Fast, engaging and true, this book demands attention from the very first page and it just gets more compelling as the tale moves forward. The Osage were resettled on to land believed worthless and then Fate delivered a big surprise. Oil was found beneath that land and the rights were owned by the Osage entirely; they quickly became incredibly wealthy. Vast amounts of money never bring out the best in others, specifically white folks who firmly believed the Osage were unworthy of so large a fortune. In a multitude of despicable ways, white men sought to separate the money from the Osage. When legal proceedings didn't accomplish their goal, murder and mayhem did. It all really happened and still, today, pieces of the story remain unsolved. While this book won't reinforce your belief in Americans' general humanity towards one another, it will impress upon you the virtues of great investigative reporting. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I am going to review the book "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI" by David Grann. This book is hot off the press as it was published April 18, 2017 by Doubleday Books. David Grann is a best selling author and an award winning writer at "The New Yorker" magazine. He is the previous author of "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" which by the way is going to be made into a movie and is on my to-read list. He also wrote the book "The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession." For those of you who would like to purchase a copy of this book CLICK HERE. This book takes place during the Trail of Tears. Hundreds of Native Americans were murdered for wealthy white people to get Native American's inheritance from the oil on their lands. It is also about the birth of the FBI.
Overall I gave this book four out of five stars. This is a story that needed to be told so a big thank you to the author for writing this book. This era in history has been much erased from our history books and stories like this need to be told so we can learn from our mistakes. This book captured my attention from the beginning to the end. The only thing I wish the author did different was instead of saving the author's story and passion to this story until the end, I would have liked it to be intertwined within the whole story. Because the beginning of the book I did wonder where the author's ties to this story was and what made the author write this book. I am glad the author did put it in in the end.
I would like to thank Netgalley, David Grann, and Doubleday Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free Kindle copy of Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann courtesy of Net Galley and Doubleday, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review of the book on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my history book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.
I requested this book as I have an interest in Native American history and culture. It is the first book by David Grann I have read.

This book is well researched and written. It reads more like a novel or historical fiction (which it is from time to time in order to connect the dots). The author weaves the story of the Osage Tribe in Oklahoma whose reservation ended up being on top of a vast oil field, the manipulations that local non-native americans took to control and gain access to the money that was supposed to go to tribe members, and how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was formed in order to solve the cases of many early deaths of tribe members. I won't go into great detail as that gives away many of the intriguing parts of the book and it is something that I do not particularly like in a book review.

This book dealt with specific murders associated with a single family, but the author at the end paints a picture that it was going on long before this family was involved and long after.

I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in Native American History, the Osage tribe or the early development of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Killers of the FLower Moon was an excellent book exposing an amazing true crime story many have never even heard of. It is well written and well paced, A fascinating look in to what people will do for racism and greed.

<b> Killers of the Flower Moon </b> is the true story of the slaughter of dozens of Osage Indians and how MANY people got away with it. It's SO over the top that if this were a fiction story I would say the author had overwritten it and that it wasn't realistic. David Grann has come at this story from two angles.

The Osage tribe reigned over much of the mid-west back in the day. By the time of this book, roughly the early 1920's, they were mostly moved onto what was thought to be worthless land in Oklahoma. Then oil was discovered there and their lives changed forever. The first angle was how the Osage were changed by the sudden influx of millions of dollars and how the white man viewed that; how they were jealous over that, and what they did about that.

The second angle comes from the law enforcement side of the story, and specifically the building up of the FBI. At the time the first murders occurred the FBI wasn't the FBI yet. By the time the investigation was in full swing, (keeping in mind that the Osage tribe had to basically beg and pay through the nose to get anyone to investigate or do anything at all about these murders), the FBI was officially called that and Mr. Hoover was in charge.

There is a third portion of the book, not exactly another angle, but a portion so unbelievable yet proven,(to my mind at least), to be true that it actually brought tears to my eyes. I can't get into more detail but trust me on this: it was horrifying. It was shameful. It was a wrong that's never been righted and I don't believe it ever can be.

