Osage would later refer to this as a diaspora. DAVIES: We're speaking with David Grann. This really was about a clash of two civilizations, the emergence of modern law enforcement and how important it is to be a country of laws. The forced migrations had depleted their numbers. Hale, his nephews, and one of the ranch hands they hired were charged with the murder of Mollie Kyle's family. These were men who were kind of struggling to adapt to the new bureau to adapt to new scientific forms of detection which were slowly emerging such as fingerprinting, handwriting analysis. Nevertheless, impatient settlers massacred several of the Osage, mutilating their bodies and scalping them. To try to prevent further criminality and to protect the Osage, in 1925 Congress passed a law prohibiting non-Osage from inheriting headrights from Osage who had half or more Native American ancestry.[13][23]. The bureau badly bungled the case initially. [3][4] This was after a major class-action suit had been filed against the departments of Interior and Treasury in 1996 by Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) on behalf of other Native Americans, for similar reasons. You know, it's fascinating because you spoke with grandchildren of this era, and they would bring you documents and in some cases stories that they had heard of crimes that we didn't know about. It wasnt just Mollies family that was being methodically killed on Oklahomas Osage Nation Reservation in the early 1920s. He, too, had been stripped naked. The oil boom was in full swing, and the Osage people were prosperous due to ownership of mineral rights. [12], In the early 1990s, journalist Dennis McAuliffe of The Washington Post investigated the suspicious death of his grandmother, Sybil Beekman Bolton, an Osage with headrights who died in 1925 at age 21. The Osage were being shot and poisoned in staggering numbers. On June 28, 1923, Hale and Burkhart put George Bigheart on a train to Oklahoma City to be taken to a hospital. Both Grammer and Kirby were killed before they could testify. . Thats one of the more outrageous details, Grann says. GRANN: These were deeply intimate crimes. This Scottish-born boy came to America at the age of 16 after his father died. January 12, 2014. I could never fully fathom what that must have been like for her. Hes very insecure in his career at the time, Grann says. [17][h], In the case of the Smith murders, Ernest was soon convinced that even his wife's money and his uncle's political influence could not save him. So Mary Jo Webb was somebody who I met. There was a great deal of both envy and prejudice and eventually outrage. And the Osage would receive a check every four months. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? OETA Debuts New Documentary About Early 1900s Osage Murders They didn't treat these crimes with seriousness. And you often didn't quite know who they were working for, who they were leaking to. He has to wear a suit and a fedora where he had once ridden on a horse back with a 10-gallon hat. GRANN: Yes. And so they asked him to go to Washington, D.C., to try to plead for help. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. GRANN: At one point, they released an outlaw, a man named Blackie - very appropriately - who they hoped to use as an informant. To gain part of the wealth, Hale persuaded Ernest to marry Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded Osage. And you could not sell or buy a headright. Osage Indian murders - Wikipedia DAVIES: Mollie is married to a guy named Ernest Burkhart. July 3, 2022 . I'm Terry Gross. In some instances, white settlers even married their marks to legally become the next of kin before murdering their spouses. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? how many osage murders might there possibly have been? Blood for Oil - Reason.com He shows up to look into the killings. Murders in the U.S. by state 2021 | Statista And this team then is sent in undercover, and, of course, they do not represent the team the kind of agents that Hoover was touting as college boys. But within a few years, they began to be forced off their territory. GRANN: The public, the whites, not just in Oklahoma, but across the United States, were transfixed by the Osage wealth which belied images of Native Americans that could be traced back to the first brutal contact with whites. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? Grann spoke to FRESH AIR's Dave Davies about his new book, "Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI.". Osage Nation Announces 2023 Sovereignty Day Celebration and Dance on March 11, 2023| CLICK HERE. But with the arrest of William K. Hale it all stopped. The U.S. Department of the Interior managed leases for oil exploration and production on land owned by the Osage Nation through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later managed royalties, paying individual allottees. As a youth he had been told she died of kidney disease, then as a suicide. [1] In 1995, the writer Robert Allen Warrior wrote about walking through an Osage cemetery and seeing "the inordinate number of young people who died during that time. The priest told her not to touch liquor under any circumstances. Accuracy and availability may vary. And he was considered honorable and not corrupt. It would later become Oklahoma. How'd that happen? In March 1923 an alarmed Osage Tribal Council sought U.S. government intervention in the . And because of racial prejudice, it was a enormous challenge, and many people believe that the locals would never convict fellow white men for killing an Osage Indian. This sordid episode has been revived recently by Killers of the Flower Moon, which as of June 2021 is being made into a movie on location in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. GRANN: There are about 4,000 who still live in the area. The Osage, who'd been pushed west for more than a hundred years, lived north in what eventually became Kansas. And it is the first hint that Mollie's family has become a target of this conspiracy and that her tribe has also become a target of this conspiracy. She was born in the 1880s, growing up in a lodge, practicing Osage tradition, speaking Osage. And the challenges that Tom White and his men faced were just enormous, almost Herculean in that, one - there was enormous corruption. