Books alter our states of mind, infuse our lives with emotion and experience. When I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I was breathing in the life of locals in Williamsburg, immersed in empathy for Francie as she watched the slow demise of her father, feeling her pride as she became an independent woman with an education and a career, transcending tenement life and moving on with hope into Francie's future past the end of the book.
But roughly around the same time as Francie's story, in the early 1900's, a more menacing reality was unfolding. Over a thousand miles southwest of Brooklyn is Osage County, Oklahoma, where David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon takes place. In this book, instead of romance or relishing in the past, there is regret and resentment. Instead of poverty and drunkenness as central conflicts, the driving forces of American Expansion, greed for money and land, and systemic injustice are the main culprits of an entire people's loss and suffering. In this book, Grann exposes the true crimes against the Osage Indians. He tells the stories of their families who lived peaceful lives in harmony with the land on which they lived until the disruption of Western Expansion that robbed them of their homes and attempted to obliterate their existence.
Mollie is one of four sisters born to Lizzie and Ne-kah-e-se-y, Osage Indians who had grown up on their ancestral land in southeastern Kansas. Their people were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their land to the United States and find a new homeland. They settled on unoccupied territory where they believed they could be happy because "White man cannot put iron thing in ground here... white man does not like country where there are hills, and he will not come" (40). The family settled in an area called Gray Horse. The troubles caused by the forced migration and diseases such as smallpox led to the tribe's population falling to a third of what it had been seventy years earlier (41). The list of troubles they endured was seemingly endless: mandatory assimilation, the dwindling of buffalo, a major food source, unfair government mandates such as having to learn Western farming in order to receive annuity payments, and an overall status quo attitude of the white settlers that the Indians were unintelligent savages who didn't deserve to live on the land they had been living on for generations.
Already by page 44, I was outraged. How could this be allowed to happen? I know superficially that the Native Americans were ravaged, slaughtered, brutalized, and dehumanized much like African slaves were in this country. However, to learn about how deeply entrenched this was in the culture of America is disturbing, enough to make me feel shame for this country. I realize, though, that I cannot blame the country for the injustices. The evils uncovered and revealed in this book have to do with numerous immoral individuals and the culture of expansion and supremacy that protected people who committed atrocious crimes toward the Native Americans.
The situation worsened for Mollie's family after an ironic twist in the tribe's lives. The land they newly inhabited turned out to be above one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the country. As a result, they began to accumulate a fortune from leasing the land and receiving up to millions of dollars a year. In the 1920's, "the Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world" (6). Their wealth made them easy targets and victims of deceptive individuals who married into the Osage to inherit their money and other scheming swindlers who manipulated their way into Osage money, often through poisoning and murder plots. The tribe's tremendous wealth came with tremendous tragedy. Mollie's sister, Anna Brown, went missing and was found dead in a ravine. Then there were other murders of Osage Indians that went unsolved: Charles Whitehorn, her other sister Rita, and her mother, Lizzie. A pattern emerged and the details of the deaths came together throughout the book.
Reading this, I was disgusted by the lawless criminals, corrupt local officials, and the greedy white men who abused their power, deceived the Osage, and took their money, and most importantly, scores or most likely hundreds of the tribe's human lives. At the same time, I admired the courageous, upstanding lawmen such as Agent Tom White who helped to unravel the mysteries and find culprits to some of the murders. I learned about how J. Edgar Hoover hired White and others to investigate the Osage murders and how much control Hoover had over the handling of the case and how carefully he tried to craft the reputation of the FBI. However, while there was success in resolving Anna Brown's murder, there was so much left unresolved. The bureau estimated only 24 Osage murders, though the number must have been much higher. The FBI seemed to have closed the case too early, shortly after trying and convicting criminals responsible for Anna Brown's death, and they failed to continue bringing other murderers to justice; "at least some at the bureau knew that there were many more homicides that had been systematically covered up, evading their efforts of detection" (282). One of the bureau agents who was investigating the Osage cases, acknowledged the culture of killing and revealed that "There are so many of these murder cases. There are hundreds and hundreds" (283).
At the end of the book, David Grann writes about his encounters with current members of the Osage and descendants of many killed during the Reign of Terror. He learns about many more deaths that were not investigated, including Mary Jo Webb's grandfather who may have been slowly poisoned by his wife who was white but was ultimately killed by a hit-and-run. He also met Marvin Stepson whose grandfather was killed, possibly by one of the convicted felons mentioned earlier in the book. It is clear that countless families have suffered from lack of peace and justice regarding their murdered ancestors.
These accounts of cold-blooded murder are not mentioned in American History textbooks or general school lectures. These deaths are not memorialized by people outside of the tribe. I assume that the majority of Americans do not know of the Osage murders nor the specific details of systemic oppression that affected the daily lives of Native Americans during the expansion of this country and still today. As citizens of this nation, we need to understand and confront the many violent truths of our history. Our land is "saturated with blood" (291). We must acknowledge this, not for the reason of resentment or animosity, but for the reason of education and wisdom.
I am grateful for writers such as David Grann who help uncover a truth about this nation's history. This book helps galvanize ongoing civic engagement. While the murders of the Osage cannot be undone, we must work toward a nation where policies and practices are in place to ensure that all people's rights and lives are respected and protected, and we must insist on uncorrupted support from our local and federal governments.