Bravo to Mr. Grann for his extensive research on this case. A case that, until now, I had never heard of. That is an injustice. I believe Mr. Grann has done his damnedest to bring to light the wrongs that were committed here, and that alone is the only justice that the Osage can hope for at this late date.

I think we owe it to the Osage to read this book, and as such, I highly recommend it.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Doubleday for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This is it.*

Oil brought unimaginable riches to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the early years of the twentieth century, and made them the “richest people per capita in the world” by the 1920s. It also brought about the “Reign of Terror,” a period of time between 1921 – 1926 when racism and insatiable greed led to many of the Osage being murdered for their headrights, which were worth millions of dollars. When the newly-created FBI first investigated the case, they botched it. Once former Texas Ranger Tom White and his undercover team were put in charge, however, significant progress was made and the evil conspiracy that devastated so many families was finally exposed.

I don’t often read true crime, but I was drawn to this one because I’ve always been very interested to learn more about the cultures and histories of Native American people. I was further intrigued because it happened in my home state and I knew nothing about it.

As difficult as it was to read about the murder victims and how they died, it was nearly as upsetting to me to read about the way the Osage were generally treated and regarded. Bigotry was made worse by jealousy of their wealth, and they were regularly swindled out of their money by being charged exorbitant fees and forced to pay hugely inflated prices for everything. Many of the Osage were ruled incompetent to handle their own money, and had court-appointed guardians who decided how much money they would be allowed to access, and what it could be used for. These guardians often-times were in control of several people’s finances, whom they stole from ruthlessly and repeatedly. Once the murders and suspicious deaths began, the terrorized Osage quickly lost hope of justice ever being served, thanks to shoddy investigations (if, indeed, an investigation took place at all) that wrapped up quickly and garnered no useful leads in finding the culprit.

What interested me as much as the case details was the portion at the end of the book, detailing visits and conversations the author had with descendants of murder victims. Grann was made privy to details known only to the families of the victims, leading to discoveries that are both shocking and heartbreaking.

Meticulously researched and written in an engaging, narrative style, Killers of the Flower Moon is simply excellent. Highly recommended for history buffs with a particular interest in Native Americans and true crime.

Thanks to talented author David Grann for his tremendous effort to bring this shamefully true Wild West historical mystery to light. His depth of research is impressive, his journalistic background apparent. I had no idea about the tragic Osage Indian murders. Appalling what greed brings out in people.

Part of what makes this book easily readable despite lots of factual chronicling is Gann’s style of engagement. He writes a cohesive and captivating story and it is shocking the instances of prejudice, conspiracy and murder being uncovered. Other interesting pieces weaved in were details about the formation of the FBI and rise of J. Edgar Hoover, who led the murder investigation. Given the scope and nature of events, the story feels a bit monotonous at times but that is inevitable when writing this kind of story.

A recent bidding war for the book raked in $5 million dollars so looks like we will be getting a movie version, possibly starring DiCaprio and De Niro. Should be good!

Wow! I had no recollection of being taught about this piece of history, though it has been some years since I've been in school, and find it unfathomable that this has been virtually erased from our collective history. Incredibly well researched, well written and eye opening.

I'd probably rate this book 2.5 stars if I could. It was somewhere between it's okay and I liked it. There were times where I wanted to DNF it, mostly because it seemed like everything had been explained and there was no new information to be gotten, but also because the origin of the FBI isn't as exciting as one might think.

I expected this book to be more like The Lost City of Z, where the reader goes along with a character or two as they piece together the mystery. Instead, most of it was bland, just a recitation of facts. And far more was about the FBI than I thought there would be. More about the Osage themselves could have given this book a bit more spark.

The parts dealing with the corruption behind law enforcement and the court of the time, along with the history of the Osage and how they gained their wealth, is where Grann really shines. Those parts were engaging, interesting, and informative. Much of the rest of the book was dry to the point of wanting to skim, if not skip entire sections.