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? "The Osage Murders: Oil Wealth, Betrayal and the FBIs First Big Case." Vaughan's body was so badly disfigured that the coroner could not be certain whether the man had fallen off the train or else been beaten first and then pushed off. When they were herded south onto their parcel of Oklahoma land, no one had the slightest idea that the place floated on an ocean of liquid gold--oil. GRANN: You know, Tom White is in many ways like Mollie Burkhart in that he is a transitional figure in this country. He was a young man. In the late 1600s there were possibly seventeen thousand Osage. So you had a local lawman. The press referred to them as, quote, unquote, "the red millionaires and the plutocratic Osage." how many osage murders might there possibly have been? The first chronicle is told largely from the perspective of an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart, whose family had become a prime target of the murder conspiracy. Local whites befriended them, in some cases, married them and targeted them for their money. He went to Oklahoma City to meet with an Osage who was dying of suspected poisoning. So there were only about 2,000 Osage who were registered on the tribal roll. John Ramsey confessed to participation in the murder of Roan as soon as he was arrested. [1] The Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the preceding agency to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), found a low-level market in contract killers to kill the Osage for their wealth. 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. [c] By that time, Lizzie had headrights for herself and had inherited the headrights from her late husband and two daughters. GRANN: No, I mean, they lived in the community, and they presented a certain face and concealed often what they were about. Henry Roan was another guy who was murdered. . In Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann picks up the case and reveals the even wider conspiracy in the Osage murders, which may have numbered in the hundreds. The Osage oil murders were a series of murders based on Native American discrimination that took place in the 1920's, in order to steal the wealth of the Osage tribe. As the body count rose in the early 1920s, the Osage saw no action from local and state law enforcement personnel. GRANN: Yeah. He died there in 1942. His doubts arose from a variety of conflicting evidence. So the Osage purchased this land. March 1, 2011. (Credit: David Grann). But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! There was a tremendous amount of corruption in Osage County. . Journalist David Grann tells the story. And you realize when you speak to someone like Margie Burkhart how much these crimes still reverberate in the present, how much this history is still living in the present. GRANN: So, yes, the Osage were typical of many American-Indian nations. Mollie Burkhart Cobb died of unrelated causes on June 16, 1937. How did whites in Oklahoma react to seeing Native Americans with all that money? We'll continue our conversation after a short break. And they were able to hold on to this last bit of their territory which they could not even see. By 1920, the market for oil had grown dramatically and brought much wealth to the Osage. In 1923 alone, the 2,000 tribe members collectively received $30 millionthe equivalent to $400 million today, according to Grann. became one the osage of the fbi's first major homicide cases. The other agents recruited were: a former New Mexico sheriff; a former Texas Ranger; John Burger, who had worked on the previous investigation; Frank Smith; and John Wren, an American Indian of the Ute Nation who had previously been a spy for the Mexican revolutionaries.[20]. "The Great Depression had wiped out many Osage fortunes that had already been diminished by guardians and thieves. Wiki, Osage Indian Murders. So you get a sense just of the quality of the legal establishment who is supposed to be solving these crimes. The tribe held the mineral rights communally and paid its members by a percentage related to their holdings. The Osage Tribal Council suspected that Hale was responsible for many of the deaths. Methodical, incorruptible and fearless, White put together a team that, having eliminated all alternative explanations, concluded the Osage killings were directed by Ernest Burkhart's uncle, William Hale, a wealthy rancher known as "the King of the Osage Hills", who had tried to cash in a $25,000 life insurance policy on Henry Roan. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? Then, that evening, he walked out of the boarding house. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And so what they did is they gave each person a headright. Thats what makes these crimes so sinister and disturbing, he says. And the third chronicle is told from my perspective in the present. And he said, if you speak to the Osage, will you please tell them that for me? He wanted to remake the FBI. They had to pay for justice.. His body had been stripped naked. These private investigators were often, though, sordid characters. By John D. May - Oklahoma Historical Society. I met with a descendant of Mollie Burkhart. Hoover instead turned the case over to Tom White, an experienced investigator who lived in the saddle. GRANN: Yeah. Morrison received a life sentence in 1926, for his participation in the Brown murder. Inside the Story of the Systematic Murder of Osage Indians in the '20s This is FRESH AIR. They have to suddenly file paperwork and wear suits, things that none of them were accustomed to, but they were very experienced lawmen including a man like Tom White. DAVIES: In this period in which whites in Osage had a lot of social contact, a lot of intermarriage, many whites that were trusted by members of the Osage Nation - this FBI agent Tom White and his team begin to discover some pretty sinister stuff going on. He realizes given the danger, given the fear in the area, given the corruption the team will have to go in undercover.