Killers of the Flower Moon

In Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann retells the story of a series of grisly murders that took place in the early 1900's in Osage County, Oklahoma. This nonfiction narrative recounts some of the history of the Osage tribe in order to explain how they came to settle in Oklahoma and how they became exceedingly wealthy when oil was discovered beneath their reservation. As it turns out, this oil would become a blessing and a curse for the Osage people. After discovering oil beneath their reservation, the Osage way of life was drastically changed as they became the richest people per capita, built large and elaborate mansions, bought multiple automobiles, started large businesses and casinos, and continued to amass large sums of money. Unfortunately, the Osage, as with most Native Americans at the time, were not allowed to spend their own money that they had in their own bank accounts without a white guardian to approve of their purchases and help manage their accounts. As you can imagine, this quickly led to some dubious practices and a large amount of corruption. It also led to hundreds of murders. The majority of Grann's work focuses on explaining how the FBI, which had just been created, got involved in and ultimately solved the case. However, Grann's continued research into the Osage murders reveals that the FBI had only brushed the surface, and while they did investigate and solve a landmark case, the FBI in no way got to the bottom of the systematic killing of the Osage people for their oil rights and money (Grann).

The end of this book marks another successful book club read. I ended up finishing this month's book in less than a week because I became so absorbed and interested in the book. While the book was incredibly interesting, and I was thrilled that the FBI was able to put a wealthy white man behind bars for murdering a significant amount of Osage people, and this wasn't a particularly easy task in the early 1900's, especially in Oklahoma, I was really disheartened, though not surprised, about what this book reveals about America's past. While many of us may like to ignore the past injustices of our country, Grann makes sure that by the end of the book his reader is able to understand that hundreds of Osage people were murdered in a systematic way. The most frustrating and disgustingly racist practice of not allowing Native American peoples to spend their own money without the permission of a white person who essentially managed their accounts shocked and disturbed me. I was somewhat surprised that this was still a law in place in the 1920's, and in retrospect, it seems obvious that this practice led many a greedy white person to poison and assassinate Osage people who they had cultivated strong relationships with. In fact, many white American men and women married Osage people only to poison and kill them off in order to gain their inheritance and wealth. This is outrageous, and frustrating, and sad, but I am grateful that Grann took the time to research these events and publish this book, because we always need authors who are willing to dig up the inconvenient and messy moments of our past and shine a light on them for all of us to see.