This book appeared to reach its end (or what seemed to be its natural conclusion) and then start up again with the truly insightful stuff: that which David Grann uncovered in his own research. All of what is discussed in perhaps the last 15% of the book is far more interesting than almost everything that came before. If the whole book had been about this conspiracy and the links behind all the deaths, instead of mostly focusing on just a handful of murders, it would have been far easier to read.

All in all, it was a decent book that anyone interested in the history of the FBI or the poor treatment of the Indians even into the twentieth century should check out. But I doubt it's something many laymen would enjoy. The Lost City of Z was definitely more exciting and fun to read.

In the early 1920s, members of the Osage tribe, made wealthy through oil reserves underneath their reservation, began to die. Some were shot, either in robberies or apparent suicides. Others were poisoned, tainted whiskey being a favorite vehicle. More than one tribal member simply “wasted away,” their deaths attributed to an unknown illness. One woman, Maggie Burkhart, watched as her sisters, mother, and even her daughter died, leaving her in sole possession of a significant fortune. it was almost inevitable that Maggie would begin to fall ill as well . . .

In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover is under a tremendous amount of pressure to prove the worth of his new Investigative Bureau. With local and state authorities unable or unwilling to investigate the Osage deaths, Hoover sends agents to start what would turn into a multi-year investigation, and would set Oklahoman society on edge.

This non-fiction book is written as a murder mystery in three parts. The first part introduces us to the major players, using primary sources from Maggie Burkhart, her family, and other Osage tribe members of the time. The second part is concerned with the FBI’s investigation and is drawn primarily from the memoirs of Agent Tom White, J. Edgar Hoover, and other investigators. The third portion of the book deals with the author’s own investigation into the murders.

The book itself is engagingly written, and the subject matter has been largely forgotten by history. The subject matter itself is compelling and infuriating; the pervasive and institutionalized racism that allowed these crimes to hide amid a thousand lesser forms of violence is nothing short of appalling. The Osage in the 1920s, while millionaires on paper, were treated more like indentured servants. The government would not allow the Osage to manage their own money, each was assigned to a white “guardian” who held complete control of their finances. The abuses such a system would invite are easy to imagine. In addition, the lack of investigation (for years), suggests a breathtaking lack of concern in the swath of deaths; so long as those dying were not white. Indeed, many at the time seemed to think that the “uppity Indians” had brought such violence upon themselves, solely by being richer than their white neighbors.

This is a fantastic example of narrative nonfiction. Grann has created an incredible narrative from this story. The horror the Osage lived with in the first decades of the twentieth century has been lost to history until now, but it is a story that needs to be told. Fans of Erik Larsen will enjoy this book.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

We all know American history is filled with atrocities, especially atrocities in relation to the native populations. In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann brings to light a mostly forgotten corner of early 20th century history that involves conspiracy, the FBI, and many murders of the Osage people. The book is written in a compelling narrative style. Grann builds the case well while delving into the lives of some of the main players. He manages to not speculate, something which should be applauded because the existing historical record of events only goes so far and has many gaps. Instead, we are given portraits of some of the important persons involved and a very good timeline of events, some of which may be more important to the larger picture than first glance would indicate.

I admit to not having known about this corner of history previously. I had no idea the Osage nation was so well-off in the early 1900s because they owned the rights to the oil in the area. What I was not surprised about was the lengths non-native people would go to steal the Osage wealth and headrights. That the FBI in relation to these events was also a surprise. I admit to not knowing much about the early days of the organisation, but I found the central characters in this story, Tom White in particular, to be a forthright citizen at odds with the larger scheme of things.

In the end, this book made me outraged for the injustices that have gone unsolved - according to Grann there are many Osage deaths that were never investigated properly if at all. In many ways the book is timely, but more importantly it shines a light on something many will likely know little to nothing about. Well researched, with compelling characters and narration, Killers of the Flower Moon is well worth the read.

