Top Quotes: “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders & The Birth of the FBI” — David Grann
Background: I came to learn more about the FBI’s past but turns out this book is much more about the true story of what was once one of the most famous periods of time in American history but has now been forgotten: an oil boom led a native tribe to become the richest people per capita in the world and then they started getting murdered. It’s amazing true crime storytelling and an important part of history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Introduction
“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 his land was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the US. To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. In the early 20th century, each person on the tribal roll began receiving a quarterly check. The amount was initially only for a few dollars, but over time, as more oil was tapped, the dividends grew into the hundreds, then the thousands. And virtually every year the payments increased, until the tribe members had collectively accumulated millions of dollars. In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million. The Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The public became transfixed by the tribe’s prosperity, which belied the images of Native Americans that could be traced back to the first brutal contact with whites.”
“For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression. Instead, citizens responded to a hue and cry by chasing after subjects.”
“Only in the mid-19th century, after the growth of industrial cities and a rash of urban riots — after dread of the so-called dangerous classes surpassed dread of the state — did police departments emerge in the U.S. By the time of the Osage murders, the informal system of citizen policing had been displaced, but vestiges of it remained, especially in places that still seemed to exist on the periphery of geography and history.”
“By 1877, there were virtually no more American buffalo to hunt — a development hastened by the authorities who encouraged settlers to eradicate the beasts, knowing that, in the words of an army officer, ‘every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.’”
“After the US government purchased the Cherokee Outlet, a vast prairie that was part of the Cherokees’ territory and near the western border of the Osage reservation, it had been announced that at noon on September 16, 1893, a settler would be able to claim one of the 42,000 parcels of land — if they got to spot first! For days before the starting date, tens of thousands of men, women, and children had come, from as far away as CA and NY, and gathered along the boundary, the ragged, dirty, desperate mass of humanity stretched across the horizon, like an army pitted against it. Finally, after several ‘sooners’ who’d tried to sneak across the line early had been shot, the starting gun sounded — A RACE FOR LAND SUCH AS NEVER BEFORE WITNESSED ON EARTH, as one newspaper put it. A reporter wrote, ‘Men knocked each other over as they rushed onward. Women shrieked and fell, fainting, only to be trampled and perhaps killed. The reporter continued, ‘Men, women, and horses were laying all over the prairie. Here and there men were fighting to the death over claims which each maintained he was the first to reach. Knives and guns were drawn — it was a terrible and exciting scene…it was a struggle where the game was emphatically every man for himself and devil take the hindmost.’ By nightfall, the Cherokee Outlet had been carved into pieces.”
“In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in ads, the company’s motto, ‘We Never Sleep,’ was inscribed under a large, unblinking, Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term ‘private eye.’”
“Many Osage, unlike other wealthy Americans, could not spend their money as they pleased because of the federally imposed system of federal guardians. (One guardian claimed that an Osage adult was ‘like a child six or eight years old, and when he sees a new toy he wants to buy it.’) The law mandated that guardians be assigned to any Native Americans whom the Department of the Interior deemed ‘incompetent.’ In practice, the decision to appoint a guardian — to render a Native American, in effect, a half-citizen — was nearly always based on the quantum of Indian blood in the property holder, or what a state supreme court justice referred to as ‘racial weakness.’ A full-blooded Native was invariably appointed a guardian, whereas a mixed-blood person rarely was.”
“In 1921, just as the government had once adopted a ration system to pay the Osage for seized land — just as it always seemed to turn its gospel of enlightenment into a hammer of coercion — Congress implemented even more draconian legislation controlling how the Osage could spend their money. Guardians would not only continue to oversee their wards’ finances; under the new law, these Osage Indians with guardians were also ‘restricted,’ which meant that each of them could withdraw no more than a few thousand dollars annually from their trust fund. It didn’t matter if these Osage needed their money to pay for education or a sick child’s hospital bills.”