But roughly around the same time as Francie's story, in the early 1900's, a more menacing reality was unfolding. Over a thousand miles southwest of Brooklyn is Osage County, Oklahoma, where David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon takes place. In this book, instead of romance or relishing in the past, there is regret and resentment. Instead of poverty and drunkenness as central conflicts, the driving forces of American Expansion, greed for money and land, and systemic injustice are the main culprits of an entire people's loss and suffering. In this book, Grann exposes the true crimes against the Osage Indians. He tells the stories of their families who lived peaceful lives in harmony with the land on which they lived until the disruption of Western Expansion that robbed them of their homes and attempted to obliterate their existence.
Mollie is one of four sisters born to Lizzie and Ne-kah-e-se-y, Osage Indians who had grown up on their ancestral land in southeastern Kansas. Their people were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their land to the United States and find a new homeland. They settled on unoccupied territory where they believed they could be happy because "White man cannot put iron thing in ground here... white man does not like country where there are hills, and he will not come" (40). The family settled in an area called Gray Horse. The troubles caused by the forced migration and diseases such as smallpox led to the tribe's population falling to a third of what it had been seventy years earlier (41). The list of troubles they endured was seemingly endless: mandatory assimilation, the dwindling of buffalo, a major food source, unfair government mandates such as having to learn Western farming in order to receive annuity payments, and an overall status quo attitude of the white settlers that the Indians were unintelligent savages who didn't deserve to live on the land they had been living on for generations.
Already by page 44, I was outraged. How could this be allowed to happen? I know superficially that the Native Americans were ravaged, slaughtered, brutalized, and dehumanized much like African slaves were in this country. However, to learn about how deeply entrenched this was in the culture of America is disturbing, enough to make me feel shame for this country. I realize, though, that I cannot blame the country for the injustices. The evils uncovered and revealed in this book have to do with numerous immoral individuals and the culture of expansion and supremacy that protected people who committed atrocious crimes toward the Native Americans.
The situation worsened for Mollie's family after an ironic twist in the tribe's lives. The land they newly inhabited turned out to be above one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the country. As a result, they began to accumulate a fortune from leasing the land and receiving up to millions of dollars a year. In the 1920's, "the Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world" (6). Their wealth made them easy targets and victims of deceptive individuals who married into the Osage to inherit their money and other scheming swindlers who manipulated their way into Osage money, often through poisoning and murder plots. The tribe's tremendous wealth came with tremendous tragedy. Mollie's sister, Anna Brown, went missing and was found dead in a ravine. Then there were other murders of Osage Indians that went unsolved: Charles Whitehorn, her other sister Rita, and her mother, Lizzie. A pattern emerged and the details of the deaths came together throughout the book.
Reading this, I was disgusted by the lawless criminals, corrupt local officials, and the greedy white men who abused their power, deceived the Osage, and took their money, and most importantly, scores or most likely hundreds of the tribe's human lives. At the same time, I admired the courageous, upstanding lawmen such as Agent Tom White who helped to unravel the mysteries and find culprits to some of the murders. I learned about how J. Edgar Hoover hired White and others to investigate the Osage murders and how much control Hoover had over the handling of the case and how carefully he tried to craft the reputation of the FBI. However, while there was success in resolving Anna Brown's murder, there was so much left unresolved. The bureau estimated only 24 Osage murders, though the number must have been much higher. The FBI seemed to have closed the case too early, shortly after trying and convicting criminals responsible for Anna Brown's death, and they failed to continue bringing other murderers to justice; "at least some at the bureau knew that there were many more homicides that had been systematically covered up, evading their efforts of detection" (282). One of the bureau agents who was investigating the Osage cases, acknowledged the culture of killing and revealed that "There are so many of these murder cases. There are hundreds and hundreds" (283).
At the end of the book, David Grann writes about his encounters with current members of the Osage and descendants of many killed during the Reign of Terror. He learns about many more deaths that were not investigated, including Mary Jo Webb's grandfather who may have been slowly poisoned by his wife who was white but was ultimately killed by a hit-and-run. He also met Marvin Stepson whose grandfather was killed, possibly by one of the convicted felons mentioned earlier in the book. It is clear that countless families have suffered from lack of peace and justice regarding their murdered ancestors.
These accounts of cold-blooded murder are not mentioned in American History textbooks or general school lectures. These deaths are not memorialized by people outside of the tribe. I assume that the majority of Americans do not know of the Osage murders nor the specific details of systemic oppression that affected the daily lives of Native Americans during the expansion of this country and still today. As citizens of this nation, we need to understand and confront the many violent truths of our history. Our land is "saturated with blood" (291). We must acknowledge this, not for the reason of resentment or animosity, but for the reason of education and wisdom.
I am grateful for writers such as David Grann who help uncover a truth about this nation's history. This book helps galvanize ongoing civic engagement. While the murders of the Osage cannot be undone, we must work toward a nation where policies and practices are in place to ensure that all people's rights and lives are respected and protected, and we must insist on uncorrupted support from our local and federal governments.