History is filled with events that, despite being utterly fascinating, simply fall by the wayside of our awareness. It isn’t that they are less interesting or less valid than other events – they just don’t make it to our history textbooks. They don’t make the cut.

Maybe they’re too obscure. Maybe they’re too poorly-documented. Or maybe they’re too embarrassing, reflecting shamefully on the victors who, as the saying goes, write the history.

The events documented in David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” have hints of the first two categories, but it is that third one into which it most thoroughly falls. The book is a deep dive into a largely-forgotten stretch of the early 1920s when the native people of one particular Oklahoma were faced with an unknown danger both relentless and cunning.

In the 1920s – the age of bootleggers and robber barons and tycoons galore – the wealthiest people per capita in the entire world were the members of the Osage Native American tribe. Due to the discovery of vast oil reserves beneath the surface of their reservation – lands to which they were moved years earlier by the United States government – the Osage people became wildly rich. Theirs was a life of luxury, of electric lights and limousines and mansions in the hills.

And then the murders began.

The Osage began to be killed off. Some were shot, others were poisoned, but all of them were Osage – and all of them carried significant connection to the tribe’s oil wealth. Many of the dead were related to one woman – Mollie Burkhart; it was almost as if her family was being targeted specifically.

It was the Wild West, with plenty of desperate people willing to do anything to fill their pockets with a chunk of that Osage oil money – people who were operating on both sides of the law. Sure, there were outlaws, but there were plenty of supposedly upstanding citizens who were willing to look the other way if it fattened their wallets. With so much corruption – and an unpleasant tendency for those investigating the deaths to themselves turn up dead – it seemed impossible that these murders could ever be solved.

The death toll climbed, with two dozen dead. The newly-appointed acting director of the FBI – one J. Edgar Hoover – decided to put together an investigation. Hoover’s still-fledgling agency blew it, leaving him no choice but to try and assemble an undercover team that might be able to break through the wall of corruption and get to the truth.

That team – led by a former Texas Ranger by the name of Tom White – would use state-of-the-art detection techniques to uncover what would prove to be a massive and convoluted conspiracy, one rife with double crosses and triple crosses. Betrayal lurked around every corner and beneath every rock; it seemed that there was no one that White – or the Osage – could trust. The depths – and heights – reached by this plot would entangle friends, family and some of the most powerful men in Oklahoma.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is one of the most propulsive, engrossing true-crime stories that I’ve ever had the opportunity to read. Grann has no problem with striding right up to the line between compelling and overwrought, keeping the reader teetering on edge for deliciously-extended stretches. It is lushly written; there’s a purplish hue that lays over the prose in a way that points up the lurid nature of the narrative without ever succumbing to the urge to exploit.

This is a story about investigating a crime, yes, but it is also a story about a society that cared so little about the lives of Native Americans that it simply turned its head and attempted to ignore these horrific crimes. It’s a remarkably fine line to walk, yet Grann doesn’t even seem to be trying all that hard – and that effortlessness certainly translates to the reading experience.

The narrative is so rich, packed with compelling characters, unbelievable schemes and plot twists that would potentially render a cynical fiction reader incredulous. “Killers of the Flower Moon” tells an immersive tale, one whose outsized elements capture exquisitely the unique nature of 1920s Osage County – warts and all.

What’s so remarkable about this historical snapshot is its clarity. The depth of research is apparent on every page; Grann has packed this book with an incredible degree of detail. It’s the best kind of nonfiction – the kind that imparts significant, interesting information while still managing some old-fashioned rip-roaring storytelling. It’s a combination that we too rarely get to experience – and this book has it.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is narrative history done right, a captivating and powerful account. This is masterful, emotionally gripping work from David Grann – the sort of book that grabs the reader by the lapels and flat-out refuses to let go. One of the best reads of the year.

That we as a nation, less than one hundred years after the Osage Indian killings, have no collective memory of these events seems an intentional erasure. The truth of the killings would traumatize our school children and make every one of us search our souls, of that there is no doubt. David Grann shows us that the systematic killings of dozens of oil-wealthy Osage Indians were not simply the rogue deeds of a psychopath or two in a small town in Oklahoma.

