the rental of a hearse. By the time he was done tallying the accessories, including gloves for the grave digger, the total cost was astronomical. As a lawyer in town said, ‘It was getting so that you could not bury an Osage Indian at a cost of under $6,000’—a sum that, adjusted for inflation, is the equivalent of nearly $80,000 today.”

This illustrates the system of graft that was in place in Osage territory, in which white people swindled the Osage people out of millions of dollars. This was in addition to the killings that took place to get control of the headrights to oil wealth. The entire society was designed so that white people could feed like parasites on Osage wealth.

“And few places in the country were as chaotic as Osage County, where the unwritten codes of the West, the traditions that bound communities, had unraveled. By one account, the amount of oil money had surpassed the total value of all the Old West gold rushes combined, and this fortune had drawn every breed of miscreant from across the country.”

This shows the lawlessness, outlaws, and great wealth that existed in Osage territory, creating the mix that would lead to the territory’s horrific crimes. While all of the American West was, at this point in history, less controlled than the country’s East, Osage territory was a thing unto itself, a deadly amalgam of riches and corruption.