The FBI
“President Theodore Roosevelt had created what became the FBI in 1908, hoping to fill a void in federal law enforcement. Before Hoover, it still had only a few hundred agents and a smattering of field offices. Its jurisdiction over crimes was limited, and agents handled a hodgepodge of cases: they investigated antitrust and banking violations; the interstate shipment of stolen cars, contraceptives, prizefighting films, and smutty books; escapes by federal prisoners; and crimes committed on Indian reservations.”
“In 1924, the attorney general concluded that given the growth of the country and the profusion of federal laws, a national police force was indispensable, but in order to serve this need, the bureau had to be transformed from top to bottom. To the surprise of many of the department’s critics, he named J. Edgar Hoover, the 29-year-old deputy director of the bureau, to serve as acting director while he searched for a permanent replacement. Hoover had overseen the bureau’s rogue intelligence division, which had spied on individuals merely because of their political beliefs. Hoover had never been a detective or made an arrest. His grandfather and his father had worked for the federal government, and Hoover, who still lived with his mother, was a creature of the bureaucracy — its gossip, its lingo, its unspoken deals, its bloodless but vicious territorial wars.”
“Coveting the dictatorship as a way to build his own bureaucratic empire, Hoover promised to disband the intelligence division and zealously implemented the reforms requested by the attorney general that furthered his own desire to remake the bureau into a modern force. Hoover got the job he longed for: he would rapidly reshape the bureau into a monolithic force — one that, during his nearly five-decade reign as director, he would deploy not only to combat crime but also to commit egregious abuses of power.”
“Tom White came to see the law as a struggle to subdue the violent passions not only in others but also in oneself.”
Robbing The Natives
“The so-called Indian business, as White discovered, was an elaborate criminal operation, in which various sectors of society were complicit. The crooked guardians and administrators of Osage estates were typically among the most prominent white citizens: businessmen and ranchers and lawyers and politicians. So were the lawmen and prosecutors and judges who facilitated and concealed the swindling (and, sometimes, acted as guardians and administrators themselves).”
“In 1924, the Indian Rights Administration documented how rich Indians in Oklahoma were being ‘shamelessly and openly robbed in a scientific and ruthless manner’ and how guardianships were ‘the plums to be distributed to the faithful friends of the judges as a reward for their support at the polls.’ A white woman married to an Osage man described to a reporter how the locals would plot: ‘A group of traders and lawyers sprung up who selected certain Indians as their prey. They owned all the officials…These men would cold-bloodedly say, ‘You take So-and-So, So-and-So, and So-and-So, and I’ll take these.’ They selected Indians who had full headrights and large farms.”
“Some of the schemes were beyond depraved. The Indian Rights Association detailed the case of a widow whose guardian had absconded with most of her possessions. Then the guardian falsely informed the woman, who’d moved from Osage County, that she had no more money to draw on, leaving her to raise her two young children in poverty. When the widow’s baby got sick, the guardian still refused to turn over any of her money, though she pleaded for it. ‘Without proper food and medical care, the baby died.’ The Osage were aware of such schemes but had no means to stop them. After the widow lost her baby, evidence of the fraud was brought before a county judge, only to be ignored.”
“An Osage, speaking to a reporter about the guardians, stated, ‘Your money draws ’em and you’re absolutely helpless. They have all the law and all the machinery on their side. Tell everybody, when you write your story, that they’re scalping our souls out here.”
The Murders
“How had Hale became the beneficiary of murdered Henry Roan’s $25k life insurance policy? After Roan turned up with a bullet in the back of his head, in 1923, Hale had the most obvious motive. Yet the sheriff had never investigated Hale, nor had the other local lawmakers — an oversight that no longer seemed incidental. White tracked down the insurance salesman who had originally sold Roan the policy in 1921. Hale had always insisted that Roan, one of his closest friends, had made him the beneficiary because he’d lent Roan a lot of money over the years. But the salesman recalled that Hale had independently pushed for the policy, saying, ‘Hells bells, that’s just like spearing fish in a leg.’ Hale had promised to pay an extra premium on such a policy and the salesman had responded, ‘Well, we might write him for $10k.’ ‘No, I want it for $25k,’ Hale said. The salesman had told Hale that because he wasn’t Roan’s relative, he could become his beneficiary only if he were his creditor. Hale had said, ‘Well, he owes me a lot of money, he owes me $10k or $12k.’ White found it hard to believe that this debt was real. If Roan had really owed Hale that amount of money, then all Hale would’ve had to do was present proof of the debt to Roan’s wealthy estate, which would have reimbursed him. Hale had no reason to get an insurance policy on his friend’s life — a policy that wouldn’t have a significant return unless Roan, who was then in his late 30s, suddenly died.”