The tentacles of guilt and the politics of fear extended to townspeople who earned their reputation as “successful” because they allowed these murders and thefts of property to go on, as well as implicated law enforcement. Grann outlines how the case was solved and brought to court by the persistence of FBI officer Tom White and his band, but Grann is not full-throated in his praise of Hoover's FBI. He leaves us feeling ambiguous, not about White, but about Hoover.

The Osage Indians once laid claim to much of the central part of what is now called the United States, “a territory that stretched from what is now Missouri and Kansas to Oklahoma and still farther west, all the way to the Rockies.” The tribe was physically imposing, described by Thomas Jefferson as “the finest men we have ever seen,” whose warriors typically stood over six feet tall. They were given land by Jefferson as part of their settlement to stop fighting the Indian Wars in the early 1700s.

Jefferson reneged on the agreement within four years, and ended up giving the once-mighty Osage a 50-by-125 mile area in southeastern Kansas to call their own. Gradually, however, white settlers found they liked that particular Kansas farmland and moved onto it anyway, killing anyone who challenged them, oftentimes the legal “owners”. The government then forced the Osage to sell the Kansas land and buy rocky, hilly land in Oklahoma, land no white man would want, where the Osage would be “safe” from encroachment. This was the late 1800s.

In the early 1900s oil was discovered on that ‘worthless’ Oklahoma land and because a representative of the Osage tribe was in Washington to defend Osage interests, he managed to include in the legal agreement of the allotment of Indian Territory “that the oil, gas, coal, or other minerals covered by the lands…are hereby reserved to the Osage Tribe.” Living Osage family members each were given a headright, or a share in the tribe’s mineral trust. The headrights could not be sold, they could only be inherited.

The Osage became immensely wealthy. The federal government expressed some concern (!) that the Osage were unable to manage their own wealth, and so ordered that local town professionals, white men, be appointed as guardians. One Indian WWI veteran complained he was not permitted to sign his own checks without oversight, and expenditures down to toothpaste were monitored. But this is not even the most terrible of the legacies. The Osage began to be murdered, one by one.

When Grann discovered rumblings of this century-old criminal case in Oklahoma, he wanted to see the extent of what was called the Reign of Terror, thought to have begun in 1921 and lasted until 1926, when some of the cases were finally successfully prosecuted. The “reign,” he discovered, was much longer and wider than originally imagined, and therefore did not just implicate the men who were eventually jailed for the crimes. “White people in Oklahoma thought no more of killing an Indian than they did in 1724.” said John Ramsey, one of the men eventually jailed for crimes against the Osage. A reporter noted, “The attitude of a pioneer cattleman toward a full-blood Indian…is fairly well recognized.”

What we learn in the course of this account is that a great number of people had information that could have led to answers much sooner than it did, but because there was so much corruption, even the undercover agents and sheriffs were in on the open secret of the murders. Those townspeople who might be willing to divulge what they knew were unable to discover to whom they should share information lest they be murdered as well. Grann was able to answer some questions never resolved at the time, with his access to a greater number of now-available documents.

Why this history is not better known is a mystery still. Memory of it was fading already in the late 1950s when a film, The FBI Story starring Jimmy Stewart, made mention of it. The 1920s are not so long ago, and some of the people who were children then have only recently passed away, or may even be still living. Among the Osage there is institutional memory, and still some resentment, naturally, and a long-lasting mistrust of white people. Need I say this is a must-read?

The audio of this book is narrated by three individuals: Ann Marie Lee, Will Patton, and Danny Campbell. Interestingly, the voices of the narrators seem to age over the course of the history, and it is a tale well-told. But the paper copy of this has photographs which add a huge amount of depth and interest to the story. This is another good candidate for a Whispersync option, but if you are going to choose one, the paper was my favorite.

David Grann delivers a fascinating account of the Reign of Terror, perhaps the bloodiest chapter in American crime history. The sad fact is that the majority of Americans have never even heard of the events depicted in this book. The wholesale slaying of Osage Indians for their headlights has been largely tucked away in the annals of history. The author, through relentless, exhaustive, and painstaking research, uncovers new information that broadens the scope of the Reign of Terror. There were countless killings that were never included in the official investigation, and others that were never investigated or even classified as homicides. This book begins with a detailed history of the Osage tribe and their land, and then Grann peels back layers and layers of corruption to lay bare the deception that they faced. Several historical photographs of the key characters and locations from the book give the story a more personal touch.

The history surrounding the birth of the FBI and their investigation into the crimes committed is well researched and presented also. I would recommend this book to fans of true crime, historical crime, and Native American history. I received this as a free ARC from Doubleday Books on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

BookFilter review by Janet Rotter: Writer David Grann (author of the bestselling “The Lost City Of Z”) sets the stage for his new book by using the Osage designation of “the flower-killing moon” as a metaphor for a terrible time in the history of the Osage nation. It began in the 1920s in Oklahoma when oil was discovered under the rocky land the US government had sold to them. The Osage tribe (or “People Of The Middle Waters”) suddenly became rich beyond all imagination by selling drilling leases. But just as the taller flowers of May push out the gentler meadow flowers of the early spring -- the time the Osage call the killer moon -- the white man was not going to let this wealth stand. Soon, a series of vicious and coldblooded murders by gunshot or poison or explosion occurred one after. From 1920 to about 1925 more than 54 and perhaps as many as 60 murders were committed against the native Osage on their own land as crooks, thieves, swindlers and cunning manipulators moved into the area to fleece one and all. At times, it seemed that every white person of power from the judges to the medical doctors were in collusion with the perpetrators. Detectives and sheriffs called to the scene could get no answers. Witnesses changed their stories. People kept dying. Finally, the very new government agency dubbed the FBI, under a very young and ambitious J. Edgar Hoover, was asked by an Osage council to investigate. Hoover’s people got nowhere until he brought in special agent and former Texas Ranger Tom White, an experienced and honest lawman who looked like the hero in a movie serial. White focused particularly on the murders, one after the other, of the family of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman married to a white man. He used new methods of annotating and cross referencing of facts on one page reports -- a system of preserving and classifying information that Hoover instituted at the FBI -- and even brought in an American Indian detective who could get people to talk, an unconventional idea for the time. White saw a pattern quickly emerge, though a successful arrest did not happen for more than five years after the murders began. Grann is a staff writer at the New Yorker and he delivers an important narrative with dramatic tension. Sometimes you might get lost in too many narrative threads, but for the most part Grann keeps it fresh and immediate. He brings to vivid life another sorry episode in our shameful treatment of the American Indian. – Janet Rotter

During the 1920s, one of those great, booming Golden Ages of the American economy, the richest people in the United States were not Henry Ford or Andrew Mellon, but the Osage people of Oklahoma. The tribe had been squeezed into a small reservation that was useless for farming but turned out to be just right for oil gushers. Since the Osage had wisely demanded mineral rights before they signed the treaty, the revenue was theirs.

Many Osage moved from tipi-style lodges into large homes. Some donned Paris fashion. Some covered that fashion with a fine trade blanket. They bought cars, and some sent their children to expensive boarding schools. They hired servants. Some drank too much. Not too different from any previously impoverished group that suddenly strikes it rich. But because the Osage had so little experience with money-there being little cash on the reservation before oil--it was decided that each adult Osage needed a white guardian to help them manage their money. This is where David Grann's enthralling book begins.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" has three parts: the first covers 24 murders of Osage people in the early 1920's. Not for the faint of heart, this details people being shot in the head, blown up in their beds, and thrown off trains. Or poisoned, slowly or fast. Grann focuses on the family of Mollie Burkhardt, an Osage woman married to a white man who had five family members killed and who is now feeling very ill herself.