“Roan seemed to have been unaware of these machinations; he trusted that Hale, his supposedly close friend, was helping him.”
“But there remained one impediment to Hale’s scheme. A doctor had to examine Roan — a heavy drinker who’d once wrecked his car while intoxicated — and deem him a safe risk for the insurance company. Hale shopped for doctors until he found a man in Pawhuska willing to recommend Roan, one of the seemingly ubiquitous Shoun brothers.”
“White studied the pattern of deaths in Mollie’s family. Even the chronology seemed haphazard but was part of a ruthless plan. Anna Brown, divorced and without children, had bequeathed nearly all her wealth to her mother, Lizzie. By killing Anna first, the mastermind made sure that her headright would not be divided between multiple heirs. Because Lizzie had willed most of her headright to her surviving daughters, Mollie and Rita, she became the next logical target. Then came Rita and her husband, Bill Smith. White realized that the unusual method of the final killing — a bombing — had a vicious logic. The wills of Rita and Bill stipulated that if they died simultaneously, much of Rita’s headright would go to her surviving sister, Mollie. Here, the mastermind had made one miscalculation. Because Bill unexpectedly outlived Rita by a few days, he had inherited much of her wealth, and upon death the money went to one of his relatives. Still, the bulk of the family’s headrights had been funneled to Mollie Burkhart, whose wealth was controlled by Ernest. And Hale, White was convinced, had secretly forged an indirect channel to this fortune through his subservient nephew.”
“White couldn’t determine whether Ernest’s marriage to Mollie — four years before Anna’s murder — had been conceived from the outset as part of the plot, or if Hale had prevailed upon his nephew to betray her after they married. In either case, the plan was so brazen, so sinister, that it was hard to fathom. It demanded that Ernest share a bed with Mollie, and raise children with her, all while plotting and scheming against her family.”
Legacy
“For Hoover, the Osage murder investigation became a showcase for the modern bureau. As he had hoped, the case demonstrated to many around the country the need for a national, more professional, scientifically skilled force. Hoover created a pristine origin story, a founding mythology in which the bureau, under his direction, had emerged from lawlessness and overcome the last wild American frontier, not disclosing its earlier bungling or false starts.”
“The Great Depression had wiped out many Osage fortunes that had already been diminished by guardians and thieves. The price of a barrel of oil, which reached more than $3 during the boom years, plummeted to 65 cents in 1931, and an annual headright payment fell to less than $800. Compounding the situation was the gradual depletion of the oil fields. Over the next few decades, most of the boomtowns began to die off. Today, more than 10,000 wells remain scattered across the reservation, but they are generally what oilmen call ‘stripper wells,’ each one generating less than 15 barrels a day. Quarterly checks might be a few thousand dollars per year.”
“The Osage have found new sources of revenue, including from several casinos that’ve been built on their territory. They generate tens of millions of dollars for the Osage, helping to fund their government, educational programs, and healthcare facilities. The Osage were also able to retrieve at least a portion of the oil funds mismanaged over decades by the U.S. government. In 2011, after an 11-year legal battle, the government agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the Osage for $380 million.”
“Cases were dropped that did not fit into the bureau’s dramatic theory of the murders: that a lone mastermind was responsible for all of the killings, and that when Hale and his henchmen were captured, the case of the Osage murders was solved. Yet, in hindsight, the fact that Hale appeared to have played no role in the Whitehorn murder plot was the very reason the killing was so important. The secret history of the Reign of Terror is that the evil of Hale was not an anomaly.”
“I don’t know of a single Osage family which didn’t lose at least one family member because of the head rights. There are so many of these murder cases. There are hundreds and thousands.”