The second part concentrates on the response to these murders, which were a national scandal. Local investigators into the Oklahoma Reign of Terror were also murdered. The young J. Edgar Hoover took up the case, sending a team of old-school agents to Oklahoma, the sort of agents who didn't fit in with Hoover's new shined and buffed college-boy look for his minions. Blending into the Oklahoma community as a ranch hand, an insurance agent, and a healer from another tribe, they try to find out who's responsible for the killings. There's a lot of old style gumshoe work, traveling to one city only to find that the person sought has moved to another with no forwarding address, listening to talk in bars and tribal picnics.

The final part deals with the ramifications of these murders in the modern day and is an excellent roundup to the piece. Grann's own discovery about the real number of Osage people murdered is painful, even more so because there were so many mixed marriages and bi-racial children that people seemed at peace with each other.

Give yourself a long stretch of time for this book because once you will not want to stir until the last page is turned. You'll want to read more, so Linda Hogan's mystery "Mean Sprit" is a satisfying companion piece. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is the best book I've read this year.

When I heard the subject of this book I was fascinated. In the early 20th century, a tribe of Indians, one of the richest groups of people in the world, endured over 20 murders that were covered up and deliberately mishandled until the fledgling F.B.I. was brought in. Somehow, this entire episode had been left out of my history education. I hoped the book would live up to my expectations and it went beyond them. Grann was able to express the grave and shameful mistreatment of the American Indians in a way that offers dignity and humanity to the Osage that lived through this horrible period. Throw in some old-fashioned Wild West sheriffs and Pinkerton detectives and you have a history worth reading. I have recommended this book to friends and will continue to do so.

This review was written for the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association

Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI.
By David Grann, Doubleday, 2017, 352 pp.

History books tell us that the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and the slaughter of at least 150 Indians* was the final episode in the wars between Native Americans and whites. Perhaps we should revise the texts to take into account the “Reign of Terror” against the Osages in Oklahoma in which as many as sixty Osages were murdered between 1921 and 1925. David Grann’s new book on the subject reads like a detective novel but, alas, everything in it really happened.

Grann focuses on the extended Lizzie Kyle family to spin his tale of how history collided with ethnicity, paternalism, and greed. The 1830 Indian Removal Act—of which the Trail of Tears was a tragic subchapter—reserved much of modern-day Oklahoma as Indian Territory, a vast repository for conquered Indians. The Osages were confined there in the 1870s, after ceding lands in Arkansas and Kansas. The 1887 Dawes Act allowed Indians to own land as individuals and, six years later, the government opened non-reservation land to land-hungry whites. By 1900, whites dominated the territorial government, but few gave heed to a 1906 act giving the Osages, as a tribe, ownership of underground minerals. The next year Oklahoma entered the Union as the 46th state, with whites and Indians living side-by-side. Partial Osage assimilation occurred through intermarriage, forced schooling of children, and chosen adoption of white culture.

In 1917, oil was discovered in Oklahoma, an event that coincided with the takeoff period for automobiles. Suddenly, the Osages were the richest people in the United States. In 1923 alone, the Osages collected royalties on the magnitude of $400 million (2016 value). Intermarriage rates soared and some Osages engaged in ostentatious displays of wealth. Several reportedly purchased new automobiles, to use as makeshift hothouses as their owners didn’t drive. More controversially, numerous whites found themselves working for Osage masters. Alas, the same act that made the Osages wealthy also led their downfall. Each Osage property owner got a “headright” based on the amount of land owned, but the U.S. government could hold royalties in trust, and the bill ominously stipulated the right of non-Osages to inherit headrights.

Grann unveils a tale of fraud in which real and mythical cases of conspicuous consumption justified placing Osages under a 1921 white guardianship law requiring Osages to “prove” their competency; until then, guardians doled out royalties like a teenager’s allowance. Some, such as William Hale, the “King of Osage Hills” and a perceived friend of the Osages, persuaded male relatives to take Osage wives and act as their guardians. Hale’s nephew, Ernest Burkhart, married Lizzie Kyle’s daughter, Mollie—who lost much of her family to oil greed. In quick order, Mollie lost her sister Anna, her cousins Charles Whitehorn and Henry Roan Horse, her mother, and—in a massive explosion— her sister Rita, her husband, and their white housekeeper.

Grann presents the violence as a veritable war against the Osages waged by whites that lusted after oil wealth and felt it was their race privilege to possess it. That oil and murder were linked was fairly obvious, but untangling a multi-stranded web was another matter. Local detective James Monroe Pyle sided with his Osage neighbors, but the investigative powers of Bureau of Investigation (BOI) agent John Wren proved invaluable. Wren was often too undisciplined and independent for his superiors, but he was half Ute and an able investigator. To the degree in which the cases were ever solved, Wren and Pyle get the credit. One of Wren’s supporters was J. Edgar Hoover. The Osage murders were instrumental in Hoover’s plan to evolve the BOI into the nation’s primary law enforcement agency, which occurred in 1935 when it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Grann’s book has it all: mystery, graft, poison, nitroglycerin, crooked lawyers, and wolves in lambs’ clothing. The pity is that it’s a non-fiction book. Indians became U. S. citizens in 1924 and a year later, the Osage Allotment Act was amended to disallow non-Osages from inheriting headrights. Not that it did the Kyle family much good. Grann’s book puts a punctuation mark to the sad saga of how the West became white. Read the book now, as it has been optioned for a movie that promises to be a more accurate look at history than the fanciful 1959 film The FBI Story.

Robert E. Weir
University of Massachusetts Amherst

* Contrary to the perceptions of those seeing to be respectful, many indigenous peoples from the Great Plains westward prefer the term “Indian” over “Native American.”

A very captivating read about a part in America's history that likely few know about. Grann's narrative style makes this read almost more like a novel and therefore it's a really quick read. I learned quite a lot and am subsequently disgusted by our country and the way we have treated people in the past. We can't change that past, and clearly things are not great in the political climate right now, and so my sincere hope is that as Americans we can do better in the future.

I received an e-ARC of this non-fiction book through NetGalley and Doubleday Books. Thank you.

This book will be of interest to many readers wanting information on different historical happenings in the early 1920s of Oklahoma regarding the Osage Indians, the Osage Reign of Terror, Tom White, and the early days of J. Edgar Hoover at the helm of the Bureau of Investigation, later changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is so much information here that over 25% of the digital download is devoted to the Acknowledgments, Notes on the Sources, Archival and Unpublished Sources, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Illustration Credits. The book is also filled with high quality photographs of people and places mentioned in the book and they bring the book to life.

When the United States government forced the Osage Indian tribe off the lands they had been allotted in Kansas they were sent to a part of Oklahoma that wasn't really of any use to an agrarian society, and the Osage were hunters, not farmers so this move was a double blow to them because they didn't know how to farm and there was no prey for them to hunt. Yet the tribe members had great representation when the ownership documents were signed for the land so this move at least turned out to be beneficial to those on the tribal register when oil was discovered below those rocky lands. What began as a wonderful windfall turned into the Osage Reign of Terror as the Osage listed on the tribal register began to die, one after another. Some of the methods of death were easily figured out, some took longer, but the local law enforcement elements were certainly not in any hurry to find who was wiping out the Osage Indians. Enter Tom White, one of the 'Cowboys' remaining in the Bureau of Investigation. Hoover directed the investigation from Washington, DC and he wanted results.

This was a hugely interesting accumulation of facts concerning the murders of so many of the Osage Indians and I'm sorry to say I had never even heard about this horrible time in our nation's history. David Grann has obviously spent a great amount of time doing research and visiting the area where this tragedy took place. His sympathy for this subject matter comes across through his sensitive narrative and his presentation points out both the greed and bigotry of the people behind the killings and the sincerity for seeking justice among those who infiltrated this community of lawlessness and righted as many wrongs as humanly possible.